I personally experienced how several Roman Catholic people especially those serving in their respective parishes whom we call and refer to as "more Popist than the Pope" because for themselves they believe and were convinced of their own righteousness.

Perhaps some open-minded people would agree with my statement based on my own experiences and observations that the Roman Catholic people am referring to earlier are just like the Pharisees during the time of Jesus. They are the people we consider religious. They followed every detail of the laws and precepts of the Church, the "conservative ones." They thought they were pleasing in the eyes of God. However, they despise everyone else.

In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that the tax collector was the one who went home justified or forgiven, not the Pharisee.

Righteousness is a theological concept. It is a state of being morally correct and justifiable. It can be considered the same as being "upright."

Don't you know that Martin Luther is often called righteous during his lifetime, why? It is because Luther not only did the right thing for other people but also followed the laws of religion (the Catholic religion) despite being a Protestant.

So, we can see that being righteous literally means being right, especially in a moral way. A person is righteous when he is in a right relationship with God, when he simply receives the imputed obedience of Christ and the forgiveness of sins through faith.

In theology, "to be righteous is to be human as God envisioned in creation, and again in redemption." Lutherans believe that there are "two dimensions to being a human creature," or two relationships that define human nature. The first dimension defines man's relationship with God and the second defines man's relationship with his human neighbors and the rest of God's creation. "In the former, we receive righteousness before God through faith on account of Christ. In the latter, we achieve righteousness in the eyes of the world by works when we carry out our God-given responsibilities."

The two kinds of righteousness are a Lutheran paradigm (like the two kingdoms doctrine). It attempts to define man's identity in relation to God and the rest of creation. The two kinds of righteousness are explicitly mentioned in Luther's 1518 sermon entitled "Two Kinds of Righteousness", in Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), in his On the Bondage of the Will, Melanchthon's Apology of the Augsburg Confession, and in the third article of the Formula of Concord. It is also the implicit presupposition governing Luther's On the Freedom of a Christian as well as other works.