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Luke 1:
 ⁷³the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
 ⁷⁴to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
      and to enable us to serve him without fear
 ⁷⁵in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

 God swore an oathe to Abraham: to enbable his descendents to serve God in righteousness.  Righteousness is not a reflection of any innate quality within us, but is rather a measure of the righteousness of God, which he decides to bestow upon us.  Righteousness, frankly, is a fruit that people can see in our lives, but it is not in our person or psyche.  It is in how we live our life, when we do those things that only God can help or cause us to do… and He only does so when we go after such fruit, by believing Him, obeying Him, reveling in His name… basically, loving Him.  And Later in Luke, Jesus showed how such fruit plays itself out… 

Luke 18:
 ⁹To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

 ¹³“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

 ¹⁴“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

I must confess to praying prayers much like the pharisee above.  I do not know what that pharisee’s heart was when he prayed, though I can tell you mine.  I know how my nature could have me be… yet I am not that way, because of God, and I am thankful for it.  The fallacee is that I’ve arrived… I have not.  No matter how far I’ve come from where I was, it is an eternity to get to where I God wants me… thankfully, Jesus did the work.  God had mercy on me, and continues in that mercy to this day. Therefore, I need to pray like that tax collector, renewing my heart with Him, and requesting His mercy.  However, I need not request it because I don’t have it, but because I am to have the heart of someone who knows he is a sinner, and can only get where he is supposed to with God’s mercy.  In some ways, it’s the same prayer, but with a different perspective, at least for me… God loves me, and I am grateful. But perspective is everything, and the words I choose to thank Him will dictate how I proceed.