Understanding Federal Headship

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth with Austin Hobbs. Austin, what's your middle name? Dwayne. Dwayne, D-W? D-W, that's right. That's not D-U.

No, not D-U. Okay, and where'd that come from? I think that came from my grandpa. I think that's his middle name. So it's Dwayne, Roger Dwayne Kintner. What did you call your grandfather? Papa K. Oh, Papa K.

Yeah, we call him Papa Kintner,.

And that's on my mom's side. On my dad's side, we call him Papa Wayne. Okay. Well, my children, my grandchildren, I wanted one of them to call me Poppy, like, you know, Big Poppy. Baseball player here.

And at the moment, the ones that can talk call me Pop Pop. So it's pretty close, Pop Pop. Poppy, Pop Pop. One can't quite make the puh sound, so it's a fuh sound, so I'm Fuh Fuh. Fuh Fuh. Right. Anyway, it's just random talk.

Just trying to get, you know, trying to get you to know us, and we get to know you. I saw in the second row, Sunday, last Sunday, a no-co-listener, and I just wanted to give Corey a shout out. Corey and his family were here.

Corey is an elder in a church, I think an EV-free church in Iowa, and he's a pactum regular, and no compromise, I think he probably stopped listening to us when the pactum came. That's fine, whatever.

We've run our course. We've been around for 20 years. And anyway, it was good to see Dwayne. Good to see Dwayne. It was good to see Corey. Good to see you, Corey. Today, we are going to talk about three.

The Three Great Imputations

Last time, Austin and I talked about two, that is the two great commandments. This time, we're going to talk about three. Can you think of anything in the Bible that's significant with the word three?

Besides our topic, anything? Jesus was raised on the third day. Okay, great. He was raised on the third day. Jonah in the belly of the fish, three days. Three persons, one God, right? That'd be a pretty important three.

Trinity, what else do we have for threes? For threes, man. Covenant of redemption, covenant of works, covenant of grace, three theological covenants. Okay. All right, anything else, any threes?

The benediction, it's in a pattern of three, you know?

Okay, baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit. By the way, that's one of my favorite verses of all time where you think of one God, three persons, because baptizing them in the singular name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, it's one God. Okay, all right. Don't we baptize in Jesus' name? Didn't they do that in Acts? Yeah. Different show. Today, not three persons, although that's wonderful. Not third day risen from the dead, although that's glorious.

Three imputations. That's what we're going to talk about today, three imputations. Can you remember, without describing what they are first, can you remember the first time you heard a sermon about the imputations?

Did you ever, or did you just read something about it?

Man, I don't know, probably, honestly, just listening to either your brother, listening to probably you or Theocas, I mean, something like that back in the day, back in college, so the 2010s.

So I was listening to S. Lewis Johnson and I was on the bicycle and I would just listen to Romans, I'd listen to Colossians, and just similar to when I first got saved and listened to thousands, literally thousands of John MacArthur sermons.

And so I was listening to S. Lewis Johnson and he worked through books of the Bible, but he also did studies in systematic theology, or he did things about dispensationalism and covenant theology and comparing and trying to be honest with both systems.

And then he had a sermon called the three great imputations. Maybe it was a series. And I thought, oh, what's this? Imputations. And I knew what imputation meant. And I thought, what are the three great imputations?

And I listened to that message or that series, and I thought, I have to study it more and I have to preach it. And so one of the ways you can gauge good preaching, obviously Christ-centered, law of gospel, verse by verse, et cetera, et cetera.

One of the ways you gauge good preaching is after you hear a sermon, dear viewer, dear listener, when you go home and you want to reread the passage for yourself. To me, that is really a sign of good preaching because we're kind of wetting your proverbial whistle and you want to go home and see it with your own eyes and in context right there.

And you understand it better now. Not that the pastor had insights you could never come up with, but that he's gleaned those from other commentaries, et cetera. Well, another thing that to me is good preaching or yielding the fruit of good preaching is when the pastor who hears it wants to not only study it, but also preach it.

And I'm like, I've got to preach about the three imputations. So that was probably 15 years ago. I'm about ready to re-preach this sermon to Bethlehem Bible Church because we have new people and it's important to understand the imputations.

