The doctrine of imputation is one of the most under-taught teachings in the church today, and every Christian needs to know it. God credits to us the righteousness of Christ, and this comes through faith alone, which is also God’s gift to us in Christ. Additionally, our sin is credited to Christ, who, though he knew no sin, was punished for the sins of all who trust in him for salvation.

Here are 10 words every Christian should know—and be able to explain—in order to “be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15).
1. Faith
Saving faith is not, as is commonly believed, a blind faith. There are three aspects of saving faith:

knowledge of Christ and his salvific work;

agreement that the claims of Christianity are true;

hearty trust in Christ alone for our salvation.

Faith is the instrument through which, by God’s grace, Christ’s perfect righteousness and atoning sacrifice are credited to us. It is God’s gift, not a work of any kind (Eph. 2:8-9). For more on the definition of faith, please click here.
2. Grace
Grace is one of God’s attributes. According to theologian Louis Berkhof, the grace of God in our redemption in Christ

is God’s free, sovereign undeserved favor or love to man, in his state of sin and guilt, which manifests itself in the forgiveness of sin and deliverance from His justice. (Systematic Theology, p. 427).

There is nothing we have done or could ever do to merit God’s grace. We receive it by God’s sovereign choice alone (Rom. 11:5-6).
3. Peace
There are two aspects to peace—objective and subjective. Just as two countries have a status of peace with each other through official agreements, so Christians are declared at peace with God through Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1). This means that we still have the status of peace with God regardless of how we feel or how well we keep his commands at any given time.
It is normal for Christians to still feel anxious in this troubled world and to feel a lack of peace from the sin in their lives. These feelings should spur us on to trust in God, repent of our sins, and seek to live in such a manner that honors our Lord. Christians should always be exceedingly thankful and find unfathomable comfort in the fact that the blood of Christ sufficiently atones for all their guilt and sin.
4. Cross
God in his perfection must uphold all his attributes. We cannot separate God’s love from his holiness, or his mercy from his justice. God must be true to all his attributes, because to do otherwise would be to deny his own self.
As theologian Michael Horton so aptly states in his book The Christian Faith, “God would not be God if he did not possess all his attributes in the simplicity and perfection of his essence” (229). Jesus was born in the flesh so he could fulfill the whole law and be the perfect sacrifice on behalf of all who put their faith in him (Heb. 10:11-14).
At the cross Jesus offered up his life as the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for all who trust in him for salvation (e.g. John 10:14, 15). According to Horton we observe, “the clearest evidence of the complete consistency between God’s goodness and his sovereignty, justice, wrath, and righteousness in Christ’s cross” (p. 266). At the cross we see God’s “righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).
5. Law
According to theologian R. C. Sproul, the law is like a mirror: it shows us our sin, but it can do nothing to save us. In fact, the law condemns everyone who is not in Christ. Jesus was born in the flesh in order to be the perfect Son whom God had promised since the fall of Adam in the garden (Gen. 3:15).

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3-4)

Jesus kept the law perfectly on behalf of all who trust in him for salvation, and they are counted righteous in God’s sight through faith alone by God’s grace alone.
The law also serves the purposes of restraining evil and showing us what is pleasing to God. Christians should also strive to keep God’s law in joyfully thanksgiving for all God has done for them in Christ, although they will do so imperfectly in this life. For more on the “three-fold use” of the law, click here.
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True love is, ultimately, rooted in Christ, who loved us too much to affirm our sin, rebellion, and brokenness. His love is both the example and the source of the love the world needs most right now, the kind which “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  

