What is the place of good works in the Christian life in light of the completely sufficient righteousness of Christ imput- ed to us?
Fortunately, the Bible has a clear answer for us. Paul emphasizes in various places that our works, our obedience to the Law, our personal righteousness cannot make us right with God. For instance, in Romans 3:27–28 Paul writes, “Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” In other words, our works contribute absolutely nothing to our justification (which means being definitively pardoned of sin and accepted as righteous, through God’s free grace, on the basis of Christ’s imputed righteousness alone). Paul’s point is that God’s gracious acceptance and pardon of us is not based on anything in us. By faith, looking away from ourselves and our works, we receive a totally undeserved declaration of forgiveness, based on something outside of ourselves — the perfect righteousness of Christ, credited to our account by faith alone. But Paul doesn’t
