The Glorious Exchange
- Capital Fellows
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
By Quentin Maxwell
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”(2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV).
The above verse is one that has recently been of significant importance to me. It encapsulates a concept that the Capital Fellows have been learning about in Life & Leadership. The doctrine of double imputation.
If you are new like me to the world of Reformed theology, this may be new vocabulary, although not an entirely foreign notion. What Martin Luther refers to as the “Glorious Exchange,” double imputation is the transaction whereby Christ is credited with all the sin and according punishment of man, while believers are simultaneously credited with all the righteousness of Christ.
A helpful illustration was given to understand this process. The guilt of man and the righteousness of Christ can be thought of as two bank accounts. The former being a negative account that is in an unrecoverable amount of debt, while the latter can be thought of as an account owned by the richest individual to ever live, full of unimaginable and infinite riches. Within this exchange, first – and this is often the easier part for Christians to understand and remember – Christ takes on the debt of man. The impoverished account is given to Christ so that he may bring the balance to zero. Zero? Doesn’t that mean that every time we sin we have to work to restore the balance? I often treat it this way. That’s because the second part of this transaction is the more difficult one for us to accept – that our account is credited with the riches of Christ’s account. An undrainable, bottomless wealth.
The implication here is not that we should “go on sinning, that grace may abound,” as Paul details in Romans chapter 6. What this means for Christians is that God’s grace for us is more immeasurable than we could ever believe, despite our sin nature being more grievous than we could ever understand. This has been particularly freeing for me as I wrestle through a season of greater understanding of myself and what God thinks of me. Ultimately, the irrevocable impact of this double imputation can be summed up this way:
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1 ESV).
Quentin Maxwell is a member of the Capital Fellows class of 2025-26. He is from Houston, TX, and is a graduate of the University of Alabama. This year, he is working at Everfox in Herndon, VA.
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