No one can earn righteousness. You can’t be good enough long enough for God to call you righteous. He’s already given you authority and made you righteous with His righteousness. It’s up to you to “receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness” 

(Romans 5:17). Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (KJV). The Greek word for MADE here in the King James Version is GINOMAI, which means “to come into existence or begin to be.”