Righteousness Is a Gift, Not a Goal

Ngozi has worked in banking for fourteen years, and without ever deciding to, she has started to relate to God the way she relates to an account.

On Monday morning she woke at five, prayed for an hour and read three chapters of Isaiah. She felt good about that. Credit. On Tuesday she gave generously when a colleague’s mother was in hospital. Credit. On Wednesday she lost her temper with her driver in Lekki traffic and said things she regretted before they had even left her mouth. Debit, and a large one. On Thursday she skipped her quiet time because she overslept. Another debit. By Friday she felt that her balance with God was dangerously low, and when a problem came up at work, she hesitated even to pray about it. After this week, she thought, why would He listen to me?

She would never have put it into words. If you had asked her, she would have told you without hesitation that she was saved by grace. She believed it. She had believed it since she was nineteen. But somewhere between her conversion and her career, the gift had quietly become a goal. Righteousness had stopped being something she received and had become something she was trying to maintain.

That is one of the most common and most exhausting misunderstandings in the Christian life. We understand the language of a gift when we first come to Christ. Afterwards, without noticing, we begin to treat our relationship with God like a salary account. More prayer should produce more acceptance. A bad week should mean less access. Before long, the conscience has exchanged the certainty of Christ for a record it can never keep perfectly.

Wages and gifts

When Paul wanted to explain righteousness, he reached for an illustration every working person understands. A worker finishes the agreed task and receives payment. The employer owes him the wage. Nobody would call it generosity; it is simply what was earned. If the employer withholds it, he is not being stingy. He is being unjust.

Then Paul carries the illustration into a setting where it can no longer work:

What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, Saying , Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

“Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.” If righteousness could be earned, God would owe it to us. It would be a wage. And then we would have something to boast about. But Paul says that even Abraham, the great father of faith, had nothing to boast about before God. What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Romans 4:3). Abraham did not achieve righteousness. It was counted to him, credited to his account, when he believed.

Then comes one of the most startling phrases in the Bible. Righteousness is given “to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly.” God justifies the ungodly. Read that again slowly. He does not justify the nearly godly, or the people who have tried hard enough. He justifies people who cannot first establish their own innocence. That does not mean He approves of ungodliness. It means He receives people who come with nothing but their need, and He gives them what they could never produce.

Paul brings in David as a second witness. David was a king, a psalmist and a man after God’s own heart. He was also an adulterer and a murderer. And David describes the blessedness of the man “unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works.” Blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven and covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not count sin.

So here are the two greatest heroes of Israel’s faith, Abraham and David, and both of them testify to the same thing. Righteousness is a gift. It is credited, not earned. It is received, not achieved.

Punchline

A wage is owed to the one who works. A gift is given to the one who believes. Righteousness has only ever come the second way.

Why comparison cannot save you

Paul spends the opening chapters of Romans exposing human sin in every direction. Gentiles without the law are guilty. Jews with the law are guilty. Religious knowledge does not remove guilt, and moral comparison cannot establish innocence. Then he arrives at the turning point: “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested... Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference” (Romans 3:21-22).

No difference. That is a hard phrase for respectable people to hear. We like to think there is a great difference between ourselves and the really bad people. And on a human scale, there may be. But when the measure is the glory of God, every one of us falls short. The man who misses a target by one metre and the man who misses it by a hundred metres have both missed it.

Jesus told a story aimed directly at people who think this way. Luke says He told it “unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others”:

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are , extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Listen to the Pharisee’s prayer. It is full of comparisons. “I thank thee, that I am not as other men are... or even as this publican.” He has found someone worse than himself, and he is standing on that man to feel taller. Then he lists his achievements: fasting twice a week, tithing everything. The prayer is entirely about his record.

The tax collector cannot even lift his eyes. He beats his breast and says one sentence: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” In Greek, the word for “be merciful” is connected to the mercy seat, the place where the blood of atonement was sprinkled. He is asking God to deal with his sin on the basis of sacrifice. He has no record to present.

And Jesus says that it was the tax collector, not the Pharisee, who went home justified.

This is why spiritual comparison always leaves the heart unsettled. You can always find someone whose visible failures make you feel better. Sooner or later, though, you will meet someone whose discipline makes you feel worse. Ngozi feels fine next to the colleague who never prays, and terrible next to the deaconess who fasts every Wednesday. Neither of those women is the foundation of Ngozi’s righteousness. The gospel lifts the whole question out of the comparison game and places it on Christ.

Clothed by another

The prophets gave Israel a vivid picture of this long before Paul wrote Romans. Isaiah confessed, on behalf of the whole nation, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). Notice he did not say our sins are like filthy rags. He said our righteousnesses, our best religious efforts, are like filthy rags when we present them as the basis of standing before a holy God.

