Positional Holiness

Positional Holiness and Martin Luther’s Search for Peace with God

I pray, Lord God, that we don't need this next session to focus on a better understanding of the issues that you have made with us, with you, with us. I pray, Lord God, that we open up our hearts and our minds to see that we were taught, we were born, that we were trained in righteousness, so that every person can be healed, and every human can come back to heaven.

I pray, Lord God, that we can keep up what you have been doing. Lord, now please, in this time of prayer, Lord God, may we be able to have a sustained grace, God, with these thoughts and these words, that we have written out in dedication to the heart of Jesus Christ.

I pray, Lord God.

Amen.

Well, good morning, gentlemen.

Good morning. It is good to be back with you again this morning to continue our study. And as I said last night, it is not going to be three disconnected messages, but one will flow into the next. So I think there's a couple of you who were not here last night, just by way of sort of reminding what we talked about.

Last night we talked about God's perfect holiness, and we talked about the fact that He has demonstrated His holiness in the Old Covenant and in the New Covenant, and demonstrated that He is a God of righteousness.

And those who would seek to perhaps trifle with His righteousness, as Nadab and Abihu did, or ignore His righteousness, as Ananias and Sapphira did, were the object lessons of His willingness to demonstrate the power and authority of His might.

And yet at the same time, as we noted last night, God is not a God who is merciless, but He is a God who is merciful. Even though He demonstrates His justice in moments to remind us of who He is, in much of our lives we live a life clothed in mercy.

We live a life that continues to exist because of the mercy of God. And as you're opening your Bibles to Romans 1, verses 16 and 17, which will be our main text for this message, I just want to tell a story.

And it's about a man who I'm sure you are likely very familiar with, but I want to just bring to mind some of the things about his life. And this man's name was Martin Luther. Martin Luther was a man who was consumed with the idea that God is holy and He is not.

He was a man who had, on an impulse, promised to go into the ministry. He was not supposed to go into the ministry. Martin Luther's father, Hans, had sent him to law school. He was a brilliant student and he was the one who was going to take care of the family.

In that day, they didn't have Social Security, they had kids. And kids took care of their parents as the parents got older. And Martin Luther was a brilliant student and so he was going to go to school and he was going to become the one who would take care of the family.

Well, one day as Martin Luther is coming home from school and he is going through a thunderstorm, a bolt of lightning strikes very near him, knocking him to the ground and causing great fear in his heart and he cried out, Saint Anne, save me and I will become a monk.

Saint Anne, of course, was believed to be the mother of Mary, the Virgin Mary. She is the patron saint of miners. Hans Luther, that's the way you say Luther, the Luther family was a mining family. And so Luther would have grown up praying to Saint Anne as part of Roman Catholic tradition.

And he said, I will become a monk. So it was in that impetuous vow that he made, he felt obligated to enter the ministry, much to the dismay of his father, who now will have a son who will not go on to law school and riches and fame and the ability to take care of his family, but instead will be a man who lives in obscurity and poverty and taking vows for such things.

And so Luther goes into the monastery and he finds himself to be a very fastidious monk. He was concerned with the fact that no matter what he did, no matter how much he tried, he was not able to escape the overwhelming weight of his own sin.

And the stories go and are told that Luther would go to confession and he would spend sometimes hours confessing to copious sins and continuing to confess to the point that his superiors said, Brother Martin, do not return until you have something serious to confess.

But Luther understood what so many people today do not understand. Luther understood the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and he saw himself in the light of that righteousness. He saw himself in the shadow of that terrible reality that God is holy and I am not.

And this is the reason why I'm telling you this story is because I want to sort of bring some context to what we talked about last night as I talked about Nadab and Abihu and I talked about Ananias and Sapphira.

I hope that you didn't leave, I hope that you left struck, but I hope you didn't leave to the point where you were absolutely devastated because that's what sometimes the holiness of God can do if we don't continue to learn and understand that God who is holy actually does provide a way for us to be holy.

And it is not through our works. It is not through what we do. But see, Luther thought it was through his monkery. He thought it was through his fastidious nature and doing these things and going to confession.

