Genesis 15:6 → Romans 4 → 2 Corinthians 5:21 · Featured Study · The Reckoning Word
Put That on Mine Account — Imputation
One accounting word — reckon, credit, impute — carries the gospel's central transaction across the canon: Abraham's faith credited as righteousness in a Hebrew tent, the same verb worked eleven times through Paul's courtroom in Romans 4, and the doctrine compressed to a single sentence at 2 Corinthians 5:21 — "him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him." A ledger, not a metaphor: something is genuinely charged, and something is genuinely credited.
The Reckoning Word
— one accounting verb, seven texts, one canon-wide transaction- IGenesis 15:6the root — ḥāšab
“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness.”
Abram brings nothing but trust; God does the reckoning. The Septuagint renders ḥāšab (h2803) with elogisthē — the very logizomai Paul will quote four times in Romans 4. The whole Pauline argument is already latent in the Greek text Paul himself read.
- IIPsalm 32:1–2the second witness — negative and positive
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven… Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.”
David's blessing states the doctrine's other half: not only righteousness credited, but sin not credited. Paul will call David to the stand as Abraham's second witness (Rom 4:6–8).
- IIIRomans 4:3–8the quarry — logizomai, eleven times in one chapter
“For what saith the scripture? And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness… Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works.”
Paul mines Genesis 15 and Psalm 32 together, working the same accounting verb eleven times through the chapter. Righteousness is credited to faith, not earned by labor — a gift entered on the ledger, not a wage owed for it (4:4–5).
- IVRomans 5:19the federal link — one man's obedience, counted to many
“For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous.”
The strongest imputation sentence Paul writes, and the one that explains how a transfer between persons is even possible. "Made" translates katestathēsan — appointed, constituted, placed in a standing — the verb used elsewhere for installing a steward over a household, not for altering his character. Adam's posterity are counted sinners federally, by their representative's act rather than by inheriting his temperament; on the same terms and by the same verb, the many are constituted righteous through the obedience of one. Two heads, two verdicts, one legal mechanism.
- V2 Corinthians 5:21the exchange — the doctrine in one sentence
“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
Reckoning becomes double: our sin charged to the sinless one, his righteousness credited to us. Not a moral transformation stated here but a transfer — the tightest single verse of the whole thread.
- VIPhilemon 18–19the picture — ellogeō, business Greek
“But if he hath wronged thee at all, or oweth thee aught, put that to mine account; I Paul write it with mine own hand, I will repay it.”
Paul writes Philemon an actual promissory note for a runaway slave's debt — a small, historical, commercial transaction. Its verb, ellogeō, is one MannaFest's research has not verified to belong to the same word-family as logizomai, and this is not a formal atonement text; hold it as a thematic parallel. What can be said flatly is that Paul uses ellogeō exactly twice, and the other time is Romans 5:13, where sin is not imputed apart from law.
- VIIJames 2:23the same verse, a different sense — door to faith and works
“And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God.”
James quotes Genesis 15:6 verbatim — but reads it as fulfilled, evidenced, in Genesis 22's offering of Isaac decades later. Same reckoning, read for demonstration before men rather than declaration before God.
In His Own Words — Wesley on the Federal Link (IV)
“As by the disobedience of one man many (that is, all men) were constituted sinners - Being then in the loins of their first parent, the common head and representative of them all. So by the obedience of one - By his obedience unto death; by his dying for us. Shall be constituted righteous - Justified, pardoned.”
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Bible (1765), on Romans 5:19 — public domain
The Ledger
— 2 Corinthians 5:21 rendered as what it is — a double entryCharged — debit
Our sin, entered against him who knew no sin — a debt he did not incur, charged to his account on the cross.
Credited — credit
His righteousness, entered to our account — a status we did not earn, credited to us in him.
