Accounted as Righteous

Not too long ago, I got up from the table in the Hay Belly Deli and walked to the counter to pay for my lunch.  I was surprised to be told that "your check has already been taken care of."  A friend had already secretly paid for my food.  In the deli's bookkeeping, I was already ok.  How had that happened without my knowing it?  I didn't assume, or even "have faith" that the bill would be paid before I got to the cash register--but it was.

In the Letter to the Romans, Chapter 4, verse 4-5, Paul wrote, "Now to one  who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due.  But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness."  Hmm.  The one who trusts "him who justifies the ungodly..."  So is it that a decision to trust God is a "virtue" or a "work" that earns our way into God's favor, i.e., God's "accounting" us as righteous?  Or is it that when we trust God, we can recognize (and have confidence) that God's love is a gift.  Is it that despite appearances, we can see we are not captive to our addiction to selfishness, we are not bound by the past, and we are not faced with completion of an impossible "to-do" list that we must complete before we can be "right with God"?  To me, faith feels like part of the gift, as if I've just discovered that a friend has already paid the bill.  Of course, we can, and should, trust and love God, and do good things for other people; how else can we show gratitude for God's love for us?  But we can't do anything to earn God's love.  In God's "book," we're already loved.