So today, three imputations that will be designed to help you understand Jesus, the Trinity, salvation, and just help you appreciate the gospel more. When you think of three imputations, Austin, why do you think it's important to know?

Well, it's essential to understanding, I mean, one, like why this world has fallen. He has sent into the world through one man, through Adam, which we'll talk about. And it's essential for understanding salvation, the fact that we get Christ free gift of righteousness and he takes on our sins.

So it really explains how does that glorious, that great exchange work.

Did Luther call it a great exchange or a fortunate exchange? I can't remember. Probably translated two different ways. Yeah, sure, sure. I can't remember. I mean, great exchange, of course, is great. Fortunate, sometimes maybe it's a little lesser than great, well, it's like an understatement.

It's a fortunate, that was a fortunate exchange. So first, before we get into the three biblical imputations, the three great imputations, we should probably define what imputation is. If I said imputation and you gave me a synonym, what might that synonym be?

Imputation as Crediting or Accounting

Yeah, we can say account. You know, we see that word in Romans, that God, you know, counted him, accounted him according to, you know, counted righteousness to him. We see maybe a credit. You know, God, it's, he puts it on your account.

Like it says, it is yours and it is yours in Christ. So maybe credit, to count, all that good stuff.

I was in Tennessee and when I'm down South, they regularly say something from old English that's kind of not present in our vocabulary here in New England or even in California, I reckon. Reckon, yes.

They'll say, I reckon, you know, you want to do such and such? Yeah, I reckon I'll do that. And to bolster what Austin just said about charging something, Philemon 17 and 18, Paul says, receive this man, and if he's wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

That's language of imputation, charging, crediting. You've heard me say this before. When I give my daughter away, are my daughters to be married? I say usually to the man after they've asked me for permission, I have good news and bad news financially.

The good news is when I die, you get one fourth of everything I own. The bad news is by the doctrine of imputation, you get my daughter's student loans. And then I say, I mean it. So that is imputation.

So it's a technical word that can be used. Even in marriage, I pulled up some of the marriage language when the groom says to the bride, with all my worldly good, I thee endow, right? So everything I have, it's yours by the doctrine of imputation, to charge, to credit, to reckon, to attribute something to someone's account.

And why is it important? Because it's in the Bible. And short of the three great imputations, I like to say, Austin, that my favorite imputation chapter to prove how important it is, is not just Romans 5, although that's where we're heading today, but don't forget Romans 4, because 10 times the word in the original language and then in the English, credit, reckon, count, or charge is used.

It's called the imputation chapter in my mind. 10 times Romans chapter 4. Just an example. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Not to the one who works, his wages, not to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. And so we have the doctrine of imputation. And the three great ones we're after today are, what are the three?

The three great ones. So it's basically Adam's sin to all mankind, ultimately the elect's sin to Christ, and Christ's own righteousness to those who believe.

Awesome. And where this is all coming from is headship and how one person's actions can influence and affect many. What one does, they can influence many. And there can be different kinds of headship, but it's all kind of under a big umbrella.

I guess this is an umbrella. This is before I lost weight. Under a big umbrella of a solidarity. And before we get into the Bible, Austin, I can think of if a general surrenders to another army, everybody under that general, he also surrenders, right?

That's what we saw with David and Goliath, right? That's exactly right. Two champions came out to fight.

That's exactly right. See, he goes straight to the Bible. I'm doing things like an ambassador signs a treaty or a president signs something, and we all have to inherit that. We're all affected. Or even Exodus 20, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation, right?

You have someone who does something and it affects you and you didn't do anything, but you just had the results of that. How many people lost their firstborn in Egypt because of Pharaoh's hardened heart, right?

They didn't harden their heart, but they were affected in this solidarity through headship. Achan, his whole family died. They didn't steal anything. Just he did. I was always taught, how do you remember what Achan did, right?

He stole things. And so I was taught when I was younger, Achan was Achan to steal something. So that's how I remember. The leprosy of Naaman clung to his descendants because there's a solidarity. One works, others get affected because of this headship.

