Jesus’ Second Gift, Righteousness
Jesus’ Second Gift is Righteousness. This isn’t because it’s less important than salvation. Nor is true righteousness anything resembling two flawed human-based behaviors: works righteousness, and self-righteousness, which many people find burdensome and disagreeable.

What then?

On Tuesday, I used the concept of a-box-within-a-box. Let’s switch word pictures, because one of the souvenirs I brought home from my trip to Ireland is a lead crystal paperweight.

Righteousness is more like a facet in that paperweight.
To build the analogy, salvation would be the entire object, whole and unchanging, while righteousness is one facet, which produces a essential change for us. Righteousness equips us to be in company with God.

Definitions and some comments:

The eleventh edition of Webster’s dictionary describes righteousness first as acting in accord with divine or moral law. Free from guilt or sin. Second, morally right or justifiable. Third, arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality.
I think the compilers of this dictionary edition did a decent job of being concise. But in my opinion, their sentence “Free from guilt or sin,” has been turned back-to-front, because the Bible makes it clear that without sin, there is no guilt.
The second definition, morally right or justifiable, seems weaker to me. People base morality on their individual preferences more frequently than on God’s law, the original source for morality.
Were this world unbroken, the third definition would be unnecessary. However, as it stands, our sense of justice and morality when based on less than God’s ideal, is both dulled and oversensitive. Only God expresses fully righteous outrage. He does so at us.

Human-based counterfeits

Two things people attempt to substitute for Jesus’ second gift, righteousness, are connected. Works righteousness is the silly idea that we can fix our sin/guilt problems ourselves by obeying rules.(When we didn’t obey rules while the only rule was Don’t Eat That), while self-righteousness springs from comparison of how well we obey rules.
Both counterfeits are like an object made of mere pressed glass: lighter in weight, lacking the well-defined edges of a piece of cut crystal, and completely failing to produce any sign of a spectrum.

The effect of righteousness

Jesus’ second gift, righteousness, like a facet in a piece of crystal

which breaks light into its spectrum of colors, alters how we’re seen. Jesus’ atoning death cuts away sin as well as its resulting guilt. God the Father then sees us the way he sees his Son.