Since sin is an internal reality, outwardly manifested through imperfect and superficial symbols, the redemptive act involves the imputation of Christ’s righteous spiritual state to the sinner’s fallen state. This occurs through agreement with Christ’s external symbol of righteousness, which intersects with man’s internal potential for righteousness. In that moment, the representational force of the sinner’s symbolic self is nullified, even as it is paradoxically used and destroyed. Nothing in the man is substantially altered in that instant—no more than God is changed by man’s faith in Him. What is changed is how God is now truly, legally, not falsely, perceived: as real, trustworthy, moral, sovereign—and man, in turn, becomes His spiritual dependent. The symbolic representation of God is corrected in the mind of man, and the salvific symbol within man is aligned. Absent this transformation, man remains as he was—defined by physical symbols only, and God remains, to him, just a conceptual figure: a belief, not a revelation.
You can sense how much shifts when we begin to think of these things in terms of symbol and signification—because we understand symbols. We use them constantly. This article is composed entirely of symbols: inert shapes on a screen. Their value lies not in what is seen, but in what is meant—what is inwardly discerned and spiritually apprehended.
Through divine symbols, God speaks to the mind of man—but these symbols are not understood through learning alone. They are not processed by intellect or feelings in isolation, but rather by direct encounter with the transcendent meaning itself. They are experienced in a spiritual-mental convergence: the witness of a strange synthesis between here and there, between human and divine, by which understanding and love are awakened and reformed. Like a corpse stirred by the scent of incense, we are reanimated in spiritual awareness—yet without a body, there is no person to reanimate. The body is not dead in being, but in divine ineffectiveness. The only part of our spirituality capable of receiving, believing, and loving God’s self-revelation is not a singular act of God or of man, but a shared symbolic event—a union of mind and will between the two. It exists in neither sphere alone, but is formatted for radical convergence: wholly other, yet entirely known. This symbol of divine-human agreement is as much attributable to God as the imputed righteousness that now covers the sinner: totally.
If we are speaking of the convergence of internal states—Christ’s supernatural righteousness and man’s spiritual response—then faith must operate as the symbolic connection. It is not trust in a physical symbol but belief in the revealed spiritual substance of Christ. That is: not in the material signs, but in their transcendent referent. Faith connects to Christ’s spiritual demonstration—not the miracle alone, but the prophetic-revelatory meaning of that miracle.
In other words, it is by spiritual symbols—revelatory displays not confined to physicality—that Christ is known. These symbols originate in the physical world but cannot remain there. The strength and certainty of Christ’s demonstrative presence, both physically enacted and spiritually interpreted, must be matched within the receiver for imputation to take place. Faith must receive what was revealed. And it does so first receptively, then actively. Faith becomes a symbol of God’s new spiritual state imputed to man. But for that to be true, the content that awakened faith must be the same as the content that sustains it. The physical symbol—the man—may be imperfect, but the originating symbol—faith itself—is perfect in what it reflects.
Therefore, the Christ who is believed in is not a general spiritual ideal or theological abstraction, but a particular revelation. Faith in Him cannot be merely belief in an empty tomb, or in supernatural acts divorced from their revelatory core. It is not belief in divine intervention per se, but belief in the reason for that intervention: messianic fulfillment. It is belief in the God who keeps His promises—not just in wonders, but in the word that preceded the wonders and was fulfilled through them.
To treat a physical sign as if it were a spiritual one—without grasping its revelatory significance—is to reduce Christ to a mythic object, manipulable, subjective, optional. This leads to the belief that accepting Christ is like picking up a stone: a voluntary, generic act, without internal specificity. But spiritual reception does not happen through casual gesture. It begins with the recognition that what is grasped is meaningful, divine, and exclusive. The faith that receives Christ must apprehend what Christ is—not just what He did.
When faith is reduced to emotional assent or metaphysical optimism, it detaches from the object it is meant to know. It ceases to be belief in Christ’s revelatory fulfillment and becomes belief in belief itself. The spiritual reality of Christ is no longer needed. This is how the content of faith becomes dissimilar from the object of faith, and how supernatural truth is severed from supernatural epistemology.
The result is a church that insists, persistently and fatally, that the spirit is more like the body than like God. This confusion has wrought more devastation—spiritually, intellectually, morally—than any vice of the flesh. This is the battleground upon which Christ is gained or lost: “Who do you say that I am?” And that confession requires not merely a name, but the recognition of a unique revelation: Christ as the exclusive manifestation of God’s redemptive truth.
In short, the righteousness that covers sin—the Cross—cannot be only a physical event. It must be a spiritual communication, a revelatory sign, a divine symbol signifying a divine reality. The Cross as a historical event is necessary, but the Cross as a spiritual sign is what transforms. It must be fixed, lawful, supernatural, and irreducibly tied to God’s own self-giving—just as God Himself is.
Let me close this section without invoking the term “symbol,” though the principle stands.
What you do can never be the same as what God has done. But what you believe can be. That is why there is no glory for man in salvation, even though he must come to know and accept what God has done. Because you only believe—and to truly believe, you cannot do it. You do not generate truth; you receive it. Your actions are yours. But your belief is in God’s action, not your own. So the final question remains: What did God do, and why? For that answer becomes your faith.
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