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Written by John Bunyan (1628-1688), an English writer and Puritan preacher, best remembered for his work “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”  This is an excerpt from “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, from “The Complete Works of John Bunyan (Philadelphia, 1874).

One day as I was passing into a field, … suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, “Thy righteousness is in heaven”… I saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, is my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me, “He wants my righteousness,” for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, not yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Now did my chains fall off my legs, indeed; I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; … now went I home rejoicing, for the grace and love of God…I saw that the man Christ Jesus, as He is distinct from us, as touching His bodily presence, so He is our righteousness and sanctification before God. Here, therefore, I lived, for some time, very sweetly at peace with God through Christ.

It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God–—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. [1 Corinthians 1:30].