They even sent him to Rome. He walked from Germany to Italy. He walked to Rome where he went and he did the Scala Sancta, which is the steps that are there in Rome, which are believed to be the very steps that Jesus walked up when he walked up to ascend to see Pilate on the day of his crucifixion.

And people say, well, how could that happen? Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem and these steps are in Rome. Well, it is believed that during the Crusades that the Crusaders would take back relics from the Holy Land and bring them back to Rome.

And one of the things that they did was they deconstructed the steps from that area and they brought them back and they said, these are the steps on which Jesus walked up to see Pontius Pilate. And so what people would do is they would go to those steps and they would get down on their knees and they would put their hands on the step and they would kiss the step and they would pray and then they would ascend one step further and they would kiss the step and they would pray and they would ascend one step further until they had finally reached the top of the Scala Sancta, the top of this stairwell.

And Luther did that because Luther wanted to find a balm for his troubled conscience. He wanted to find a way to have peace with God because he felt, in fact, he said himself, there was a point at which he said, his superior said, you must love God.

He said, I can't love God, I hate him because all he does is condemn me. My sin is worthy of nothing but his condemnation and I have no hope. And so they sent him to Rome, he goes to Rome, he does all the things that are in Rome, including the Scala Sancta, but when he gets to the top of the Scala Sancta, he stands up and he looks around and he said, how can anyone know whether this is true?

How can anyone know that doing these things actually does anything? How can we know that this is actually going to solve my problem because I have one tremendous problem before God and that is I am a sinner and he is holy.

And I will say this, the most important question in the history of the universe is this simple question, how is a sinful man reconciled to a holy God? How is a sinful man reconciled to a holy God? And you see, that's the question of questions and no matter what religion you're in, no matter what church you're in, no matter whether you are a Protestant, Orthodox or Catholic, you eventually have to deal with that question.

You have to deal with the question of how is a sinful man reconciled to a holy God? And Luther realized it's not through this. It's not through these formalities. It's not through these ceremonies. And so upon his return to Wittenberg where he was now the professor of theology in Wittenberg, and this is way before the 95 BCs, he begins to study Paul's letter to the Romans and Paul's letter to the Church of Galatia and he begins to see that Paul presents a way to be right with this holy God that is not based on kissing relics and climbing steps.

It's not based upon ceremonies or works of our hands, but it is based on God's giving us a righteousness from outside of ourselves that we can stand in, a positional holiness that we can possess which comes not of works, but by faith alone.

Justification by Faith Alone in Romans 1:16-17

So with that being said, I want us to read now Romans 1, 16 and 17. Luther said, and this is a quote from him, he said, when he read this verse and he understood it, it was at that point that he felt himself born afresh and to have entered through the open gates of paradise itself.

It was this verse that caused him to feel as if he had finally been born again. And this is what it says. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. And I pray that even now, as I begin to give an understanding of it, Lord, that you would keep me from error.

I pray this every time I preach, Lord, not to be repetitive, but because I want to be kept from error as I know how easy it is to go astray. And Lord, your word is holy. Your truth is precious and deserves to be handled properly.

And I pray for these men, I pray for the believers, Lord, that this would remind us of the wonderful positional sanctification that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, having been born again, having been set apart, having been filled with the Holy Spirit and having been declared righteous.

But Lord, for those who do not yet believe, who have not yet bowed the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that they would remember the words that it is never too early to repent, but one day it will be too late.

Lord, may it be that today be the day that you draw them to yourself.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Paul's letter to the Romans is considered by many to be the greatest of his letters, closest to a systematic theology that we have in the New Testament, even though it is not admittedly a systematic theology.

It does, in fact, detail for us the doctrines of man, sin, justification, sanctification, election, and Christian living, which very much seems like a modern treatment of systematic theology. And like many of his letters, it begins with an introduction.

But at verse 16, we find the thesis statement of Paul's letter. In verse 16, Paul tells us the main point that is going to run through this book. Romans is meant to articulate the gospel, the gospel of God, according to Romans 1, verse 1.

