The righteousness we are supposed to have is not our intrinsic righteousness. Our position as sons of Adam was we were enemies of God. Our enemy is a traitor. "If I forget you, O Jerusalem may my ritual hand forget its art, may my tongue stick to my palate. O daughters of Babylon... happy is whoever pays you for what you have done to us... collect yours Children and throw them against the rocks. " In the biblical sense, an enemy is one who receives retribution, not satisfaction.
So we play with being an enemy of ourselves all our lives, I mean intrinsically.So the righteousness we enjoy is one of the positions, not of us. It is actually the righteousness of Christ that is credited to our account. It is not our righteousness along with his. He achieved this through His perfect obedience. If we say it is our righteousness, then we must, in fairness, argue that we have the same kind of obedience as Christ.
Christ's success in His obedience... On this level... is not only something speaks in our favor since we are all sin and need an arbiter, but on the other hand it is described as having His life for ours. Take our disobedience, which argues we are unworthy and only He makes us worthy by going ahead of us and doing all the work necessary to make us worthy.
That means there is no point at which we can say we deserve reconciliation. The point of reconciliation is that the sin brought before us is a double blow to our courage to be reconciled. Therefore, God does not speak as we were special before us. Will be delivered.But the goal of being at peace with God is to be absolutely free in the relationship, not even our bondage, is tied to our obedience, but to being a member of His army... Which was required for all of Israel. We fight and win. Hence, there is a mysterious reversal in our experience of freedom and peace that doubles our acceptance of our works.Rather, the only reason we are at peace with God is that He has made vessels of anger into vessels of mercy. But in and of itself we are totally depraved in this life. I'm not trying to be "better than but I argue as I pray the Psalms. ..