Imputed Righteousness

‘Imputed’ is a rare, technical, almost exclusively theological/legal word in contemporary English (obsolescence risk), which paradoxically makes it safer than ‘justification’ alone, since readers are less likely to already have a confident wrong definition. Still requires active teaching: credited righteousness, not the popular secular substitute of being a fundamentally ‘good person’ by behavior or intention, which contemporary moral culture (increasingly framed in terms of personal authenticity and good intentions rather than external moral law) tends to substitute by default.