The Big Picture of the Bible:
God is wonderful and wants you to choose during your lifetime to become like him in his righteousness
The Supposedly-Improved Big Picture of the Bible:
God is wonderful, and has chosen to see you as wonderful, too, even if you never choose to become righteous during your lifetime
In Summary
In summary, the “good news” of the first big picture is that man can become righteous, whereas in the second, man simply needs God to choose to see him that way. But still, he has a problem, for he must actually do the believing in order to make it possible. Of course, the modern Christian likely has this believing whittled down to the scantest believe imaginable―that “Jesus is Lord”, and perhaps, that “He died for my sins.” And this is different from Bible times, where words like faith and belief had much stronger and fuller meaning, referring to a deliberate way of life, and particularly on a deep reliance on God, as opposed to simply giving mere mental assent to this or that proposition as being true.
And of course, the other huge difference here is that in the first one, man is supposed to make something of himself, where in the second, God chooses to make-believe man into something. In the original, man was supposed to conform himself to God in all ways―in thought and deed and attitude. But in the second, the man just has to hang on to the idea that “Jesus is Lord”, and if he can do that, then God takes care of seeing the man as if he were righteous.
The original version makes for humans of character, where the second makes for worthless servants with an overgrown sense of spiritual entitlement. And while there are some camps today who gravitate somewhat toward the first, it seems that most camps lean heavily toward the second, with only a few hints of accountability thrown in here and there in their church cultures.
God, of course, will have the last say with each of us as to whether this new version is better.