Perhaps no one is in a better position to challenge the reductive notion of love being mere “tolerance” than someone who has experienced “detransitioning.” At our most recent Lighthouse Voices event, a collaboration of Focus on the Family and the Colson Center, Laura Perry Smalts addressed the leading idea that, in the name of tolerance, Christians should use a person’s preferred pronouns, should only say and do what will never offend, and should be superficially sensitive.
The temptation to reduce love to only those actions and words that steer clear of offense is, like all lies, rooted in a half truth. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul describes love as “patient and kind,” “not arrogant or rude,” and “not irritable or resentful.” He also exhorts, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”
And yet, while love isn’t less than being kind and peaceable, it is more. Love requires that we tell the truth. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul also tells us that love does not “insist on its own way,” but on God’s way. And, most clearly, Paul states that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”
In fact, once the foundations of truth and morality are brought into the equation, it becomes clear that the constant pressure to be tolerant today (which, as many have pointed out, is ironically intolerant) is a pressure to conform to the world, something Paul also warns against.
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Written by R. Fowler White |
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
The Law itself, rightly read, clarifies who Abraham’s heirs are and also prescribes the rejection of their persecutors, particularly false teachers. The Law, then, was never put in place to dispense the eschatological blessings of Abraham, and so it has never been the way to obtain them. As it was at that time, so it is now (4:29-31).

As a complement to the three recent posts on the Hebrew Roots Movement (here, here, and here), consider the following synopsis of Paul’s argument in Gal 3:1–5:1, where he expounds the contrast between the Promise and the Law, between the Abrahamic covenant and the Sinai covenant. Put differently, in those chapters, the Apostle makes an inter-covenantal argument in which he contrasts Christ and the Law.
We might begin by asking, Why would Paul stress the Promise/Law contrast to the Galatian churches? I maintain that he does so because Paul’s opponents at Galatia (2:4) were teaching a heretical view of how to obtain justification and all the other eschatological blessings of Abraham. Specifically, contrary to the false brothers’ position, the Apostle insists that the Law is not the way to obtain those blessings, whether as an alternative to Christ (i.e., law-keeping without Christ) or as a supplement to Christ (i.e., law-keeping plus Christ). Christ is the only way, Christ alone is enough, to secure those blessings. To see how Paul’s argument unfolds, we will break it down section by section.
The “Follies” at Galatia (Galatians 3:1-9)
The issue that Paul’s opponents had created in the Galatian churches can be reconstructed from several places in the letter. We’ll take as an example 3:1-9. There, Paul expresses his astonishment at the foolish Galatians. He lays bare their foolishness by highlighting the contrast between the way they had begun their Christian lives (3:3b) and the way they were now finishing their Christian lives (3:3c). They were at least seriously considering a way other than the one with which they had started (cf. you who want [or desire] to be under the Law, 4:21). The Galatians had begun their new lives under God’s promised blessing: it was by hearing with faith that He had provided them the Spirit and had worked miracles among them (3:2, 3, 5)! Misled by Paul’s opponents, however, the Galatians were, apparently, submitting to doing the works of the Law (3:3) and, as he will add later, to circumcision (5:2-3). The result of these choices was that they are now finishing under God’s threatened curse (3:10; 5:4; cf. Rom 2:25)! Evidently, the false brothers were luring the Galatians, if they had not already duped them, with a false gospel, a gospel different from that of the Apostle (1:6). So, Paul is required to refute that false gospel, and he does so by arguing both for and from the true gospel of Christ. To rebut the “follies” at Galatia, he takes the Galatians through the history of the Promise and the Law. From that history, he reminds them of several pertinent facts.
Redemptive History Lesson #1: Before the Law Came In (Galatians 3:6–9)
First, as summarized in 3:6-9, Paul shows the Galatians that, even before the Law came in, the way to obtain the eschatological blessings of Abraham—including justification (3:6, 8)—had not been by doing the works of the Law, but by hearing with faith. In fact, the way the Galatians were now seeking those blessings was contrary to the way in which God had credited righteousness to Abraham himself (3:6). Clearly, before the Law had been enacted, it had been by faith that God had justified Abraham. In addition, the way the Galatians were now seeking those blessings was also contrary to the way in which God had previously determined to credit those blessings to all among the nations who would be Abraham’s true heirs (3:7-9). Therefore, even before the Law came in, doing the works of the Law had not been the way to get the eschatological blessings that Abraham received.

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