Noah found favor (grace) with God.(Gen. 6:8) Out of this grace/favor Noah was enabled to build the ark. He didn't build the ark in order to gain favor with God but God had already graced him. The grace was the power that enabled him to do the work which God had initiated. This was not a project that Noah had dreamed up but was something out of God Himself.

As Christians today we too have been favored by God. This favor, this grace, has come to us without any merit on our part. It is the free gift of God. We didn't deserve it but it was given based on the death of Christ on the cross. He bore all our sins and due to His obedience we were forgiven all our past, present and future sins and thus we became the righteousness of God in Christ.

It is not what we do that make us righteous before God. If that were the case then we would be righteous based on our keeping the law by which no one can be righteous. Only the righteousness of Christ dispensed in us when we received Christ and were born again can be counted by God as righteousness.

Not only the righteousness that we received initially with our new birth, but every day of our Christian life our righteousness is based solely upon God's grace/favor. I do not mix law with grace. I so not try to be good, to please God or try to improve myself in any way. This is legality. If I do, I nullify what Christ has done for me and what He will do in me. I simply stay with Christ and enjoy this Person who lives in the depth of my being.

My righteous behavior toward my wife, for example, can only be by His grace/favor in me. I am under this grace/favor and only the operating energy of that grace/favor on and in me can produce the acting righteousness to my wife or to anyone else. If I attempt to be a good husband by my own effort it is law keeping and I will experience death toward God. In other words I have just eaten the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Gen.6:9 says that Noah was a righteous man. Since at that time there was no law given to men by God, righteousness in those days, as today, only could come to man by faith in God. So Noah was a man of faith which had been given to him through grace, just as we become righteous through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

No matter what our situation or circoustanse is, we are always favored by God. He loves us more than we know. The blood of His son Jesus Christ is always cleansing us from all our sins. No matter how we have fallen or how we may fall we are still under the cleansing of His blood and are accounted righteous.

I have enjoyed the following little chorus many tines:

I am the righteousness of God in Christ
A brand new creation in Him.
I can now approach the throne of God
With no condemnation of sin
I am the righteousness of God in Christ
I am now complete in Him.
I'm a partakeer of His divine nature.
To me He will not impute sin..

Since I am under the new covenant sin is never imputed to my account. God, the Judge of the universe has judged me in Christ to be righteous now and unto all eternity. And all because of His free grace/favor in Christ!