Length: 21 Minutes

Righteousness is a gift, not by our works, but through the work of Jesus!

This article summarizes many hours of teaching from Reform Church and is taken from our Journey Bible Curriculum (available on our store).

Chapter 1:
What Righteousness Means

Before we say anything else, we need to know what being “righteous” means. To make it simple, the word “righteous” just means “right.” It can be used in a variety of contexts, but when we’re made righteous that just means that we’re made right. This doesn’t mean that we do everything right (although that can change). No, being made righteous is when God re-creates us right as a gift.

Righteousness is two-fold. It has to do with being forgiven and cleansed (1 John 1:9). 

• Forgiveness is when God, from Heaven, erases all the records of you having ever done anything wrong. 
• Cleansing is broader than this, but in part, it’s when God sends His Spirit inside of you and makes everything in you right, just like Him. Every good quality of Jesus is in you now. No sin at all (2 Corinthians 5:17-18)! 

If you didn’t know, you are three parts: A spirit, soul (or mind), and a body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Your spirit is the unseen part of you, in your body. When you first believe, it is your spirit that God makes completely righteous and perfect (Hebrews 12:23; 1 Corinthians 6:17). 

All of this worked a little bit different for believers in the Old Testament, but that is how righteousness works today.

Chapter 2:
It’s Not By Your Work

There are men and women throughout the Bible that God called pleasing and righteous. Mary, the mother of Jesus is said to be highly favored by the Lord. Noah and Abraham are said to be righteous men. And Hebrews 11 is full of people that had a good report from God, a report that they were righteous. But when many hear God call someone “a righteous person” they think, “What a godly life they must have lived. Despite all the sin around them, they chose to do what was right. While they weren’t always perfect, they certainly must’ve been a great example of godliness for God to call them out as ‘righteous.’” While good works and godliness are very important, none of that is the reason God calls people righteous. The only reason why anyone has ever been called pleasing, favored, or righteous before God is because they chose not to work for God and instead believe in the work of Jesus.

Romans 4:5 (NKJV) But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness,

People aren’t called righteous because of their right works. Quite the contrary. That verse said that righteousness is for those who decide not to work for it, but merely believe the work that Jesus already did for them. 

One foundational way to know that none of these people were called righteous by their works is because… no one can. No one has the ability. That might sound simple, but that’s a baseline revelation that everyone needs. Apart from Jesus, we can’t do anything truly godly or make any lasting change. The best that human beings can do is have a “form of godliness” and the “appearance of righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:5; Matthew 23:27-28). It’s not that human beings can’t love, for instance, but human love is subject to whether someone is your own or loves you back (Luke 6:32; Matthew 7:11). This is not God’s love. It’s not morally pure. The Bible says that there is none that do good, no not one (Romans 3:10). Jesus said without Him we can do nothing (John 15:5). Isaiah says that even our righteousnesses are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). That’s not talking about people at their worst, when they don’t care anymore. That’s talking about a person’s best attempt! Galatians 5:19-21 is a list of what human flesh looks like when it’s working. I’ll tell you; it doesn’t look good! So, thank God we don’t have to work for our own righteousness!

These verses are not talking about believers, neither is it reflective of God’s value on people. God values people immensely, more than His own life. These verses are not describing people’s value. They’re describing the value of our work. They establish the fact that we can’t do this ourselves. There’s no way that any person in the Bible was ever called righteous because God was so proud of how they were serving Him. Enoch, Mary, Abraham, and Noah all could do nothing without Jesus. These are people that much of the church looks up to as if they had achieved something of themselves, but they needed God’s gift of righteousness as much as we do! 

God gave them the titles of pleasing, highly favored, and righteous, even though they had done nothing good for God in their life! That sounds radical, but it’s absolutely true. Any good results you saw in those people was transformation by God’s own Spirit in them, not their own works being served to God for righteousness (2 Corinthians 3:18; 1 Corinthians 15:10). Righteousness was a gift that God served to them, not a result of their service to God!

Abraham was righteous by faith (Genesis 15:6). When he lied, also offering his wife to a king, to potentially sleep with her to save his own life, God still took his side and defended him against his enemies (Genesis 12).

