Section 3
also means "put to account." First, God reckoned Abraham's faith as righteousness (4:3, 9, 22). When Abraham reacted to God by believing in Him, God, as the heavenly chief accountant, looked at the figures and seemed to say, "This faith of Abraham's should be accounted as right eousness. I credit Abraham with righteousness." Thus, God put righteousness in the credit col umn of Abraham's account. Furthermore, Paul says that sin is not reckoned where there is no law (5:13). A better translation of this word is that sin is not put to account without law. With out law sin existed, but it was not entered into God's accounting book. When we come to Ro mans 6, we must use our spiritual mathematics to do some accounting work (v. 11). Since we have been crucified with Christ and resurrected with Him, we must make an entry of this fact into our accounting book, that is, we must reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.
Let us proceed to draw two columns, a debit column and a credit column, for Adam and Christ. The first item on the debit side of the ledger is Adam himself. Adam constitutes a great debit for us all. Under Adam, the second item is transgression, or, to use synonymous terms, offense or disobedience. As used in Romans 5,