Becoming Righteous

by Katie Harding on January 30, 2023

Sometimes I don’t even know where phrases come from, except that I’ve heard them repeated by Christians for so many years that they’ve often become part of my phraseology as well. Like this one: Jesus took our sins and gave us His righteousness instead, indicating we now have the moral uprightness of Christ by accepting Him as our Savior. Thinking of it this way can actually make us feel we have to strive to live like Jesus and leaves us feeling guilty when we don’t — which is contrary to what His death was to achieve.

However, as I’ve recently discovered by reading What Saint Paul Really Said by N.T. Wright, that’s not what becoming righteous meant when it was written about in the original text. There is the righteousness of God, which Tom Wright says refers to God’s own faithfulness to His covenantal promises “to deal with the sin” and “save the whole world.”

But when we receive righteousness from God, it’s not that we are determined to be faithful to God’s covenantal promises. It’s meaning for us is actually derived from what happened in the court of law when two people came before the judge. The one who was determined to be vindicated against their accuser was declared to be righteous or “in other words, acquitted,” as Wright says.

Understanding this makes perfect sense given the fact that we know Jesus was the blood sacrifice for the sin of the world. Hebrews 9:22 tells us, “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” So, we have received forgiveness for our sins by Jesus’ death. He took the punishment for the wrong we have done and the wrong we might do. “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“When we accept Christ as our Savior, we don’t receive righteousness; we are declared righteous. ”

When we accept Christ as our Savior, we don’t receive righteousness; we are declared righteous. We are automatically acquitted of our sins and absolved of our guilt by God, our judge. We are justified before God because of the faithfulness of Christ. It not about what we do but what Christ has done. It is a gift we receive; no striving needed. We are free in Christ.

Go now in the grace of God, in this new year 2023, and be righteous. Live free.