2 Corinthians 5:21 God made Him [Jesus] who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
This verse is called the divine exchange! Jesus exchanged His righteousness for your sinfulness.
This is why righteousness is a gift because you have done nothing to earn it or receive it. It’s a divine exchange where God imputed your sin upon Jesus and His righteousness upon you.
God does not want you to try to establish your own kind of righteousness through your own good works. He wants you to rest in the knowledge that Jesus is the One who makes you righteous.
Romans 10:3 For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
So many Christians, unknowingly, spend so much time trying to learn how to walk righteously before God. They identify all their areas of sinfulness and establish a plan to start eliminating these sinful behavioral patterns one by one. Do you realize this is what Romans 10:3 is telling you not to do! It’s called the pattern of the Law.
The devil wants you to continue to live under this pattern of the law because that way, you will always be feeling “guilty and condemned” because you will never be able to successfully keep all these laws.
But what God wants you to do is stop and to submit to His righteousness which is a gift through Jesus going to the cross. Jesus' righteousness is your permanent, eternal standing before God and the devil is powerless over a person who knows they are righteous through Christ.
Don't allow the devil or conventional Christianity to confuse you into a theology that says that although you were made righteous by grace, you now have to behave in a certain way and keep God’s laws (Ten Commandments) to continue to be righteous.
Let me illustrate it this way. If I gave you a brand new red Ferrari and said: “it is a gift”. But then I said, “Oh, I need you to pay me HK$20,000 every month for the next five years!” Well, that Ferrari is no longer a gift because you have to pay for it.
Likewise, God’s righteousness cannot be a gift if once after salvation, you have to start doing certain things to earn that righteousness.
The reason some Christians live burned out, defeated lives is because they are trying to establish their own righteousness.
Just rest in the righteousness Jesus has gifted to you. The more conscious you become of His righteousness, the more His grace begins to transform you from the inside out.