The purpose of God under both the old covenant and the new covenant is to create people who make their decisions according to God's will. He is bringing forth such people for the world to behold by creating Christ in every aspect of their personality. This is what salvation is!

Death rather than life comes by the Law of Moses because of our sinful nature. This is the law of sin and death. The purpose of the Law of Moses is to bring us to Christ.

When Christ becomes central in all that we are, all that we think, all that we say, all that we do, we behave righteously in our personality, our thinking, our speaking, our actions.

The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Righteousness brings God's peace to us. The wicked never possess peace. Peace brings joy to us, peace being an important element of joy. But first of all must come righteousness; for everything in the Kingdom of God depends on our behaving righteously in the sight of God.

Under the new covenant, the Christian covenant, there are two kinds of righteousness. It is important that we understand the difference between the two when we are studying the Scriptures.

The first kind of righteousness is that which God ascribes freely to the human being who places his faith in Christ but who as yet is making many decisions in his behavior that are contrary to God's will.

The freely ascribed righteousness given to the repenting sinner through his faith in Christ is an assigned righteousness based on the atonement made by the shedding of the blood of Christ. Assigned, imputed righteousness is explained by the Apostle Paul in Chapters Three through Five of the Book of Romans.

The second kind of righteousness is found in the human being who, through the grace given to him in Christ, is actually behaving according to God's will. Righteous behavior is discussed throughout the Scriptures and summed up in Micah 6:8. The necessity and the power for righteous living are explained by the Apostle Paul in Chapters Six through Eight of the Book of Romans.

The first kind of righteousness, assigned righteousness, is the righteousness of Christ Himself placed to the account of the sinner who comes to Christ for forgiveness and transformation.

The second kind of righteousness, actual righteous behavior, is produced by the wisdom and power that come from Christ through the Holy Spirit so that we grow every day in the ability to distinguish between good and evil and in the willingness to choose the good and reject the evil. This is what is meant by the expression growing in Christ (Hebrews 5:14).

Let us speak of the first type of righteousness as assigned righteousness and the second type of righteousness as righteous behavior.

When the Lord assigns righteousness to an individual it is for the purpose of bringing him or her into righteous behavior. If righteous behavior, the fruit for which God is looking, does not begin to grow, then the believer has received the grace of God in vain (II Corinthians 6:1; Philippians 2:15,16; I Thessalonians 3:5; James 1:26, Jude 1:5).

To be continued.