Guilty of Righteousness? The Asymmetry Problem in Federal Theology
Why the Adam-Christ parallel was never symmetrical, and why that matters.
Federal theology rests on a parallel. Adam stands as the covenant head of humanity; Christ stands as the covenant head of the redeemed. What Adam did affects those in him; what Christ did affects those in Him. The parallel is real, and it matters. But there’s a problem hiding inside it, and the problem becomes visible the moment you try to make the parallel run in both directions.
The standard federalist account goes like this: Adam sinned, and his guilt was imputed to all his descendants. We are born not merely corrupted but condemned, bearing the legal liability for an act committed before we existed. The parallel then runs to Christ: His righteousness is imputed to all who are in Him. Just as we received guilt through Adam, we receive righteousness through Christ. Symmetry.
But watch what happens when you press on the mechanism.
How does Adam’s guilt reach you? By biological descent. You didn’t choose Adam as your representative. You didn’t ratify the covenant. You were simply born into it, and the guilt attached automatically.
How does Christ’s righteousness reach you? Not by biological descent. Not automatically. You are united to Christ by faith, through the Spirit’s work. There is a personal reception, a union that must be effected. No one holds that righteousness is imputed to all of Adam’s biological descendants simply because Christ acted on their behalf.
The asymmetry is already there. It was always there. The tradition has lived with it without fully acknowledging it.
Here’s a phrase that clarifies the problem: guilty of righteousness.
We speak of being “guilty of sin.” That makes sense. Guilt is a forensic status arising from culpable action. To be guilty is to bear liability for a wrong.
Can you be “guilty of righteousness”? The phrase is nonsense. Righteousness isn’t something you’re guilty of. It’s something credited, received, granted. The grammar doesn’t work because the categories are different.
And yet, if the federalist parallel were truly symmetrical, something like this would have to hold. If guilt transfers automatically by descent, and the parallel with righteousness is strict, then righteousness would transfer the same way. But it doesn’t. Everyone acknowledges it doesn’t. Righteousness is imputed to those who are in Christ, and being in Christ requires a union that biological descent from Adam never required.
The tradition has quietly accepted an asymmetry it officially denies.
What if we followed the asymmetry rather than suppressing it?
The alternative is this: Adam’s act introduced a condition, not a legal verdict. The condition is corruption, mortality, disorder. Every human being is born into this condition. It is inescapable, and within it, rebellion is inevitable at the species level. No one makes it through without sinning.
This is what David means in Psalm 51:5: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” The verse is often cited as proof of inherited guilt, but look at what it actually says. David was brought forth in iniquity, conceived in sin. The preposition describes the environment, the condition, the situation into which he entered. It doesn’t say he was guilty of his mother’s sin or Adam’s sin. It says he entered a world already saturated with it.
Paul’s language in Romans 7 reinforces this. He describes himself as “sold under sin” (7:14), trapped in a condition where “nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (7:18). The entire passage is a phenomenology of the corrupted condition: knowing the good, unable to do it consistently, captive to a law of sin dwelling in his members. This is the human situation. It’s a condition of bondage, not merely a legal status inherited from Adam.
But guilt? Guilt attaches to actual rebellion. Guilt arises when a person, operating within the corrupted condition, chooses autonomy over God’s authority. The guilt is then genuinely theirs. It’s not a legal fiction inherited from a distant ancestor. It’s the real liability for a real choice.
This is what Ezekiel 18:20 says: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”
The principle is clear. Guilt is not transferred across generations. Consequences, conditions, corruption: these propagate. But the forensic verdict attaches to the one who acts.
Does this reading hold up in Romans 5?
Paul’s argument in Romans 5:12-21 is often taken as the definitive statement of imputed Adamic guilt. But look carefully at verse 12: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”
Death spread to all. Why? “Because all sinned.” Not “because all were credited with Adam’s sin.” Paul’s logic is that Adam’s act introduced sin and death into the world, and every person, operating within that world, sins. The guilt is real, but it’s the guilt of actual sin, not merely inherited liability.
The parallel with Christ then works consistently. Adam’s act introduced the condition of sin and death. Christ’s act introduces the possibility of righteousness and life. Those who are united to Christ by faith receive what He accomplished. The parallel is representational and covenantal: Adam and Christ are both heads whose actions have consequences for those connected to them. But the mechanism on the Christ side was always personal union, and the mechanism on the Adam side is the introduction of a condition within which personal guilt inevitably accrues.
The typology holds. It actually holds more cleanly, because we’re no longer forcing a symmetry that the tradition never consistently maintained.
But what about being “in Adam”?
First Corinthians 15:22 states it directly: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” The federalist will press this. Doesn’t “in Adam” imply the same kind of covenantal inclusion that “in Christ” does? And if we’re included in Adam’s guilt, isn’t that parallel to being included in Christ’s righteousness?
