The Daily Word of Righteousness

Grace; Heaven; Change; the Kingdom, #7

Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. (Acts 20:25—NIV)

Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. (Acts 28:31—NIV)

Do we preach the coming of the Kingdom today? We do not. We preach that the Lord is returning to take His Church to Heaven. Yet there is not one passage of Scripture in the entire Bible that states the Lord is returning to take His Church to Heaven, much less that He will overlook the sinning of the Christians and take them to Heaven by grace.

Do you care that the truth is not being preached today? I do. The result of the wrong preaching and teaching is that the churches in the United States of America are filled with believers living according to their sinful nature. Therefore heavy judgment shall come upon us unless there is radical, lasting repentance—a turning away from the sinful behavior that has resulted from our unscriptural teaching.

Why is it true that if we follow our sinful nature we will not inherit the Kingdom of God?

It is because there is no sin in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the rule of God through Christ through the saints.

"Your kingdom come, Your will be done in the earth as it is in Heaven." The Lord's prayer does not refer to imputed righteousness. It refers to the doing of God's will in the earth.

Where do grace and Heaven fit in, because they both are mentioned in the New Testament?

Heaven is that part of the spirit realm where the Throne of God is, where Jesus Christ is, where the holy angels are, and where our new born-again nature is.

I think our spirit and soul go to Heaven when we die, if we are abiding in Christ, but there is not much scriptural support for this. In any case, we go to be with the Lord, and He is in Heaven, and so we will leave it at that. But much of our thinking about Heaven is not found in the Scriptures and is largely mythological.

Heaven is a place of rest, apparently, where we wait for the Lord to return to earth and establish His righteous Kingdom, fulfilling that which was spoken by the Hebrew Prophets.

Where does the grace of imputation fit in (there are many other forms of grace found in the New Testament). Where does the grace of forgiveness fit in the plan of salvation?

The grace of forgiveness does away with the guilt of our past sins, leaving us without condemnation in the sight of God.

So far so good.

But—and here is where the massive error in Christian thinking enters. The moment we repent, are baptized in water, and know our sins have been forgiven, we then are to follow the Holy Spirit each day in the work of changing us into the moral image of Jesus Christ.

Imputed righteousness is not a new way in which God relates to man. Imputed righteousness is the Divine provision designed to get us started in the program of transformation of our personality.

To be continued.