When Abraham didn’t learn from the first time, he did this again and God again took his side. Despite that Abraham was wrong, and the Bible says that the king was innocent (Genesis 20:6), God still took Abraham’s side and stood against the king. How can this be? Because Abraham was righteous by faith and the king was not. Abraham had believed and the king had not (Genesis 20).

God called Lot righteous and would not allow him to be judged, even at a time when he committed the heinous act of offering his daughters to be abused and raped by men to save the angels that were with him (Genesis 19:8; 2 Peter 2:7). 

Rahab was still a prostitute at the time of receiving the spies (Joshua 2:1, 9-11), but because she had accepted the faith of Israel, she was still declared righteous (Hebrews 11:31, 39, 4).

Samson committed himself to ungodly relationships, slept with a prostitute, and not only was he called righteous, but God supernaturally empowered him having just left a prostitute’s house (Judges 16:1-3). 

In Hebrews 11, Samson and Rahab are named as having the same title of “righteous” alongside Samuel and all the prophets of the Old Testament. Their title was no different, because they received that title through the same Jesus as all of us (Hebrews 11:31-32, 39, 4).

None of this is to condone what they did. Sin is harmful to us and others. It’s not that God agreed with their works. He certainly didn’t. They were righteous despite their works. If we will get to know Jesus better, the Holy Spirit will transform our actions! In fact, being made righteous in this new covenant produces good works! You could say, righteousness doesn’t come from our good works, but good works come from being righteous! When God puts His righteousness inside of us (as we will discuss later), it also comes out of us, producing that righteousness on the outside. But if God doesn’t put that righteousness in first, He’s never going to get any righteousness out because we certainly aren’t able to produce it of our own power! 

Chapter 3:
It’s A Gift

Being pleasing, pure, and clean is not based on what we do. This is why all those men and women were still blessed and righteous even when committing terrible acts. Their righteousness was secured through Jesus, not the caliber of their performance.

They all had nothing to offer to God, but God had everything to offer them through Jesus. So, they chose not to work for righteousness, but believe on the One who could justify them! Being righteous and pleasing to God is not something we do for God. It’s a free gift we receive through Jesus.

Romans 5:17 (NKJV) …those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)

That verse says righteousness is a gift. That means that there’s not a single good deed that needs to be done or committed to before receiving it (Romans 11:6). Jesus took our sin and everything it deserves at the cross, so we could receive His righteousness and everything that it deserves today! That’s why God can give righteousness to us as a free gift, because Jesus paid for it! 

2 Corinthians 5:21 (NKJV) For He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

This verse says that Jesus became our sin at the cross. But what wrong did Jesus ever do to become sin? What evil did He do to deserve such a title? Nothing at all. Jesus didn’t do something wrong to make Himself sin. He received our sin without ever doing anything wrong. Likewise, we can now receive His righteousness without ever having done anything right. Jesus received our sin without a sinful work, and we can now receive His righteousness without any right work. For all who have believed, we have this righteousness forever!

Many people say that they believe in the gift of righteousness, without works, but so many people still find ways to sneak work in. 

For instance, we will have an altar call on Sunday asking people (who can do nothing) to stop sinning and turn their life around for God, rather than God turning their life around for them. We falsely call this repentance (which, in reality, is just changing your mind to acknowledge the truth, 2 Timothy 2:25; Mark 1:15; Hebrews 6:1; Acts 20:21). We ask people for this so-called “repentance” before they can truly be saved and righteous.

Sometimes, we’ll tell people that “no work is required.” Sounds good. But then we’ll ask people to commit to living for the Lord for the rest of their life before being made righteous. That’s just receiving righteousness on credit. He’ll give you the righteousness up front, but only if you commit to working for Him later. That’s still righteousness by works. It’s just not paying Him up front but paying it back later. You’re not made righteous because you give your life to God, but because Jesus gave up His life for you! Good works are just a fruit, not a prerequisite.

Even when we truly invite people to receive righteousness as a gift, we then compel Christians to maintain their righteousness by their works, saying that if they sin, they are out of fellowship with God or they are in a “backslidden” state (which is a term wrongly used as almost a fallen state of a believer). As if we received righteousness without works, but now our works can affect the quality of it.