Paul says this is the gospel of God. And then in Romans 1, 16 and 17, he says, I'm not ashamed of this gospel. I'm not ashamed of this message because this message is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes it, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. And then he says it's revealed from faith. And the ESV, I do not like this translation, and I will explain why. I read it because I teach from the ESV, but I'll tell you why I don't like it.

The ESV says from faith for faith, and there is a difficulty in translating that middle word, but I think the most appropriate translation, and I think it's translated this way in the King James Bible and some others, is it's from faith to faith.

And here's the reason why that's important. Paul's point, and he is going to reiterate this all the way through the first few chapters of Romans, is that salvation, justification, begins and ends with faith.

So it is from faith from beginning to end. And so he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God in salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it, the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

It's revealed to be something that is of faith. And this is where Luther was challenged with this idea that we now all probably are familiar with the term, the idea of sola fide. Sola fide is Latin for faith alone, but it's theological shorthand.

The term faith alone has been mocked by many people. In fact, if you ever spend any time, as I have many times had conversations with Roman Catholic theologians and Eastern Orthodox theologians, they will mock faith alone.

Even members of the Church of Christ, I have a friend of mine who's a pastor in the Church of Christ, and I believe he's very wrong in his theology, but we're still friends, we're friendly, we're gonna be doing a debate soon.

But he doesn't believe faith alone is an appropriate understanding. And oftentimes they will run and they'll say, the only time the Bible ever mentions faith alone is in James. And James says, thou are justified by works and not by faith alone.

See, it's not by faith alone. And yet, when we consider that the term sola fide, faith alone, is not meant to sit by itself, but it sits within this context, it is theological shorthand for this statement.

Man is declared righteous by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. That's the longer term. And what it's saying is that we are justified not by our works, but by faith in the works of Christ.

That's what sola fide means. We are not justified by what we have done, but by faith in what Christ has done. And it's from beginning to end. Our salvation begins with faith in Christ and ends with faith in Christ, and it is faith in Christ that carries us through it all.

It is never anything added to that because we cannot in any way, shape, or form add anything to the perfect, finished, and completed work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that is what we mean when we say sola fide.

That's what we mean when we say faith alone. And I believe this very passage gives us warrant for that because Paul says in it, that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God, by the way, which is the righteousness we are so lacking.

That's what he understood. Luther understood he lacked the righteousness of God. And he said the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. And then he quotes from Habakkuk 2, verse 4, and he said, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

And Luther would say at this point, the just shall live by faith alone because it is from faith to faith and nothing can be added. And it's not a New Testament idea. Notice Paul is citing an Old Testament prophet who says how do the just live?

By faith.

And we go all the way back to the book of Genesis, which Paul will address in Romans chapter 4. And who does Paul use as the model of justification but Abraham himself. He says when God promised Abraham that he was going to do these wonderful blessings for him, that he was going to make of him a nation and give him a seed and give him land, and that he was going to do all these things, what does the Bible say?

And Abraham believed God and it was credited unto him as righteousness. So justification by faith and faith alone is not a New Testament concept. Justification by faith alone is the only way any man has ever been made right before God.

Justification by faith alone is the entire narrative of Scripture when it comes to how a sinful man is made right with a holy God. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the word justification because one of the distinctions, one of the issues that people have is we use words differently.

Pastors, we were having our talk last night, we talked about having a different vocabulary. Some people use the same words we use. Like you talk to a Mormon about grace, they're going to have a totally different understanding of grace than we do as Protestant Christians.

Their understanding is different. They have the same words, different dictionary is the term. And the same goes for the idea of justification. The word justification can have different nuances of meaning.

So, for instance, you know, we talk about things being justified. Wisdom is justified in her deeds, the Bible says. Well, that's not talking about salvation. That's not talking about justification of sins.

That's talking about the idea of vindication or to be justified and regarding to declare something to be true or correct, right? Wisdom is justified in her deeds. So the word justified can be used in different ways.

