Works-righteousness
From Neoredemptive
Martin Luther, in his commentary on Galatians, sets out two kinds of righteousness. The first, "Christian-righteousness", is received by the believer passively as a result of God's gracious action in saving us and giving to us His righteousness. The second, "works-righteousness", is simply a righteousness that derives from our actions (whether by our own strength or by God's).
Any attempt to earn God's favor, to warrant His salvation, or to deliver ourselves from our own sin as an act of works-righteousness.
Works-Righteousness and Prosperity
Prosperity theology walks a very fine line, usually very badly, in telling people to believe for God to deliver them from poverty, oppression, relational difficulty, and emotional distress. The line is crossed when the teaching shifts from "God is the giver of all good things" to "God will give to you everything you want if you believe/confess/prophesy/etc enough." That "enough" (whether "long enough", "well enough", "deeply enough", "sincerely enough", or any other "enough") is the give-away that we have stepped outside of an economy of grace in which God acts to redeem us and into an economy of works-righteousness in which we accrue virtue tokens until we have enough to cash in for a prize of our choosing.
Works-Righteousness and Marriage
There has grown up, among books on marriage and Christian sex books in particular, a drift toward a kind of marital works-righteousness in which the key to marital success is bound up in some set of changed behaviors. While we do not doubt that there are a lot of unhelpful behaviors between married couples that need to change, remember that our marriages are to reflect the love of Christ which is characterized not by a tit-for-tat or a quid pro quo, but rather by sheer unmerited grace. We can't help but wish that these books would focus less on changing your behaviors to appease/please a spouse and more upon extending grace to a difficult spouse and receiving grace from God to handle those seasons when even your best actions are simply not good enough.