But Isaiah also knew the other side: “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10). He hath clothed me. The robe is put on us by Another.

The prophet Zechariah saw it happen in a vision. Joshua, the high priest of Israel, was standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan was standing at his right hand to accuse him. Joshua had nothing to say in his defence. Look at what happened:

Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment. And I said, Let them set a fair mitre upon his head. So they set a fair mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the LORD stood by.

Joshua did not change his own clothes. He did not scrub the filthy garments until they were clean enough. He stood there while others removed them and dressed him in new ones. “Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.” The accuser was silenced, not because Joshua had argued well, but because God had dressed him.

That is what happens to every believer in Christ. Paul says it in a single verse: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Our filthy garments went to Him. His robe came to us. And the accuser, who loves to stand at your right hand and recite your week, has nothing left to point at.

The gift of righteousness

Paul uses the actual phrase “the gift of righteousness” in Romans 5, where he sets Adam and Christ side by side as the two great representative heads of humanity:

For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Adam’s disobedience brought sin and death into the whole human story. Christ’s obedience brings the gift of righteousness and life. Paul’s concern reaches deeper than our individual mistakes. He is explaining why humanity needed a completely new source of standing and life. By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners. By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Notice the phrase “they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life.” The gift has to be received. This is not permission to assume that personal faith in Christ is unnecessary. The invitation is to receive what God gives through Him. And receiving means letting go of every attempt to establish a competing basis of confidence.

This can be surprisingly hard for a conscientious person. Ngozi would rather contribute something to the verdict, so that at least part of the credit remains hers. That is the instinct of a hardworking, responsible professional, and in most areas of life it serves her well. In this one area, it is exactly what she must surrender. Grace leaves her with gratitude and with no room for boasting.

Paul himself had to do this. Before he met Christ, his record was outstanding by any religious standard. Listen to him describe it, and then describe what he did with it:

Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.

Paul had the best ledger in Israel. Circumcised on the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, zealous, blameless as touching the righteousness of the law. And he counted the whole thing as loss, as dung, “that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.”

Two kinds of righteousness. One is “mine own,” built from my record. The other is “of God by faith,” received as a gift. Paul tore up his ledger. Most of us never had a ledger as good as his, and yet we hold on to ours far more tightly.

Paul grieved over his own people for exactly this reason: “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3). Going about to establish. That is the exhausting work of the person who treats righteousness as a goal. Then the very next verse gives the answer: “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4).

A gift that makes honesty possible

You can see the practical difference most clearly in repentance. Suppose a man has concealed a dishonest transaction at work. If his hope rests on appearing righteous, then confession threatens everything he has been trying to protect. Admitting the wrong would collapse his whole sense of standing. So he hides it, rationalises it, and lives with a low-grade fear of being found out.

If his hope rests on Christ, he can tell the truth. There may still be difficult consequences. Trust with those affected may take time to rebuild, and restitution may cost him. Yet he is no longer required to preserve the lie in order to preserve his identity. His righteousness before God was never resting on his record in the first place.

David knew this from bitter experience. In Psalm 32, the psalm Paul quotes in Romans 4, he describes what it was like to hide his sin: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long” (Psalm 32:3). Then he confessed, and he found the blessing: “Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile” (Psalm 32:2). Notice those last words: no guile. The forgiven person becomes an honest person, because he no longer needs to pretend.

Nugget

David’s blessedness is not the excitement of getting away with wrongdoing. It is the relief of receiving God’s forgiveness. A forgiven person is free to stop hiding and begin addressing what sin has damaged. Grace brings a far deeper honesty into the room than fear ever produced.

A conscience made clean

Ngozi’s real problem on Friday afternoon was not her record. It was her conscience. Her conscience was doing what consciences do: keeping accounts, reminding her of Wednesday, telling her she had no right to approach God. And the conscience, left to itself, is a very strict accountant.

The letter to the Hebrews speaks directly to this. The writer explains that the animal sacrifices of the old covenant could never make the worshippers perfect, because they had to be repeated year after year. Then he says something remarkable. If those sacrifices had really dealt with sin, “the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins” (Hebrews 10:2). The repetition itself was the proof that the conscience had not been cleansed. Every year the Day of Atonement came round again, and with it “a remembrance again made of sins every year” (Hebrews 10:3).

Christ’s sacrifice is different in kind:

But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

One sacrifice for sins for ever. He sat down, because the work was done. And “by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” Perfected for ever. That is the standing of every believer before God, as far as the verdict on sin is concerned.

This is why the same letter can speak of the blood of Christ purging “your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14), and can invite us to draw near “having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:22). God does not only declare us righteous in heaven’s court. He intends that declaration to reach the inner courtroom of our own conscience, so that we can approach Him with a settled heart.

