Is Holiness Imputed or Imparted?

BLJ: This is a very important topic. Is holiness imputed, that is you are not really holy, but God sees you as holy? Or is holiness imparted by the Holy Spirit so that you actually become holy.

Is personal holiness imparted or imputed by Christ?

We know of no imputed holiness. Christ imparts never imputes holiness. His righteousness never covers up a corrupt heart. He never apologizes for sin, nor throws a mantle over it. It is to be feared, many who are living in sin are cherishing the delusion that they "are complete to in Christ," through an imaginary imputed holiness, while they fail to seek personal righteousness in His cleansing blood. It is a pernicious Antinomian heresy to trust in Christ's imputed righteousness instead of seeking and receiving personal redemption through his blood. We must be made "partakers of his holiness." No man is saved by the credit of Christ's holiness, without personal holiness begotten in him by Christ; and Christ never accounts his people holy in law before he makes them holy in fact.

Holiness in man, wrought by the grace and power of Christ, is precisely the same as holiness in God. The same in kind -- the one is original, and the other is derived and inwrought by the Holy Ghost. "Be ye holy, for I am holy." God is both the model and source of all holiness.

Our perfection is in Christ, as the perfection of the branch is in the vine. Grace is derived from Christ only by a union with him, as the branch to the vine. "Christ in you the hope of glory," -- dwelling in us by the Holy Spirit, and sanctifying us by his blood. Christ atones, intercedes, and procures blessings for us, and of God is made unto us "wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption." Our holiness is no more confined to the person of Christ, than a sick person's health is to the physician who cures him; or than a starving beggar is full fed in the benefactor who supplies his wants. Through the blood, merit, and work of Christ the fully saved soul has personal sanctification, and is made holy.

Rev. Albert Barnes says: "By him we are sanctified, or made holy. This does not mean, that his personal holiness is reckoned to us, but that by his work applied to our hearts, we become personally sanctified or holy." -- Notes I Car. i. 30.