And when the word justification was translated into the Latin, it did pick up a connotation which was different than what the Greek meant when it uses the word justified. The Greek word justified, dikaio, is the root and it's used, the different forms of dikaio is used.

It means something different than the Latin term, which is justus and ficari, which put together is justificari, is where we get the word justification. And ficari means to make something righteous or to make something right.

Whereas the Greek word dikaio or dikaisuno, it actually refers to the idea of declaring someone to be righteous. So, for instance, when you stand before the judge and your sentence is meted out or ended, the judge says you are now justified.

You are now declared righteous. Your penalty is paid or whatever. It is a legal justification. And therefore, when we talk about justification, we're talking about it in a forensic sense. Now, the word forensic, some of you may be familiar with, may not be.

It simply means a legal sense. So our justification, our declaration of righteousness before God is a legal declaration of righteousness, which is different than as some of the Roman Catholics would say, or Roman Catholics would say this.

They would say we are declared righteous because we're made righteous. We are personally righteous. But that's not what Paul teaches. Paul says that we are declared righteous because of the righteousness that comes from outside of us.

We are declared righteous because a righteousness, and here's the key word, a righteousness which has been imputed to us. And the word imputation comes from the idea of crediting something to someone's account.

The Great Transaction and Imputed Righteousness

So, for instance, if I have a ledger, and in my ledger there is a list on one side, and it says sin, well, what would my sin ledger look like? Be pretty full, right? If I were to ask you, hey, write down all your sins, you couldn't do it.

Your ledger of sin would be completely full. And then I were to say to you, okay, here's your ledger of righteousness. Now, you might say, well, I've got some righteous deeds I could put over there, but what does the Bible say about our righteousness?

It's just filthy rags, right?

So really, my ledger of righteousness is empty, but my ledger of sin is full. And over here we have the Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect God-man, who lived 33 years without sin in thought, word, or deed.

I've never gone 33 minutes. And he went 33 years, no sin, thought, word, or deed. And you take his ledger, and in his ledger it says righteousness full. He is full of righteousness. And on the area of sin it says nothing.

He has a blank page. And Christ takes his ledger, he closes it, and he hands it to you, and he takes your ledger, and he takes it upon himself. And now he has the ledger that's full of sin and is devoid of righteousness, and you have the ledger that is full of righteousness and devoid of sin.

We call that the great transaction. I was just fixing to say, you ran right ahead of me, Pastor. It's God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we could become the righteousness of God in him.

And this is why Paul would go on to say that we have a righteousness that is not our own, which comes from the law, but a righteousness which comes through faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness of God, which comes through faith.

And so we call this the act of God imputing righteousness to us. And when God imputes this righteousness to us, he does it not based upon our works and not based upon our goodness. And here's the other part, not based upon any ceremonies that we have participated in.

As important as ceremonies are, your baptism is very important, but it did not impute God's righteousness to you. The Lord's Supper is so important. And later today, I'm going to talk about God's means of growth.

Like, what does he give us to grow? He gives us the supper. He gives us baptism. He gives us fellowship with the saints. He gives us Bible study. He gives us each other as our gifts minister to each other.

All those things are good, but they do not impute righteousness unto you because you need a perfect righteousness to stand before a perfect God. And you don't have a perfect righteousness in and of yourself, no matter how many ceremonies you do, no matter how many good things you do, no matter how many works you do, you don't have a perfect righteousness to stand before God, but Jesus does.

Jesus has a perfect righteousness, and He imputes that righteousness unto you based upon faith. And this is why it is said that the just shall live by faith, not of works. And we'll talk a little bit about Ephesians 2 later, but justification is a forensic legal declaration of righteousness, and it is the righteousness of Christ.

And again, this is the passage I was quoting earlier. I want to quote it verbatim. This is from Philippians 3. Paul says in verse 8, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

What's Paul talking about? He's talking about his life of righteousness. He was a Pharisee. He was the Pharisee of Pharisees. He was a man who tried his best,.

Like Martin Luther,.

To live that righteous life.

And when he saw Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, he immediately realized,.

I have failed. I have failed.

I have not been able to keep that righteous life in and of myself. So what has he said? I count all as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things.