A cleansed conscience is not a careless one. A believer with a clean conscience is still sensitive to sin. In fact, he is often more sensitive, because he is no longer numbed by constant guilt. When he does wrong, the Spirit convicts him, specifically and clearly, and he responds. What he no longer has is the background hum of condemnation, the feeling that he must make up for something before God will hear him. His conscience has been taught to say what God says: the sacrifice is finished, and the worshipper has been purged.

The writer of Proverbs observed long ago that “the wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1). Boldness is a fruit of righteousness. A person who knows that he has been made righteous as a gift can face God, face his own failures and face the accuser with the same quiet confidence. He is not bold because he is impressive. He is bold because he is clothed.

That is what Paul means when he says that those who receive the gift of righteousness “shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.” Reigning in life does not mean that nothing ever goes wrong. It means that you face what goes wrong from the position of a forgiven and righteous child of God, not from the position of a debtor. Sin no longer has the final word over your identity. Christ does.

The gift teaches us how to live

Some people hear all this and ask whether giving righteousness as a gift removes the need for righteous conduct. Paul anticipated the question: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (Romans 6:1-2). His letters teach obedience in great detail. The question is not whether obedience matters. It is what place obedience occupies within salvation.

The order is everything. We are made righteous as a gift, and then we are called to live out what we have been made. Paul tells the Romans, “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness” (Romans 6:18). He tells the Ephesians to “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). The new man has already been created in righteousness. Our conduct is learning to match our new nature.

A person who receives the gift of righteousness may still need to unlearn habits of dishonesty, bitterness, anger or sexual sin. The gift does not call those habits righteous. Ngozi still needs to apologise to her driver. What the gift does is establish a new relationship with God in which the Spirit teaches and empowers a changed life. She apologises from the position of a daughter who has been made righteous, not from the position of a debtor trying to restore her balance.

So I would never ask a struggling believer to abandon the pursuit of holiness. I would ask him to reconsider what he is relying on while he pursues it. Is he learning to obey because he belongs to Christ? Or is he trying to become righteous enough for Christ to receive him at last?

You can tell the two postures apart by their fruit. The first can receive correction, because correction does not threaten its standing. The second often hides from correction. The first gives thanks when growth becomes visible. The second is tempted to boast. The first can help another struggling person patiently. The second easily becomes harsh, because someone else’s weakness disturbs the standard by which he has been measuring himself. Look at the Pharisee in the temple again, and you will see it.

There is no benefit in claiming the gift of righteousness while refusing to deal with a cherished sin. There is also no benefit in trying to deal with the sin while refusing the righteousness God gives. We need the whole truth. Christ is our sufficient Saviour, His righteousness is credited to us as a free gift, and His Spirit leads us into a life worthy of the grace we have received.

Let me go back to Ngozi on Friday afternoon. Imagine that instead of hesitating, she remembers Zechariah 3. She pictures Joshua standing in filthy clothes with the accuser at his side, and she hears the voice of the Lord: I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment. She remembers that she is wearing a robe she did not weave.

Punchline

So she prays. “Father, this has been a messy week. I am sorry about the way I spoke to Sunday on Wednesday, and I will make it right with him tomorrow. Thank You that I come to You in the righteousness of Jesus, not in my own. Now, about this problem at work...”

The ledger is closed. The conversation is open.

Come to the Father on that basis the next time you pray. You may have something to confess. You may need instruction you would rather avoid. Neither need requires a different doorway. Jesus Christ is your access, and the righteousness He gives is a far sounder foundation than the finest account you could ever prepare about yourself.

For reflection, practice and prayer

Teaching Companion

For Reflection

• Do you ever relate to God like a salary account, with credits and debits? What does that look like in your week?
• Why does Jesus say the tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home justified? What does that reveal about how we receive righteousness?
• How does the vision of Joshua in Zechariah 3 speak to the voice of accusation in your life?
• What is the difference between obeying God because you are righteous and obeying Him to become righteous? How can you tell which one you are doing?

This Week

Read Romans 4:1-8, Zechariah 3:1-5 and Philippians 3:4-9 on three different days this week. At the end of each day, if your conscience starts reciting your record, write down one sentence in reply: “My standing with God rests on the righteousness of Christ, which He has given me as a gift.” Then deal honestly and practically with anything that genuinely needs to be put right.

A Prayer

Father, thank You for the gift of righteousness in Jesus Christ. I confess that I have often treated my relationship with You like a ledger, trying to earn what You have freely given. Today I let go of my own record. Clothe me afresh in the robe of Christ’s righteousness, and silence every accusation that rises against me. Teach me to live as the righteous person You have made me, to confess quickly, to make things right with others, and to walk in holiness from a settled heart. My confidence is in Jesus alone. Amen.

Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.