Today the Church of Jesus Christ is faced with a major step forward in the Kingdom of God. We have been forgiven through the blood atonement. We have been given God's Spirit. Now it is time to build the wall against sin.

The Wall Against Sin

As we said previously, the concept of the wall is prominent in the Scriptures: first in the Book of Nehemiah, and then in the description of the new Jerusalem.

Let me begin by making some comments about righteousness and sin.

I believe the new Jerusalem is a real city and the wall that surrounds it is a real wall made of jasper, a colorful variety of quartz. Yet, there are many aspects of the city and its wall that clearly are symbolic.

For example, the wall represents our will to choose not to sin, our will to do God's will. It is in the human will buttressed by the Divine Nature of Christ that resistance to sin finally is built.

The height and thickness of the wall are measured in terms of man's unit of measurement because the wall against sin is constructed from man's effort as well as God's effort. One of the great problems of the Evangelical teaching of today is it does not emphasize the numerous passages of the New Testament that refer to the things we must do to drive sin from our personality. We often are looking for God to perform acts of deliverance that He will not do because we are not doing our part. It always must be both the sword of the Lord and of Gideon if we are to gain complete victory over sin.

When our desires run ahead of our strength to choose to do God's will, this signals a breach in our wall against sin. Then we are to prepare a bed of mortar in the breach and set our stone in it. We get the mortar and the stone by praying. It never is God's will that His people continue in known sin.

Righteousness is obedience to God's will. Righteousness is not inherent in a particular action. For example, bearing false witness is a sin. But when the midwives lied to Pharaoh about the birth of male children God made homes for the midwives. What is sin in one instance is righteousness is another.

Sin is disobedience to God's will, the will to choose to disobey God's will.

God does not force His will on people. He could force us to do His will, you know, but He desires to relate to us in love. God wants us to choose to do His will.

Any dictator can force people to do his will, but he does not have their heart and so he possesses nothing of value.

If we wish to have a wall against sin constructed in our personality we first must believe God wants to deliver us from all sin, that God has the power to deliver us from all sin, and that God wants to do this now. If we are not convinced of these three elements of deliverance we will never have the wall against sin built in us.

To be continued.