Count everything as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness of God that depends on faith.

Martin Luther called this an alien righteousness. A righteousness that comes from the outside, not from the inside. A righteousness which is imputed, not produced. This is the righteousness by which we stand.

It's the only righteousness you can stand. If you face God and God says, why should I let you into my glorious kingdom? And you say, it is because of what I have done. It will be woefully inadequate. In fact, D. James Kennedy started something back in the 70s.

It was called Evangelism Explosion. EE, if you've ever heard of that. And it was based on one diagnostic question. If you face God and He said, why should I let you into my kingdom?

What would you say?

That was the way he started all of his evangelistic questions. He said, because the answer to that question will tell you whether or not someone understands the gospel. Because if I say to you, if you meet God and He says, why should I let you in your kingdom?

And it's anything other than the finished and completed work of Jesus Christ. It's the wrong answer. If your answer is, I was baptized. If your answer is, I went to church. If your answer is, I gave my tithe.

If your answer was, I was a preacher. I was a deacon. I was anything in the church. My name was on the roll. If your answer is, I help old ladies across the street. I was a boy scout and I did all the things I was supposed to do.

I've given all my money to the poor and all of those things, but you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you will find yourself woefully lacking because none of those things cause you to be righteous. None of those things meet the righteous requirements of this perfect and holy God.

The only one who ever met the perfect completed requirements of this holy and righteous God is his son, Jesus Christ. And only his righteousness and his holiness.

Will make you fit.

To stand before the king. And we see this illustration. There's an illustration in Jesus' own words. He said there was a man who threw, a king who threw a banquet and he invited the people to come and the people came and he gave them garments to wear.

But one man refused to wear the garments that the king provided. Remember this parable Jesus said? He said there was a man who came and he refused to wear the garments that the king provided and that man was cast out because he was not wearing the appropriate garment.

What is the garment? What is Jesus even talking about in that story? He's talking about being clothed in the proper attire and the only proper attire to stand before the king.

Is to be clothed.

In the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. We sing this in the song Rock of Ages. Nothing in my hands I bring simply to the cross I cling. Naked come to thee for dress. Helpless look to thee for grace.

Foul I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die. Not the labor of my hands can fulfill thy law's demands. Nor could my zeal any respite know. Nor could my tears overflow. All could sin could not erase.

Though thou must save me and thou by grace. What is it saying? It's saying when we come to God we have nothing. We come naked. All we have is the righteousness of Christ. You can't put anything out and say this is why I should be led into your kingdom.

It has to be the Lord Jesus Christ. People ask me, why do you argue so much for sola fide? For justification by faith alone? In fact, next, this Wednesday I'll be in Grand Rapids, Michigan speaking at Cornerstone University on a defense of sola fide.

This doctrine. And people say, why do you defend this doctrine with such passion? Why is this so important? I said because to deny the doctrine of justification by faith alone is to deny the sufficiency of Christ.

Because justification by faith alone is to say Christ is enough. And to say justification is not by faith alone says I must add something to the finished and completed work of Christ and I cannot do it.

The proof of sola fide. Honestly, the proof of sola fide is the impossibility of the contrary.

What does that mean?

Anything else can't be true. Because anything other than justification by faith alone means I'm justified by something other than the finished work of Christ.

And it can't be.

I couldn't possibly be justified by anything else. And therefore I have to say it's the impossibility of the contrary that convinces me of this truth. Luther knew that. Luther tried to be righteous in his self.

He tried to be the fastidious monk who did everything his superior said. And he found himself wanted.

And you will too.

If you try to find your righteousness outside of Jesus Christ. You will find yourself wanting.

And on the day of judgment.

You will find yourself separated from your God. Only in Christ are we made positionally holy. Positionally righteous. And it is a blessing. Because honestly what better plan of salvation could God provide than it to be a perfect gift that's received not by works but by faith alone.

Distinguishing Justification and Sanctification

Now.

I want to distinguish between justification and sanctification. And I want to make a point starting out. In theology we are required to establish categories. In fact that is what science is. And theology is a form of science.

