'Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin'(Rom 4:6-8).
Paul does not say that David said, ‘blessed is the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works’, but that he ‘describeth’ the blessedness of the same man. He describes that blessedness in a little different language. Paul describes this blessedness in its positive aspect, David in the negative. Paul said God imputed something, David said God did not impute something. Both are speaking of the same man.
The absence of the one is the affirmation of the other. If your sins are gone, you are righteous, but there is more to this righteousness imputed to us than just the absence of sin. If God just wiped the slate clean, we would mar it again before you could say “clean.” Nor is this just a perpetual wiping of the slate clean. We not only are sinless, but we positively have a righteousness that is ours, which is the very righteousness of God (Rom 3:22), the righteousness of Christ, “the Lord our righteousness.”
What do you mean we ‘have’ a righteousness? Well, the word imputed is much misused and bandied about to make way for all sorts of wrong thinking. Here is how to clear up all of the wrong thinking about imputed righteousness: stop thinking (and saying) that when something is true in the sight of God, it is yet somehow not true. Imputation is not God seeing something differently than it actually is! Lose that thinking and rejoice! If God considers me righteous, it is because He has made me the righteousness of God in Him Who was made sin for me (2Cor 5:21). It is not complicated, just unfathomable. Do not add to or butcher God’s word in an attempt to understand or explain it. If God says it is so, believe and rejoice.
But, Chris, you are sinful and wretched. According to who? Who said so? Paul challenges anyone to say so: ‘Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth’ (Rom 8:33). Whoever raises a charge of sin against me, (my conscience, my enemies, whoever) is flying in the face of God. Is this a naïve blindness to my present condition in the flesh? No, it is simply walking by faith, not by sight.
We are sometimes like Elisha’s servant who saw only the enemies and a seemingly hopeless situation. Elisha prayed, ‘LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see’ (2Kings 6:17). If God would but open my eyes to see His precious, substitutionary, sin-atoning blood shed for me, then I will see the reality of the matter. My sins are gone. Elisha’s servant did not see a mirage, but a vision of the true, a glimpse of reality. The enemies did not disappear when his eyes were opened, but he saw them overwhelmed by the armies of Heaven. My present sinful condition is still visible to me, but where sin abounded, grace has much more abounded. And it is not ‘as though’ Christ put my sin away and became my Righteousness. It is that He ‘d i d s o.’ Now, God says I am sinless and righteous in Christ, and I say “Let God be true, and every man a liar.”
Postscript:
In Romans 4:7 the word “covered” is used in regard to our sin. Many words are used in scripture to describe how God has dealt with His people’s sin in Christ. Some have used this word “covered” as a way to explain the false idea that no sin was put away, redeemed, in any sense, until the time that Christ died on the cross. It is said that “cover” means to somehow sweep it under the rug until Christ died for it. There is an obvious problem with this since our text says that whoever’s sins are covered, also have the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, sin is not imputed to them and that their iniquities are forgiven. Sin that is covered from God’s sight is gone! Not deferred until a future reckoning. David described this blessedness long before our Saviour came and died. In David’s day, as now, blessed is the man who is forgiven by God because of the eternal redemption of Christ for His people of all ages. Christ’s blood was shed in time, but His cross-work is an eternal work.
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