The Bible definition of righteousness doesn’t mean right living; right living is a result of righteousness. You can’t live right until you’re righteous. Thus, righteousness, essentially, is a nature; the nature of God that produces in a human person, the rightness of God. That nature or ability to do right was imparted to your spirit when you were born again. Thus, your true and only nature is one of righteousness.

 

I’ve heard some people say that when a person is born again, his old nature and the new nature in Christ co-exist, but that’s not true. Now that you’re born again, the life and nature of God has completely supplanted the human life and nature with which you were born by your biological parents. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

 

The man who’s born again is a completely new species, one that never existed before. He has only one nature, which is the divine nature—the nature of righteousness: “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:4). There’s no other nature in you except the nature of God, which is the nature of righteousness.

 

This is why it’s possible for you to live right and do the will of God. The righteousness of God in you is a force that causes you to do the will of God.