When Jesus suffered on the cross, just as he was about to die he declared: "It is FINISHED." This meant that the penalty for the sins of ALL mankind had been paid for and anyone who would believe would be justified. "Justification" now is a legal word that means, roughly, "pronounced innocent." When you believed in the suffering and resurrection of Christ, you were taken before God's judgment seat and pronounced INNOCENT.
The innocence you received in Christ means that all your spiritual toil, all your religious efforts, and all your prayers and fasting gain you nothing when it comes to your standing as a righteous man in Jesus' sight. You're already righteous because of what he did for you, so you can literally add nothing to his work. Ephesians 2:8-9 says "It is by grace you are saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves. It is a gift, lest any man should boast." This is why you can disregard those super-spiritual people who look down their noses at you. They are bigots and have imagined they've added to the righteousness that Christ provided for them.
Does this mean you do nothing as a Christian? Just sit and thank God and live your life your own way? No. It means that all your spiritual disciplines, all your toil, and all your labor of love for the sake of the faith are to make you LIKE Christ. They make you LIKE Christ because the more you seek and pursue his face, the more you know him. When you know him, you can't help but become more like him. And being like him is the exact cause for him saving us, as is pronounced in 1 John 3:2: "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."
On the last day, when Christ returns to judge the dead and the living, we who are believers will be made exactly like Christ in his glorified state. That means we will have living bodies like his living body, able to function as he functions in his body; but it also means we will be perfectly like him in character, our choice to conform to him being made permanent and perfect.
So as you search out Christ in the scriptures, as you fast, as you worship and pray and serve the needy, don't suppose that you are adding to your standing as a Christian. Your position in God's eyes is "righteous," not because of anything but the "It is FINISHED" justification of Christ. You can do nothing to add to your positional standing of perfectness created by Christ. What you can do is seek his face with the hope that your mind will be renewed daily, no longer being conformed to the image of the world around you. When that happens, you get to KNOW Christ better, and when you KNOW him better you become more LIKE him in character. Since being conformed to the image and character of Christ is our ultimate prize for endurance in the faith, and our ultimate reward in Heaven, we should be pleased to attain to Christ-likeness here on this earth.
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