Federal Headship and Adam's Sin

So today we're going to talk about federal headship in Romans chapter five. Romans chapter five, verse 12, federal headship for the first great imputation. And that is Adam's first sin and only his first sin credited by imputation, by charging, by counting that sin to all those in Adam.

It was given to everyone else's spiritual bank account, except of course, the Lord Jesus, the last Adam. We'll get to that in a minute. But Adam as a public person, as a head, their solidarity in the family of God by God's own wise choosing as Adam as the federal head and what he did affected all his descendants.

Is that right? That's right. That's correct. So the context of Romans five is simple. You mean to tell me Jesus can do something and it affects a lot of people. Doesn't he just do it for himself? Are you really trying to say that representation can affect lots of people?

And so Paul is saying, of course, representation is true. What Jesus did is for all his elect, all his family, all his bride, all those that the father gave him. And to prove the point that what one man can do and did can affect many, here, Paul uses Adam.

And he's saying, hey, forget Moses for a minute. Forget Abraham for a minute. Do you want to know how one person's actions can affect the many? He goes to Adam. He goes straight to Adam. And so we come to that first imputation and it is Romans chapter five, verse 12.

That representation, in other words, is not new. It's not novel. It's replete in history. It's replete in the Bible and Jesus, what he does affects the many. So I'm trying to find the verse here. Anything you want to chime in as I'm finding the verse, Romans five, 12?

No, no, I think you're doing great at the end. I understand. Okay, you get to come back next show too. Right, right, right. Okay, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Now, I don't know if this is someone else's quote or mine, but it's in my notes. What is meant by because all sinned? It's a big question, maybe bigger than you think. Because all sinned. Now, there's all kinds of views of Adam and how he represented and how there was a solidarity and how Adam's sin is dealt with here because all sinned.

What does it mean all sinned? So here's one view. The Pelagian view is Adam sinned and now we all sinned by example. Adam had a bad example. We follow that bad example. We could have followed a good example, but we followed a bad example.

Now, the reason why that's not true for many reasons, but when it comes to headship, I want you to think about the first Adam and the last Adam and the symmetry between the two. So here's what I mean.

If the first Adam fell and you could follow his, and you follow his example and sin, that means can you follow Jesus' example and have eternal life? So it doesn't work because what's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say proverbially.

And so Pelagianism is wrong for many reasons, but including viewing because all sinned as we sinned because we followed his bad example.

Right, right. Again, we have to understand if you get sinned wrong, then you're gonna get the gospel wrong.

By the way, how would Adam sin if he had no bad example? Right? Yeah, yeah. That logically doesn't work either. I just was in Tennessee. That dog won't hunt. Yeah, right. We're not by our own. We're not gonna fall by the virtue of our own sins and then go to eternal righteousness by the virtue of our own righteousness.

There's another view. Well, there are many views, but the only, we're gonna talk about three today. The Pelagian view, the Seminal view, and then the Federal view. The Seminal view is somehow we were in the loins of Adam.

Pelagian and Seminal Views of Adam's Headship

We were there with Adam, progeny to be. And so that's how we were related to Adam. We were just in Adam. It's called the Seminal view. The problem is, let's think symmetry again. So we fell because we're in Adam, seminally.

Now we're made righteous. We're credited a righteous because we're in Christ on the cross. It's asymmetrical, right? Yes, that's the word I was looking for. It's asymmetrical. So that doesn't work. We could talk about the realistic view and others, but we weren't in Jesus performing acts of righteousness, nor we were in Jesus as he suffered for the sins of all the elect.

So that's not. So the best option is a federal representation. Adam was the federal head, the legal head chosen by God. What's the Latin word for federal?

It's like foetus. Yep, yep. I say foetus, you say foetus. He I need to take Latin.

I haven't taken Latin yet. I need to take it. You know what? I started taking Latin on Duolingo and I finished the first section and then it's it. There's no more sections, right? In Italian, you'd say greetings, you'd say salve.

But of course in Latin, we're gonna pronounce the V with a W and so salve. But that's as far as I got. So foetus is covenant, a covenant headship, federal headship. It's fun because my dispensational friends, many of them believe in federal headship, but I don't know if they know what they're inferring.

