06/16/2026
Brian Romero
It’s hard to understand how Jesus could take our filth and give us His righteousness.
Everything in life teaches us the opposite. If someone earns something, it belongs to them. If someone makes a mistake, they carry the consequences. If someone has a debt, they pay it. We understand transactions. We understand fairness. We understand earning. What we struggle to understand is grace.
That’s why the Gospel feels almost too good to be true. Deep down, many people believe there must be something they need to contribute. Something they need to fix. Something they need to clean up before God can fully accept them. We understand improving ourselves. We do not naturally understand receiving what we did not earn.
Yet the entire Gospel rests upon an exchange.
Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Notice that Paul does not say Jesus helped us become righteous. He says we became the righteousness of God in Him. That is language of exchange.
Imagine standing before God wearing every failure you’ve ever committed. Every sin. Every regret. Every secret. Every selfish thought. Every moment you wish had never happened. Then imagine Jesus stepping beside you and saying, “Give it to Me.”
Not some of it.
All of it.
The cross was Jesus taking responsibility for what belonged to us. Isaiah 53:6 says, “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” The sin was ours. The judgment fell on Him. The debt was ours. The payment came from Him.
But the story does not end with Jesus taking something from you. It ends with Him giving something to you.
Most believers understand forgiveness. What is harder to grasp is righteousness. Forgiveness means your debt is removed. Righteousness means you are credited with something you never earned. It’s one thing to have your criminal record cleared. It’s another thing entirely to receive the perfect record of someone else.
Think about that. God does not merely look at the believer and say, “I’ll pretend your sin isn’t there.” God looks at the believer through Christ. The righteousness that belongs to Jesus has been credited to your account. Romans 5:17 says that believers receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness.
A gift is only a gift when it is received, not achieved.
This is why the Christian life becomes so frustrating when people try to earn what Jesus already gave. They spend years working for acceptance that already belongs to them. They strive for a righteousness they already possess. They fight for an identity that was freely given through Christ.
The enemy loves keeping believers focused on their filth because filth produces shame. God points believers to Christ because Christ produces confidence. One voice says, “Look at yourself.” The other says, “Look at My Son.”
The beautiful truth is that God knew exactly how filthy humanity was before He ever sent Jesus. Nothing about your sin caught Him by surprise. The cross was not God’s reaction to your failure. It was His answer to it. Before you ever sinned, God already knew what His Son would accomplish.
Ephesians 2:8-9 says that salvation is by grace through faith and not by works. Why? Because if righteousness could be earned, Jesus did not need to die. The cross stands as eternal proof that what humanity could never achieve, Christ achieved on our behalf.
So if you’re struggling to understand how Jesus could take your filth and give you His righteousness, you’re not alone. It is one of the most beautiful and humbling truths in all of scripture. But that is exactly what grace does. It gives what cannot be earned. It provides what cannot be purchased. It accomplishes what cannot be achieved through effort.
The Gospel is not the story of bad people becoming good enough for God. The Gospel is the story of a perfect Savior giving sinners what belonged to Him. He took your sin. He gave you His righteousness. He took your condemnation. He gave you His acceptance. He took your death. He gave you His life. And the moment you stop trying to earn what Jesus freely gave, you begin to discover just how breathtaking the grace of God really is.