There are so many ways that people try to sneak work in as a requirement to be righteous, but Jesus became our sin and paid the price for it at the cross. His work is enough to make you righteous, pure, and clean without you adding to it! There is no work up front or commitment of work later that can make you righteous. Jesus’s work is enough. Only believe. 

Chapter 4:
The Law

Many times, the way that people teach righteousness sounds more like the Old Testament Law, rather than the New Testament gift. Let me tell you how the law worked:

A couple thousand years before Jesus came, people started thinking that they could be right without believing on the Messiah to come. They started breaking faith with the Lord and depending on their own efforts (Galatians 3:19-20). When God saw that people were depending on their work, in a last-ditch effort to save their lives, God gave them the Old Testament Law. That’s the Ten Commandments and all the other commandments with it (Exodus 20). In summary, the law is just a list of good works. 

Knowing that they would fail, God’s intention was for the self-reliant people to try and keep those commandments and see that they could never be right by themselves. They needed Jesus to make them right as a gift (Galatians 3:19-25). 

The Ten Commandments and the whole law was not given with the notion that people could keep it. It was given so that people would realize they can’t keep it.

Romans 3:20 (NKJV) Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin [a realization of our sin, not how to be righteous].

Despite these commandments being in force for a span of over a thousand years, many people today are still trying to do their best for the Lord to please Him or gain approval from Him. God gave the law so the people would stop working for Him and start believing His Son. The law’s intention was to scare you away from it so that you would rest from it (Galatians 2:19).

Some Christians are working for God and they’re thinking, “Wow, this is so stressful.” But they think there’s something wrong with them for thinking that. No, that’s perfect! Working for God is too hard for us! That’s the whole point of the law! God was trying to prove this so people would stop and rest in Jesus! There’s nothing wrong with that thinking! You’re ahead of many preachers!

It’s not just hard. It’s impossible to work for our righteousness (Romans 8:3-4), but the Bible says that through Jesus, a righteousness without the deeds of the law has been offered to everyone, if they’ll receive it. That means that God is not looking for a single good deed to call someone righteous. He’s looking for someone to believe His Son’s work. That simple.

Romans 3:28 (KJV) Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

Chapter 5:
Work Keeps People Unrighteous

There are many people who have not yet received the Lord’s gift of righteousness (although they can), but do you know something that will keep somebody unrighteous? Most people would think, “Sin! Continuing to sin would keep someone unrighteous!” By far, no. The Bible says that His gift of righteousness is only for the ungodly (Romans 4:5). Something that keeps people unrighteous is their continual attempts at working for God. 

In Paul’s time, he saw that the Jews were working for God and the Gentiles weren’t. Out of the two of them, it was the Jews that never attained to righteousness because they were seeking after it as if it were by works.

Romans 9:30-32 (NKJV) What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone.

One could sin all their life (as we all had), but when they choose to believe in Jesus, they are made just as righteous as Jesus is! But, seeing as work is a dead end, continuing to work for God is something that keeps people unrighteous, just like the Jews of Paul’s time. It’s those that work for righteousness that will never attain it. Faith in Jesus is the only way to get there. 

Ever heard the term “fallen from grace”? That’s referring to a person who can’t receive the grace of God. People usually apply that to sinners, or to “the backslidden” as they say. But that’s not what the Bible says. God gave His grace specifically for those who sin! The Bible applies the term “fallen from grace” to workers.

Galatians 5:4 (KJV) Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

“Fallen from Grace” is a term for those trying to be made righteous by the law (their good works). Righteousness and grace can only be received as a gift, by faith in Jesus. So, if you try working for it, you’ll never attain it. If you try working for it, you will fall from it. 

Of course, even if you are someone who has worked for righteousness in the past, you can change your mind and start receiving the same grace you were falling from before.

Sin is wrong and God wants to transform us from it, but sin doesn’t keep people unrighteous. Sin doesn’t cause people to fall short of His grace. Any form of unbelief does. That includes work.

