…It [righteousness] shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead (Rom 4:24).
Hodges translates this verse as “to whom it would be imputed…” (Romans, p. 127). The EHV reads “will be credited.” The VOICE translation reads, “who would one day be credited.” That imputation/crediting occurs when we believe, not after this life is over.
The big question, however, is why Paul says that this righteousness would be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. He doesn’t say, “who believe in Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead.” Instead, Paul speaks of faith in God the Father.
I believe there are two reasons for his referring to faith in God the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead.
First, as the Lord Jesus said in John 5:24, to believe in Jesus is to believe in God the Father who sent Him: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” To hear Jesus’ word is to believe His message of everlasting life to all who believe in Him. Anyone who believes that also believes in God the Father who sent Jesus to give that message.
Second, Romans 5–8 teaches that sanctification only occurs when the believer experiences the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are raised to “walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). In fact, the last verse in Romans 4, the verse immediately after Rom 4:24, says that Jesus “was raised for [or because of] our righteous living [dikaiōsis]” (Rom 4:25). Though most translations of Rom 4:25 translate dikaiōsis as justification, the Greek didn’t really have a word for that. The word justification is found three times, all in Romans, in most English translations: Rom 4:25; 5:16, 18. But in all three places the translation should say righteous living or righteous actions. The Greek word that refers to justification is the word righteousness, dikaiosunē. A few translations suggest that Rom 4:25 says He was raised “to make us right with God” (ERV, EXB, ICB, TLB, NCV, NIRV, NLV, NLT) or to “receive God’s approval” (GW, NOG).
Romans 7:4 reiterates the point of Rom 4:24-25: “Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.” Jesus was raised by God the Father so that we might bear fruit to Him.
Romans 8:11 also connects Jesus’ resurrection with our righteous living: “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”
Hodges makes this comment about Rom 8:11:
…In its context here, this statement must not be taken as referring to our future resurrection. Instead, it refers to the life and peace produced by the mind-set of the Spirit (v 6b). Thus the Spirit can overcome the death that characterizes the fallen state of our present mortal bodies (v 10) and can make them vehicles for expressing the divine life within us.
The Spirit through whom this amazing action is accomplished is none other than the Spirit of the One (that is, God the Father) who raised Jesus from the dead. With this statement, we come full circle back to Rom 6:4. There, Paul had stated that our union with Christ had an important goal: that “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.”
Accordingly, the resurrecting power of God the Father (the One who raised Christ from the dead), exercised through His Spirit, can bring us into experiential union with the risen life of Christ so that we actually walk in that “newness of life” that He Himself possesses (Romans, p. 211).
Romans 4:24-25 are like hinges on a door. They are the transition from the justification section (Rom 3:21-4:25) to the sanctification section (Rom 5:1–8:39). Righteous living is the way in which the person justified by faith is saved from the wrath of God in this life. Justification by itself does not save the believer from God’s wrath. That justification must result in righteous living, which is living that is energized by the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Keep grace in focus, and you will continue to walk in newness of life and to bear fruit to God.
