A deposit to your account

 A Deposit to Your Account

Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

GENESIS 15.6, NIV

We who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us.

GALATIANS 5.5

I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.

PHILIPPIANS 3.9

Let’s say you’re hungry, and you have a twenty-pound note. You have two choices. You can use the twenty-pound note to buy some lunch. Or you can eat the twenty-pound note. Yuck! Of course you wouldn’t eat the money! You’d use the money to buy something good for lunch.

Faith is like that twenty-pound note. Faith is not what saves you. Faith is the channel by which you receive what saves you — kind of like money is a channel you get fed through. What saves you is the righteousness of Christ — a gift deposited into your spiritual bank account. People are not saved because they have faith, just as they are not fed by eating twenty-pound notes. The only way a person is saved is by being righteous enough to enter God’s presence. Faith is the channel by which we get that righteousness — the righteousness of Christ.

The important word that helps us understand this truth is the word credited. This is an accounting or bookkeeping term. If you have placed your faith in Christ, a deposit has been made to your spiritual account. Your account has been credited. But it wasn’t you who made the deposit. It was someone else. When you turn to God in faith, that faith is the channel by which Jesus makes a deposit to your account. He credits you with his own perfect righteousness. Jesus is basically saying, “You need perfection so you can enjoy being in God’s presence? I’ll give you mine.”