Imputation as part of present-day faith is a double concept. There is imputation of Christ's merit and imputation of salvation as a result.

The whole Christian church holds that justification and consequently salvation are effected by God the Father by imputing the merit of Christ His Son; and this imputation takes place by grace when and where God wishes, and so at His discretion. Those to whom Christ's merit is imputed are adopted and numbered among the sons of God. Since the leaders of the church have not advanced a step beyond this concept of imputation, or raised their minds above it, their dictum about God's discretionary choice has led them to fall into the gross errors of extremists, and eventually into the detestable heresy of predestination, as well as the abominable heresy that God pays no heed to what a person does in his life, but only to the faith he has written on the interiors of his mind. Unless therefore this erroneous belief about imputation is done away with, atheism would overrun the whole Christian world, and it would become subject to the reign of 'the king of the abyss whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek has the name Apollyon' (Rev. 9:11). Abaddon and Apollyon mean one who destroys the church by means of falsities; the abyss means where those falsities are (see APOCALYPSE REVEALED 421, 440, 442). This makes it plain that it is this false belief and the whole series of falsities that are consequent on it over which the destroyer is to reign. For, as I said before, the whole system of theology at the present time depends upon this concept of imputation, like a long chain hanging from a fixed hook, or like a person with all his parts dependent on the head. Since this concept of imputation is everywhere dominant, it is as Isaiah says:

The Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail; he who is honoured is the head, and the teacher of a lie the tail. Isa. 9:14, 15.