And by the way, dispensationalists, we love you. I married one. I used to be one. I'm not gonna create some kind of false caricature to make you look dumb or anything like that. I want you to know that you can believe in the three great imputations and be a card carrying future for Israel, a literal temple for a literal thousand years with a literal Jesus in a literal no temple setting and believe these three imputations.

Can you not? Yeah, you have a reformed doctrine of salvation. That's definitely possible.

Absolutely. And you're on your road though to foetus. Adam was the legal representative. Let me read Romans 5, verses 15, 16, 17, 18, and listen for the word one. For the word one, one sin of one man.

Did Adam sin after the first sin? Of course. Did Eve sin before Adam sin? Yes. Did Satan sin before Adam sin? Eve sin? Yes. But Adam was the legal representative. He was the federal head and what he did affected many.

We call him a public person. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one, the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by that grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to many.

The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For on the one hand, the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation. But on the other hand, the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification.

For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.

So then as through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men. Even so through one act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners.

Even so through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous. Right, I mean, so you hear that.

It's not simply you're sinful because your sin's been passed down through descendants. No, like you're accounted guilty because of that one transgression. It's all about what Adam did. So it's simply how it just passed down throughout the generations, but Adam sinned and you fell in that first transgression.

As Lewis Johnson says, isn't that enough? Five times? That's surely enough. Five times he says death and condemnation take place by one sin by one man. And then Lewis said, that's very important. Jesus is our federal head, of course, but here he's talking about, that's not a new and novel concept because what Adam did affected all those under Adam, in Adam, all I think the 1689 and Westminster say, and his posterity, Adam and all his posterity.

All right, who chose Adam to be your federal head? Would you have liked to been the federal head? Do you think you could have fared better? Tell us a little bit, Austin, about this is God's choice as federal head and we can either buck against the system or we can yield to God's choice.

Right, right, I think if you struggle with this idea that Adam is God's chosen head over you and that, well, why does his sin affect me? That's not fair. Well, think about the Lord Jesus. The Lord, I mean, God himself chose his son, Jesus, to be, if you're in Christ, if you're a believer, he chose him to be your federal head so that even though you didn't do those acts of righteousness, even though you didn't die for your own sins, but God accounted that.

He counts Christ's own righteousness to you as if you did it. You didn't earn it. So according to you, that wouldn't be just. But again, this is according to God's covenant. This is according to how God will graciously give this to you.

That is so true. I almost wanna reach out into the camera and say, no, no, just think clearly. You like federal representation. You like federal headship. You might not like the Adam part, but you like the last Adam part.

And so here we have this symmetry that's true. Lloyd-Jones, excuse me, S. Lewis Johnson said, I'm happy that Adam was my representative because God chose him. But because if I had been my own representative, I know I should have failed.

And if God did not have this representative arrangement, then we would have a representative redeemer to come? No, so I like God's arrangement. I'm happy with it. In fact, I rejoice in it. And how about Adam as a full grown man is the federal head.

What do we do? We're born and then as an infant or as a toddler, we try to perform these things? No, no, we like the arrangement that God had, and that is Adam and the last Adam. G .S. Bishop said, if we could all gather, all the people that have ever been born and say, you know what?

Let's collectively choose a federal head to obey or disobey for us. Bishop said, overwhelmingly, we'd all vote for Adam. Smart, wise, intelligent, no sin. God created him upright. Uh-huh, right. He's saying, Adam's our man.

Yes, let's do it. One transgression. And as a consequence, now we're all born sinners. We get that credit to our account, that sin, that first sin, only that sin. And as a consequence, we're sinners, right?

We're born sinners. But before that, before we inherited that from our parents, as it were, we get Adam's sin. And matter of fact, it says in verse 13 of Romans 5, for sin indeed was found in the world before law was given, but sin is not counted where there's no law.

Moses, had Moses given the law at Sinai yet? Well, no. And so while there's the law written on our heart, Paul's not talking about that now. He's talking about sin is because you break the law and Moses isn't given yet.

So how is there death for people that haven't broken Mosaic law? Answer, Adam's sin. He even alludes to what about children? Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

That refutes Pelagianism.