In fact theology was once called the queen of the sciences. It's mocked now. They don't even put theology in universities. It's now in the philosophy department. It's not considered science anymore. Because studying God that's just all philosophy.

But there was a time when theology was considered a scientific endeavor. Because we're seeking to understand this God who created all things. I mean what is science but the study of creation. And what better thing to study than the one who created all things.

So we study God and we begin to categorize things. And so the theologians wanted to be able to distinguish between what declares us righteous. What causes us to be declared righteous before God. And what about the righteousness that we are called to strive for.

Remember when we started last night.

What did we read?

We read Hebrews and it says in 12 .14 we're to strive for holiness. Right? We're to strive for holiness without which no man will see God. Well that word strive is in the imperative. It's something I'm commanded to do.

Well guess what?

I can't strive.

To be any more perfect in Christ.

Than I already am.

If we're talking about my positional holiness. Here's the thing about justification. You are never more justified than the moment you first believe. Justification does not grow. Justification can't grow because it's based on one perfect righteous life.

Right? And you can't make it more perfect. You can't make it better. So the righteousness that you have in Christ doesn't grow. But sanctification. Sanctification is the conformity to Christ likeness which is formed over time and grows throughout your Christian walk.

Sanctification and justification are distinguished by one major thing. Justification changes your legal standing. It changes your positional holiness. It places you in the family of the king. You've been adopted into his family.

But sanctification makes you like Jesus. And both of them are essential because both of them are works of the Holy Spirit that He does to prepare us for glory. One sets us apart positionally where we are fit for glory.

And the other prepares us to live in eternity in glory. I want to read from J .C. Rowell. I think Rick mentioned that J .C. Rowell, the book, is it here? The book Holiness? Is it on the table?

Okay.

If you can get a copy this weekend, great. If not, order a copy. The book Holiness by J .C. Rowell really lays this out much more than I can do in a 45-minute sermon. But I want to read to you a couple of quotes.

This first one is where he talks about the difference between justification and sanctification and how justification, because it's a legal standing, doesn't change, but sanctification, because it's your conformity to Christ, it does change.

So listen to what he says. Sanctification is a thing which admits of growth and degrees. A man may climb from one step to another in holiness. That's not the steps Luther was climbing, just to be clear, not to confuse.

A man may climb from one step to another in holiness and be far more sanctified at one period of his life than another. More pardoned, more justified than he is when he first believes he cannot be, though.

He can grow in sanctification, but he can't grow in justification. You can't ever be more pardoned than you are. You can't ever be more righteous in the sense of positionally righteous than you are. More sanctified he may certainly be because every grace in his new character may be strengthened, enlarged, and deepened.

This is evident. This is the evident meaning of our Lord's prayer to his disciples when he used the word sanctify them, and of St. Peter's prayer in 1 Thessalonians where he says, the very God of peace sanctify you.

In both cases, the expression plainly implies the possibility of increasing sanctification. While such an expression justify them never happens once in Scripture. The Bible never says justify them more, justify them more.

No, they are justified, but they are being sanctified. So we are once justified, but we continue to be sanctified, and that growth continues. Our justification is imputed to us, but our sanctification is the work of the Spirit in us growing us in Christ.

And here is the passage. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn with me to Ephesians 2, because this is the passage that actually explains this, I think, so clearly. And again, these passages are often mocked by those who want to rail against Ephesians or want to rail against Sola Fide, and they say, oh, you run to Ephesians, or you run to Romans, and you want to cite these passages.

I say, yes, but these passages are so clear. Because hear what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 2,.

When he says,.

For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.

For good works.

Notice, salvation in this context, I believe, refers primarily to our justification, because it says it's not of ourselves. It is a gift of God. It removes our ability to boast. It reinforces the idea that you didn't earn this.

For by grace are you saved through faith, and that is not of yourself.

It is the gift of God, not of works,.

Lest you should boast. You cannot boast in your salvation if your salvation is based on the righteousness of Christ. All you can do is say, thank God that I have received a righteousness not of my own.