Both entries are stated in one breath at 2 Corinthians 5:21, and neither is a change of inward character at the moment it is made — it is a reckoning, a crediting, entered on the ledger before it is ever lived out. MannaFest's fuller argument for reading this as forensic imputation, and the honest case against it, at full strength, sits on the justification-by-faith doctrine page →
The Judge's Verb
— hitsdiq — why “justify” cannot quietly mean “improve”Everything above depends on one claim: that to justify is to declare righteous, not to make righteous. That claim is not settled by preference. It is settled by the Hebrew, centuries before Paul. The causative stem of tsādaq — hitsdiq, the Hiphil — is pinned down by two courtroom texts that would be nonsense on any other reading.
“then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.”
Judges are not commissioned to reform the righteous man. They are commissioned to rule in his favour. And “justify” is paired against “condemn” — a verdict against a verdict, both handed down, neither poured in.
“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah.”
Read “justify” as “make good,” and this verse calls the rehabilitation of a criminal an abomination — which no one has ever believed. Read it as declare in the right, and it is simply the ordinary horror of a bought verdict. Only the forensic sense survives contact with the text.
Why it matters here — This is what makes Romans 4:5 an outrage rather than a platitude. God is said to justify the ungodly — the exact thing Proverbs 17:15 calls detestable. Paul knows it. The doctrine of imputation exists to answer the question that raises: on what ground can the Judge do what Proverbs says the Judge must never do, and not be corrupt? The answer is the ledger — a righteousness genuinely credited, and a penalty genuinely paid.
Two Witnesses, One Reckoning
— Romans 4:6–8 — Abraham and David called to the same standAbraham — the positive entry
"Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness" (Rom 4:3, citing Gen 15:6).
Righteousness credited where none existed — a gift entered on the ledger, not a wage owed. Paul's own terms: a worker's reward is reckoned “as of debt,” while the one who does not work but believes “on him that justifieth the ungodly” has his faith reckoned for righteousness (Rom 4:4–5).
David — the negative entry
"Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin" (Rom 4:8, citing Ps 32:1–2).
Sin not credited — a debt genuinely incurred, and just as genuinely not entered against the debtor's account.
MannaFest flag — Paul states the doctrine both ways on purpose: a positive crediting (righteousness reckoned) and a negative one (sin not reckoned) are the same transaction seen from two sides of the same ledger, not two different doctrines.
The Argument From the Calendar
— Romans 4:9–15 with Galatians 3:17 — Paul's case runs on dates, not only on textsPaul's sharpest move in Romans 4 is not an exposition. It is a chronology. Genesis 15:6 is dated, and everything a reader might mistake for the ground of Abraham's standing arrives afterwards — which settles what could and could not have earned it.
- Genesis 15:6the verdict
Abram believes, and it is reckoned to him for righteousness.
The standing is settled here. Everything that follows is later by definition, and Paul builds on exactly that.
- Genesis 17~14 years later
Circumcision is commanded — the covenant sign given to Abraham and his seed.
So Abraham was justified as an uncircumcised man, which is Paul's ground for calling him father of believing Gentiles (Rom 4:9–12). The sign follows the reality it marks.
- Sinai430 years later
The law is given — the interval Galatians 3:17 puts at four hundred and thirty years.
A promise already confirmed cannot be annulled by a covenant that arrives four centuries afterwards. Law works wrath (Rom 4:15); it was never the instrument that made Abraham righteous.
The point of the dates — Abraham was reckoned righteous while still uncircumcised and with Sinai four centuries over the horizon. Neither the rite nor the law can be the ground of a verdict that was already entered before either existed. Circumcision is demoted, in Paul's own word, to a seal of a righteousness already reckoned (Rom 4:11) — a signature on a document, not the document.
A Small, Real Promissory Note
— Philemon 18–19 — the doctrine's vocabulary, borrowed for one household debt"But if he hath wronged thee at all, or oweth thee aught, put that to mine account; I Paul write it with mine own hand, I will repay it: that I say not unto thee that thou owest to me even thine own self besides."
Paul writes Philemon an actual legal-sounding promissory note for a runaway slave's debt, using the commercial term ellogeō — "put to one's account." The picture is unmistakably the same shape as the doctrine: one who owes nothing absorbs the debt of one who owes everything, so the debtor is received as family rather than billed as a debtor. But it is worth stating plainly what our own research declines to settle: whether ellogeō belongs to the same word-family as logizomai is not verified — the brief withholds judgment in both directions rather than ruling it in or out — and this is not itself an atonement text. Hold it as a thematic parallel, a small lived illustration of imputation's shape, not as identical terminology or a further Scripture proof.
