MAN has no righteousness for God. God has one in His grace for man, sinful and wretched man. Who can stand before the law of God? Who can say, "I have not transgressed it?" How can a man justify himself by a law he has transgressed? “By the law is the knowledge of sin." What is to be done? Hear what the apostle says: "But now the righteousness of God without the law is made manifest, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all thorn that believe; for there is no difference: for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood."
It is the precious blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, which is the only answer (which God himself has furnished to us) to the demand of the justice which condemns the sinner. It is the righteousness of God by Jesus that makes righteous the man who has no righteousness to present to God, so that God is just in justifying him that has faith in Jesus.
What grace! What a blessing for the poor sinner who has a heart broken enough and cleansed, sufficiently true for him to condemn himself! Boasting is excluded through faith in Jesus.