It's like, oh, you image Adam, you follow his example. No, it says it's not like the transgressions of the one.

When Adam sinned and Eve sinned, God said, what did you do? To the man or to the woman? To the man. To the man, the federal head. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? The first sin of Adam, God's choice for federal representation affected many.

Representation is not new, it's not novel. It sets us up for if the first Adam did that, the last Adam's work is gonna be even better. Here's the confession, 6 -2, London Baptist Confession. Our first parents by the sin fell from their original righteousness and communion with God.

And we in them, whereby death came upon all, all becoming dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. They being the root and by God's appointment standing in the room instead of all mankind, the guilt of the sin was imputed and corrupt nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.

The Imputation of Believers' Sins to Christ

What if it just ended there? What if our show just ended with the first one? You mean to tell me we have to do more? Well, I know Austin's probably gonna be too busy. I might have to do the second and third one on my own, but just as a taste for some good news,.

Second imputation is what? The second imputation is our sins to Christ.

Now we like that, don't we? You say, I don't like that first representation. I wasn't there, I didn't do it. I didn't choose him, please. Well, okay, well, we didn't earn righteousness either, but we like this arrangement.

We like this arrangement where we get the righteousness earned by Jesus credited to us. But this one we're talking about, Jesus gets our sins. And as Lewis Johnson said, when a father strikes oil, the children get rich.

Wow. And then Lewis said, we have hit a gusher in Jesus Christ. Now I've never seen oil gushers in Texas. Have you? You Texas A &M guy? I have, I have. Okay, so Christ becomes legally responsible for our sins.

And 2 Corinthians chapter five is a very familiar passage. For our sake, he made him, that is the father made Jesus to be sin. Think sin offering. He's not transformed into some kind of sinner, but legally think of laying your hand on the head of the goat, right?

In Leviticus 16, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, spotless, blameless, the Lord Jesus, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So we wanna focus on this second great imputation is our sins credited to Christ's account by reckoning, by imputation.

He made him to be sin. Jesus wasn't guilty. Jesus wasn't a sinner, but he paid for our sins. Tell me a little bit more about that, Austin. When you think about this imputation, what runs through your mind, verses, ideas, concepts?

Yeah, well, if you ever think about the idea in our culture of a scapegoat, someone is blamed for the shortcoming, the failings of another, and that's how they run free. And that really comes from the Old Testament, from the day of atonement, how the high priest of Israel would confess the sins of Israel upon this goat.

And then once he put his hands on the goat, they would kick him out, kick him out. They would kick him out of the camp and that he would go to the wilderness, ultimately to be probably eaten, right? And so that's the same concept with Jesus.

He has come to be ultimately our scapegoat so that God would place all of our sins upon Jesus, that all of our sins, all of your failing of the 10 commandments, your lack of love for God, your hatred of neighbor, hatred of God, all of that is placed upon Christ.

It's all gone. It's wiped away. And this idea we get from Colossians, how he has canceled the record of debt that stood against us by nailing it to the cross. So all of that sin that you've committed in your life, if you're a believer, it's gone.

It's wiped away, clean slate. In terms of that imputation, it's as if you committed no sin. That's what it's like, that imputation.

Boy, wouldn't that be wonderful, committing no sin? It's just like, oh, what a relief. Well, that'll be glory. But on earth, God looks at you like you've never committed a sin, dear Christian. Isn't that wonderful?

Substitution and the Satisfaction of God's Wrath

I think of the language in Isaiah 53 of substitution as Austin was discussing the scapegoat and substitutes. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was a chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. All like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way.

And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. That's the doctrine of imputation, where our sins are credited to Christ's account and he pays for them on the cross, right? The wrath of God was satisfied as Jesus paid for them in full.

And how do we know it worked? How do we know God the Father accepted that great transaction of imputation?

Well, he had raised his son from the dead and he has declared, this is my son with whom I'm well pleased.

Today, you're my son. Today, I've begotten you. And by the way, I know we're out of time, but you even sing this song about imputation. Because the sinless savior died, my sinful soul is counted free.

For God is just as, for God the just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me. Two great imputations. We'll see you next time for the third one.