“Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” – Galatians 3:11
It’s the most natural thing in the world to want to make yourself right with God by “being a good person”, doing “good things”, and following whatever moral or ethical code you find meaningful. We humans know there’s something wrong with the world and with us, so we desperately want to save ourselves from the consequences of our bad choices, bad actions, bad thoughts, and inexcusable inactions. We want to rationalize and justify away our separation from the utterly holy God of the Universe. None of those things work!
God is holy. He is perfect. He is utterly without sin or darkness. We aren’t, no matter how hard we try. Even our best moments are often tainted with selfish or mixed motives. Even our best actions can be accompanied by ugly thoughts. Then there are all the other moments and actions which aren’t our best!
We can’t get ourselves right with God by rule following. Ever. We can’t get ourselves right with God through charity, kindness, and good deeds. We can’t get ourselves right with God through greater knowledge or better habits. To be justified is to be declared fully righteous and that’s only possible through faith.
But faith in what or whom? The only faith that can make us righteous is faith in the One who was perfectly righteous and died on a cross as an innocent sacrifice so that His righteousness could be credited to us by God’s grace through faith. “For our sake, He made Him to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Who is that Him? Jesus Christ, the Righteous (1 John 2:1)!!!