The parallel is real, but the mechanism differs. Being “in Adam” means belonging to the humanity that Adam heads, sharing the condition he introduced: mortality, corruption, the inevitability of sin. Every human being is “in Adam” in this sense, simply by being human. It’s not a relationship that requires faith or choice. It’s the given situation.
Being “in Christ” is different. No one is “in Christ” merely by existing. Union with Christ is effected by the Spirit through faith. It’s personal, not automatic. Paul’s language everywhere assumes this: we are baptized into Christ (Romans 6:3), we put on Christ (Galatians 3:27), we are found in Him (Philippians 3:9). The union is real, but it’s not biological descent. It’s covenantal incorporation that happens through the Spirit’s work received by faith.
So “in Adam all die” describes the universal human condition. “In Christ shall all be made alive” describes what happens to those who are united to Him. The “all” in the second clause is not numerically identical to the “all” in the first. It’s “all who are in Christ,” and being in Christ is not the same as being in Adam.
The standard federalist objection will be this: if you deny imputed Adamic guilt, you undermine the basis for imputed Christic righteousness. The parallel is supposed to ground the transfer. Weaken one side, weaken the other.
But we’ve now seen from multiple angles that the parallel was never mechanistically identical. Being “in Adam” is automatic; being “in Christ” requires Spirit-effected union through faith. No one believes righteousness is imputed to all Adam’s descendants simply because Christ acted. The asymmetry was already conceded in practice.
What grounds the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is union with Christ, not strict symmetry with Adam. We are justified because we are united to the One who is righteous, and His righteousness counts as ours because we are in Him. The basis is His work and the Spirit’s application of that work through faith. This doesn’t depend on Adam’s guilt being imputed in an identical fashion; it depends on Christ being who He is and doing what He did.
Far from weakening imputation, this clarifies it. The ground is union, not parallel mechanism.
There’s a further payoff, and it matters pastorally as well as theologically.
The strict federalist position generates a persistent apologetic problem. How is it just to condemn someone for an act they didn’t commit? The standard answers (Adam was our representative, we were “in” him seminally, we would have done the same thing) never quite satisfy. They feel like jurisprudence retrofitted onto theology.
The alternative I’m proposing doesn’t have this problem. You are born into a corrupted condition. That condition is not your fault. But within that condition, you rebel. You choose autonomy. You sin. And when you do, the guilt is genuinely yours. No legal fiction. No arbitrary transfer. Real guilt for real sin.
This is actually a harder truth than inherited guilt, not a softer one. You can’t blame Adam. You can’t appeal to the unfairness of being condemned for someone else’s act. The condemnation is for your act, committed within a situation you didn’t create but which you made your own by your choices.
And the gospel announcement is correspondingly clearer. Christ doesn’t save you from an arbitrary legal verdict. He saves you from the real guilt of your real rebellion. He rescues you from a corruption you couldn’t escape and a condemnation you genuinely earned.
A question will arise: what about infants? If guilt attaches to actual rebellion, and infants haven’t yet rebelled, what is their status?
The honest answer is that Scripture doesn’t give us a complete calculus. What it does give us is a principle: God judges justly according to the light given, the knowledge possessed, and the capacity to respond. “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required” (Luke 12:48). Those who sinned without the law will be judged without the law; those who sinned under the law will be judged by the law (Romans 2:12).
This principle of graduated accountability applies to infants, to those with severe cognitive limitations, and to those who never heard the gospel. God’s judgment is real, but it is also just. The exact thresholds are not exhaustively revealed. Deuteronomy 29:29 applies: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.”
What we can say is this: the framework I’m proposing doesn’t leave infants condemned for Adam’s act. It places them under God’s just judgment according to their actual situation. That’s not a complete answer, but it’s the answer Scripture gives, and it’s more satisfying than either inherited guilt (which condemns them for something they didn’t do) or a universalism that denies the seriousness of the human condition.
The question of who is saved and on what basis is ultimately God’s prerogative. What we know is that He is just and that He is merciful, and that these attributes never conflict in Him.
So where does this leave us?
The tradition has always lived with an asymmetry between how guilt and righteousness are transmitted. What I’m suggesting is that we acknowledge the asymmetry rather than suppress it. Adam’s sin introduced the condition of corruption and death. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to those united to Him by faith. The parallel is real, but it operates at the level of federal headship and consequence, not at the level of identical mechanisms of transfer.
The result is a more coherent theology, a more defensible apologetic, and a gospel that addresses the actual problem: not a legal technicality inherited from the ancient past, but the real guilt of real people who really rebelled against their Creator.
We are not guilty of righteousness. And we are not, strictly speaking, guilty of Adam’s sin. We are guilty of our own. That’s worse, in a way. But it’s also the truth, and the truth is what the gospel addresses.
This framework is offered under Scripture’s authority and stands open to correction by the Word of God rightly understood.