Paul was blameless when it came to righteousness under the law. He followed the letter of the law. It drove him to murderous rage against the church. There wasn’t a blameless heart behind that. You have to remember that the law he was following was not God’s good law, but man’s corrupt law. They kept making up new laws. Jesus wasn’t breaking His Father’s Sabbath law. He was breaking man’s Sabbath laws.

But for all that Paul could boast in from his upbringing, he counted it as nothing. Less than nothing, he counted it as a loss. It’s trash. All you could brag over? It’s nothing. Christ is everything. Rejoice and glory in Christ alone. Desire and seek after Christ alone.

Christ becomes for us our righteousness. We depend on Him for our righteousness. We need Him. By faith, we trust Him to be our righteousness and to make us the righteousness of God.

If you have the righteousness of God, then you are righteous, actually righteous. You know the right thing and you do it.

You live that righteous life by faith, by looking to Him to do it in and through you. You have His righteousness and patiently, He will grow you up into it.

We grow up into Christ, joining Him in His sufferings and death and in the power of His resurrection. Don’t seek the power of the resurrection without submitting to the suffering and death part. You’ll find yourself outside of Christ. We go down with Christ before we are raised with Christ.

If our salvation, our righteousness, is God’s work, what’s our part? How do we “press on?” We hold fast. We keep the faith. No matter how hard it feels. We don’t give up. We hold fast the faith by continually looking to Him to hold us fast and to give us faith. We press on by relying on Him. We look to God and are saved. We keep trusting that He will save us, today and forever.

The only rest for the Christian is in Christ, not in the “relaxation” of this world. Those destined for destruction are those whose minds are set on earthly things.