It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
1 Corinthians 1:30– NIV
Righteousness is not sinlessness. No one but Jesus had ever been sinless and free from all wrong thoughts and actions. The apostle Paul asserts that He “knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21).
However the only condition laid down by God that makes men acceptable to him is through the atoning work of Jesus which made it possible for men to be righteous.
Man by nature can never by his own power attain righteousness outside the life of Jesus and we see many examples of this in the scriptures.
Job declared that man is “abominable and corrupt,” one who “drinks injustice like water” (Job 15:16). Solomon acknowledged, “there is no one who does not sin” (1 Kings 8:46). The apostle John warned, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” and “make Him a liar” (1 John 1:8, 10). The apostle Paul also affirmed all these saying “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10).
Therefore for anyone to claim the righteousness of Jesus it must be by faith in Jesus. This is essentially so because our redemption rests upon Christ’s sinless life and substitutionary death.
In making Christ our righteousness we must not only have faith in his substitutionary atonement for us, we must constantly set our corruption of minds, hearts, and wills against the purity of Jesus with the aim to achieve purity.
We must ask the Holy Spirit to daily give us a thorough knowledge of Christ in a more intimate way, by revealing the deeper truth of His word to us as we mediate in scripture.
Now, when we receive the righteousness of Christ by faith does it mean we no longer have sins in our lives and become perfect beings? No but the one who claims the righteousness of Christ must also desire to set the ultimate love of God in the center of his heart. He does not rest on His own oars to enjoy his weakness and salivate over his sins.
Above all he must love to please God and continually repent of his failings ( not repeat them) as he convicted by the Holy Spirit.
Just as an affectionate child may not be perfect but seek to always please his parents as soon as he is scolded we must also seek to please Jesus and turn away from all things that displease him. When or if we fall short in any matter, we do not justify our failure, nor plead for it or aim to argue our way out but be dissatisfied with the conduct and repent.
Why is it important to uphold our righteousness in Christ? The Bible gives our righteousness a central place in the Bible against satan, the enemy of our soul.
The Bible calls it the breastplate of righteousness, because it’s an armor in our war against Satan who constantly attacks us through accusation, guilt, and condemnation. ( See Zechariah 3:1-4.
Certainly Satan attacks when we sin, because we have given him a ground of accusation. Just as it is the job of the Holy Spirit to convict us and bring you us repentance, it is the job of Satan to tell us that Jesus has turned away from us because of the sin we committed and will not accept us.
This is why we need to always learn to uphold the breastplate of our righteousness and never drop it to satanic accusations.
Christ our righteousness means we are right before Jesus and approved by Him, and pleasing in His evaluation and not by our own moral standards or justification but by His own atoning work alone- If we believe.
Not only only should we confess our righteousness against Satan when he comes to attack us with guilt we must also do this with a heart felt believe in the atoning work of Christ . When we do this the aggressive voice of Satan fades away to strong faith.
