If we keep looking to the Lord, He begins to lead us by His Spirit into an awareness of specific sins in our personality. Now we have the confidence and strength to confess our sins and receive, in the spirit realm, the robe of righteousness. In other words, after we have partaken of Christ, of the Tree of Life, we now are able to be fed from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We now have the spiritual life and strength to reject the evil and embrace the good.

We are to keep following the Spirit, keep putting to death the deeds of our body, always making certain our heavenly robe is clean. If we do this, when the Lord Jesus returns He will bring that robe with Him and cover our nakedness.

If instead we as a Christian choose to live in the flesh, our heavenly robe becomes filthy with unconfessed sin. There is no passage of the New Testament that tells us even if we keep on walking in the flesh the Lord will keep on washing our robe. It is only as we walk in the light of God's will that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

If our robe in the heavens is filthy, then, in the day of resurrection, we will be clothed with a filthy robe. We will reap the corruption we have sown. Then we will be in an agony of remorse and despair as we realize we have not served the Lord and are not fit for His Kingdom.

Those who participate in the first resurrection, the resurrection that will take place when Jesus returns, will have kept their garments clean through the blood of the Lamb. They will be clothed in their righteous deeds the righteous character that has been formed in them as they have put to death through the Spirit their carnal nature and have been given to eat continually of the body and blood of Christ.

When the Lord instructed the members of the church in Laodicea to buy white clothes so the shame of their nakedness would not appear He was speaking of the righteous character that comes as we keep living in His crucifixion and resurrection.

The Apostle Paul, as we know, suffered much during his lifetime. Paul stated that his tribulations were creating for him an eternal weight of very great glory.

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (II Corinthians 4:17 NIV)

Because of what Paul said immediately after mentioning the eternal glory of great weight, we believe this "eternal glory that far outweighs them all" is our house, or robe from Heaven.

Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, Because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. (II Corinthians 5:2,3 NIV)

Paul is saying here that our tribulations, when we respond to them correctly by continuing to follow the Lord Jesus, are creating a house from Heaven of a great weight of glory. Since we are going to be clothed with this house I think we can consider the house to be the same as the robe that is mentioned in other passages.

To be continued.