How Believers Receive Righteousness and Holiness
Orientation
The pursuit of righteousness and holiness through law-keeping leads to failure and exhaustion, not the life God intends.
- Law-keeping exposes our inability, not our capability.
- Self-effort to secure holiness ends in condemnation, not peace.
- This collapse of self-confidence is God's design to prepare us for grace.
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
— Galatians 2:16
Clarification
Righteousness and holiness are not processes we manage but gifts we receive through faith in Christ alone.
- Christ's righteousness is imputed to us; it is a declared standing, not an earned status.
- Sanctification is Christ Himself by His Spirit becoming our life, not our improved performance.
- The indwelling Spirit is given because we are justified, not to make us justified.
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
— 1 Corinthians 1:30
Structure
Biblical logic moves from our inability, to Christ's imputed righteousness, to the gift of the Spirit who manifests Christ's life in us.
- Faith in Christ receives His perfect righteousness as our standing before God.
- This justified standing qualifies us to receive the Holy Spirit as the gift of Christ's life.
- The Spirit then works from within, producing the fruit of Christ's righteous character.
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
— Romans 8:9-10
Weight-Bearing Prose
The core assertion is that righteousness and holiness are received, not achieved. The law’s purpose is to terminate all hope in human effort, driving us to Christ. Justification is the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer through faith alone—a forensic declaration. This justification is the sole basis for receiving the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not a helper for our program; He is the life of Christ indwelling us. Sanctification, therefore, is the Spirit manifesting the life of the One who is our sanctification. This rejects any system where sanctification is a subsequent work of human cooperation with grace. The Gospel is the power of God for this entire reality: it reveals the righteousness of God from faith to faith and imparts the Spirit by the hearing of faith. Any reintroduction of law-keeping or human effort as the means for holiness nullifies grace and severs the believer from the sole source of life.
Integration
Your righteousness and holiness are found in a Person, not a process. Christ is your righteousness. Christ is your sanctification. He is not a model to copy but a life to receive. The pressure to perform is removed because the work belongs to Him. Your assurance rests on His finished work and the gift of His Spirit, not on your fluctuating performance. Look away from yourself and your efforts. Be anchored in the certainty that He who began this good work in you is Christ Himself, and He will complete it. Rest in this. Let the repetitive truth stabilize you: you are in Christ, and Christ is in you.