Faith, grace, and mercy do not govern our admittance to the new Jerusalem. Faith, grace, and mercy play their roles now while our character is being formed, while we are behaving either righteously or wickedly in our physical body. Faith, grace, and mercy work together to make us new creatures in Christ.

We cannot live a defeated life, not being transformed in character, not turning away from our wicked behavior, and then expect to be allowed into Paradise by "grace." The Scriptures do not teach this. It is a great misunderstanding in Christian theology (Revelation 22:14).

To be saved is to be spared in the day of God's wrath and to be brought forward into the new heaven and earth reign of the Lord Jesus. The New Testament teaches that we are saved from wrath and receive eternal life by believing in Christ and being baptized in water. The New Testament teaches also that inheriting the new Jerusalem and the other heavenly rewards depends on the manner in which we run the race, on our worthiness (II Thessalonians 1:5; Revelation 3:4; for example).

It is possible to be saved apart from receiving the heavenly rewards (I Corinthians 3:15).

What happens to the defeated Christian when he dies is not clear. He will be judged according to his deeds in his physical body. Of this we are certain. He will not bring his unbelief and lust into Paradise. We are certain of this also.

There are some who are teaching that all Christians will receive the same reward. It appears they are ignorant of the abundance of passages of Scripture that declare our rewards will be directly related to our works; that we shall reap precisely what we sow.

The law of sowing and reaping is an eternal law of the Kingdom of God. The victorious saint enters through the gates of the new Jerusalem when he dies. The defeated believer goes to some other area of the spirit realm, there to await his placement when the Lord returns.

This may come as a shock to those who have believed that the Lord Jesus will say to them when they die, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter the joy of your Lord." They know they have been neither good nor faithful, but they expect to hear those words on the basis of "grace."

Many commentators, recognizing this discrepancy, have attempted to separate the Words of Christ in the four Gospels from the arguments of the Apostle Paul in Romans, Chapters Three through Five. They maintain that the teachings of Christ apply to the Jews and to an earthly kingdom while we Gentiles are saved "by grace," meaning we will be taken to Heaven on the basis of a statement of doctrinal belief in Christ.

This truly is an erroneous teaching. This is to remove the commandments of the Lord, such as the Sermon on the Mount, from the Christian churches. Why have intelligent Christian people accepted such an obvious error?

If we were to reject all the New Testament commandments to righteous conduct we would be required to willfully ignore not only the teachings of Christ in the Gospel accounts but also several of the books of the New Testament, including First John, James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation. All of these have much to say about our behavior.

To be continued.