Originally posted by Rajk999
Your thread title "no faith = no righteousness" sounds like you are judging .
We were all born in Adam. We sinners need to ask God to put us into Christ Jesus.
Paul told the Christians:
"But of Him [God] you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption." (1 Cor. 1:30)
They did not just believe in Christ. They believed
INTO Christ. Their belief in His resurrection caused God to put them INTO a divine and mystical union with Christ.
In this sphere of the living Person of Christ, Christ became to them righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
Christ became to them righteousness as to their past.
Christ became to them sanctification as to their present.
Christ became to them redemption as to their future.
Concerning their past, Christ is now their history.
Concerning their present Christ is becoming the one saturating them with His holy nature.
Concerning their future Christ is the one who will transfigure their bodies redeeming them from all corruption.
Paul says this is the true wisdom that man requires, the wisdom of God. Rather than to just know somthing it is to have God make Christ our rigtheousness, our sanctification, and our redemption.
Paul also says that he desired to be found in Christ. In that realm of abiding in the living presence of Christ Paul would have Christ as his righteousness.
" ... that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is out of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is out of God and based on faith." (Phil. 3:9)
Where ever Paul was, even if in prison chained, he wanted everyone to find him not in depression, not in anger, not in any mood, but in Christ. He wanted his visitors to find him in Christ, in the realm of the living Christ.
In Christ Paul would enjoy the rigtheousness which is based on faith. This righteousness is out of God and based on faith in his union with Christ. He did not want to have his own righteousness from law keeping though he lived his whole life that way previously. Now he gives that up for living in the sphere of a living Person Christ and possessing the righteousness which is out of the life of God and based on Paul's faith in Christ.