What the floor does settle
Paul uses ellogeō exactly twice in the New Testament. Once here, over a household debt. Once at Romans 5:13 — “sin is not imputed when there is no law” — three verses before the Adam-and-Christ argument that this page's fourth link turns on. Whatever the lexicographers finally decide about its family, the man writing the promissory note is the same man who used the word for the reckoning of sin itself, in the middle of the chapter where he argues that one man's act is counted to many.
The Same Verse, Read a Different Way
— James 2:23 — Genesis 15:6 again, this time fulfilled rather than declaredJames quotes the identical text Paul builds his whole argument on — "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness" — but reads it as fulfilled in Genesis 22, when Abraham offered Isaac, decades after Genesis 15's declaration. Paul asks how a sinner is declared righteous before God; James asks how a professed faith is shown to be genuine before others. Both use the same verb, the same man, the same text — answering different questions from the same gospel, not contradicting each other.
Imputed or Infused?
— the Reformation and Trent divide — the sharpest fault line this doctrine hasOne question splits the Western church, and it is the question this whole page has been circling. When God justifies, does he credit a righteousness that belongs to someone else — Christ's, received by faith, leaving the verdict a legal declaration about a person not yet changed? Or does he infuse a real righteousness that makes the person actually righteous, so that justification includes inward renewal and can grow or be lost? The first is what the Reformers meant by alien righteousness — alien not in the sense of strange, but in the strict legal sense of belonging to another, held on our account rather than produced by our nature.
The Tridentine case, at its strongest
The Council of Trent, Session VI (1547), taught justification as a genuine making-righteous: grace infused into the soul, beginning at baptism, so that the justified are truly renewed and inherently righteous — a righteousness that increases through faith working by love (fides caritate formata), can be lost by mortal sin, and regained. Trent's canons anathematised justification by imputation alone.
Its real strength is not institutional. It refuses to divorce justification from holiness, takes seriously that grace transforms rather than merely relabels, reads iustum facere — to make righteous — in some Latin and patristic usage, and guards the door against a bare verdict that leaves the sinner untouched. Newman's Lectures on Justification presses a middle that ties the declaration to the indwelling Christ.
MannaFest flag — forensic imputation
Justification is God's judicial declaration crediting Christ's righteousness to the believing ungodly, apart from works — a change of status, not yet of nature. The exegetical case is the one this page has been laying: the vocabulary of Romans 4 is accounting language, not infusion language; the verdict falls on the ungodly (4:5), so an infused righteousness cannot yet be its ground without God declaring true what is not yet true; the judge's verb is declarative; 2 Corinthians 5:21 states a double transfer in one sentence; and Romans 5:19 constitutes the many righteous by another man's obedience, the same way Adam's posterity are constituted sinners.
A related Protestant position is refused on the same grounds: Andreas Osiander held that we are justified by Christ's essential divine righteousness dwelling in us. Calvin devoted Institutes III.xi.5–12 to answering him — the objection being that it collapses justification into regeneration and relocates the ground inside the believer.
The guardrail — This is not a licence to stay as you are, and the objection deserves a straight answer rather than a slogan. Imputation and inward renewal are both real, and both given — they are distinct gifts, not the same act. Justification is instantaneous, complete, declarative. Sanctification is progressive, lifelong, transformative. The Reformation never denied infused holiness; it moved it, from the ground of acceptance to its fruit. A doctrine that credits righteousness and expects none is not the one being defended here.
The fault line is still live, and honest ecumenical work has narrowed rather than closed it: the 1999 Lutheran–Catholic Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification found substantial common ground while leaving imputation-versus-infusion, and the standing of the sixteenth-century anathemas, contested. MannaFest presents it as an attempt at convergence, not as a settlement — our research brief explicitly withholds that judgement.