Chapter 6:
Won’t That Cause People To Sin?

Some people bring up an understandable, but misunderstood concern about whether teaching righteousness apart from works so strongly will cause people to sin? The assumption is that people will say, “I’m righteous regardless of what I do, so it doesn’t matter if I sin” — using the grace of God as a license to sin.

Well, let’s see what the Bible says. When a Christian lacks virtue in his thoughts or actions, the Bible doesn’t say that they’ve been taught righteousness and cleansing too much. Actually, the Bible says they haven’t been taught enough! Specifically, it says that when good fruit is lacking in their life, they are either blind or shortsighted to how clean they are in Jesus!

2 Peter 1:5-9 (NKJV) …virtue …knowledge …self-control …perseverance …godliness …brotherly kindness …love.

Verse 9) For he who lacks these things [good works] is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

This means that seeing your cleansing and righteousness does not cause sin. All the contrary. Sin is caused when you don’t know how clean you are from old sins! It means you need more teaching (or perhaps, better teaching) on this gift of righteousness. Christians lack virtue in their life because they don’t realize how clean they are. 

This is a biblical principle: What you acknowledge that you have in Christ will be demonstrated in your life. What you don’t know will not be demonstrated (Philemon 1:6; 2 Corinthians 3:18; 2 Peter 5:8). So, what happens when we shy away from teaching the gift of righteousness, thinking it will cause sin? If Christians don’t know they’re righteous through Jesus, they won’t live righteously either.

Essentially, if you’re not teaching the gift of righteousness, you’re not empowering your people to live right.

We say that we want love and good works, but when we don’t teach this message of the gift of righteousness, we’re actually robbing people of effortless, good works. The very sin that we’re trying to avoid, we are causing. That is the definition of counterproductive.

What about people that twist the grace of God into a license to sin? They certainly exist, but the only people who do that are those who do not know God at all.

Jude 1:4 (NKJV) …ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

These people that twist the grace of God into an excuse for lewd behavior are not people that understand the Gospel. They are people that deny it! Anyone who knows the gospel will be transformed (Romans 12:2). In fact, if you think the gospel is an approval of sin, you don’t yet understand the gospel. The Gospel isn’t an approval of sin. It’s the message of how Jesus was condemned to cleanse you of it! 

It’s not mere grace and the gift of righteousness that produces results. It’s knowing it, that produces good results! If you deny the knowledge of God, of course that will produce an advocacy for sin in your life — all forms of it (1 John 4:8). But when people truly know what Jesus did for them, it will only ever produce godly results with time.

The danger is not in teaching the gift of righteousness. The danger is when people don’t know it. 

Chapter 7:
The Last Adam

Think back. How much work did you do to become a sinner? None, at all. We were all born into sin through Adam. Adam sinned in the garden and made himself sinful. Then everyone that was born of him thereafter was born into his sinfulness.

People aren’t sinful because of what they do. People are made sinful through the deed of somebody else, Adam. Their sinful works are just a byproduct.

Romans 5 tells us that Adam, in this way, is a symbol of Jesus. Just as Adam made us sinners because of his work, not our own, so Jesus has made us righteous, through His work, not our own. We entered Adam’s sinfulness because of a deed he did. Likewise, we have now entered Jesus’ righteousness because of a deed He did, not of our own!

Romans 5:19 (NKJV) For as by one man’s [Adam’s] disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s [Jesus’] obedience [not ours] many will be made righteous.

We weren’t made sinners because of something we did. It was because of one man, Adam. Whenever we sinned, we only did so because it was the nature that Adam gave us.

Now, we’re not made righteous because of what we do. It was through the one Man, Jesus’ work! When we do righteous deeds, we only do so because it is the nature that Jesus gave us!

We’ve received Someone else’s righteousness, through Someone else’s work (1 Corinthians 1:30)! This is why Jesus is called the “last Adam,” because it is through this One Man’s work that we’ve received the identity we have today (1 Corinthians 15:45). And if you didn’t receive it by your works, how can you lose it by your works? If your works did not gain it for you, then how could your works defile it?

You received God’s pure righteousness through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. All we did was believe and receive a gift.

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