No treatment of justification could be complete without considering the words IMPUTE and IMPUTED. These are legal concepts used to describe the forensic (legal) nature of justification. The following is from “The Everlasting Righteousness” by Horatius Bonar: On reading this work and especially this passage, I thought there was little point in, as it were, re-inventing the wheel. He says,

“We get everything upon the credit of His name, and because not only has our unworthiness ceased to be recognized by God in His dealings with us, but our demerit been supplanted by the merit of One who is absolutely and divinely perfect. In His name we carry on all our transactions with God, and obtain all that we need by simply using it as our plea. The things that He did not do were laid to His charge, and He was treated as if He had done them all; so the things that He did do are put to our account, and we are treated by God as if we had done them all.

This is the scriptural meaning of reckoning or imputing, both in the Old Testament and the New. Let us look at a few of these.

Genesis 15:6: "It was imputed to him for righteousness;" i.e. it was so reckoned to him, that in virtue of it he was treated as being what he was not.

Genesis 31:15: "Are we not counted of him strangers?" Are we not treated by him as if we were strangers, not children?

Leviticus 7:18: "Neither shall it be imputed unto him that offereth it." The excellence of the peace-offering shall not be counted to him.

Numbers 18:27: "Your heave-offering shall be reckoned unto you as though it were the corn of the threshing-floor." It shall be accepted by God as if it were the whole harvest, and ye shall be treated by Him accordingly.

2 Samuel 19:19: "Let not my lord impute iniquity unto me, neither do thou remember that which thy servant did perversely." Do not deal with me according to my iniquity.

Psalm 32:2: "Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity"; to whom God does not reckon his iniquities, but treats him as if they were not (see also Psalm 106:31).

Romans 4:5: "His faith is counted for righteousness"; i.e., not as the righteousness, or as the substitution for it, but as bringing him into righteousness.

Romans 4:6: "Unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works."

Romans 4:8: "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin."

Romans 4:11: "That righteousness might be imputed to them also."

Romans 4:24: "To whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead."

2 Corinthians 5:19: "Not imputing their trespasses unto them."

Galatians 3:6: "It was accounted to him for righteousness."

Thus the idea of reckoning to one what does not belong to him, and treating him as if he really possessed all that is reckoned to him, comes out very clearly. This is God's way of lifting man out of the horrible pit and the miry clay; of giving him a standing and a privilege and a hope far beyond that which mere pardon gives, and no less far above that which the first Adam lost. To be righteous according to the righteousness of the first Adam, would have been much; but to be righteous according to the righteousness of the last Adam, the Lord from heaven, is unspeakably and inconceivably more.

"It is God that justifies"; and He does so by imputing to us a righteousness which warrants Him as the Judge to justify the unrighteous freely. It is not simply because of this righteousness that Jehovah justifies; but by legally transferring it to us, so that we can use it, and plead it, and appear before God in it, just as if it were wholly our own. Romanists and Socinians have set themselves strongly against the doctrine of "imputed righteousness." But there it stands, written clearly and legibly in the divine word. There it stands, an essential part of the great Bible truth concerning sacrifice and substitution and suretyship. It is as deeply written in the book of Leviticus as in the Epistle to the Romans. It spreads itself over all Scripture; and rises gloriously into view in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, where the "obedience unto death" which makes up this righteousness was completed. There He, who as our substitute took flesh and was born at Bethlehem,-who as our substitute passed through earth, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,-consummated His substitution, and brought in the "everlasting righteousness"; the righteousness of which the apostle spoke when he reasoned that, "as by the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous" (Rom 5:19); and when he proclaimed his abnegation of all other righteousnesses: "and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is by the faith of Christ, even the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Phil 3:9). This is "the gift of righteousness" regarding which he says: "If by one man's offense death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ" (Rom 5:17). The one man's offense rests upon all men "to condemnation" (Rom 5:18); the one Man's righteousness, as the counteraction or removal of this condemnation, is available and efficacious "unto justification of life." The imputation of the first Adam's sin to us, and of the last Adam's righteousness, are thus placed side by side. The transference of our guilt to the Divine Substitute, and the transference of that Substitute's righteousness or perfection to us, must stand or fall together.

This righteousness of God was no common righteousness. It was the righteousness of Him who was both God and man; and therefore it was not only the righteousness of God, but in addition to this it was the righteousness of man. It embodied and exhibited all uncreated and all created perfection. Never had the like been seen or heard of in heaven or on earth before. It was the twofold perfection of Creatorhood and Creatorship in one resplendent center, one glorious Person; and the dignity of that Person gave a perfection, a vastness, a length and breadth, a height and depth, to that righteousness which never had been equaled, and which never shall be equaled for ever. It is the perfection of perfection; the excellency of excellency; the holiness of holiness. It is that in which God preeminently delights. Never had His law been so kept and honored before. Son of God and Son of man in one person, He in this twofold character keeps the Father's law, and in keeping it provides a righteousness so large and full, that it can be shared with others, transferred to others, imputed to others, and God be glorified (as well as the sinner saved) by the transference and imputation. Never had God been so loved as now; with all divine love and with all human love. Never had God been so served and obeyed, as now He has been by Him who is "God manifest in flesh." Never had God found one before, who for love to the holy law was willing to become its victim that it might be honored; who for love to God was willing not only to be made under the law, but by thus coming under it, to subject Himself to death, even the death of the cross; who for love to the fallen creature was willing to take the sinner's place, to bear the sinner's burden, to undergo the sinner's penalty, to assume the sinner's curse, to die the sinner's death of shame and anguish, and to go down in darkness to the sinner's grave..”