Can you see how today's preaching is completely undermining God's intention? If the members of the royal priesthood, the Christian Church, are not proclaiming vocally and revealing in their personality the moral law of God, there is no moral light for the people of the world to see. There is no covenant with the people. There is no true witness of God, His Person, will, way, and eternal purpose in Christ.

The Christian Gospel is presented today as God's plan for forgiving people. If this were true, it would not be a superior covenant. The old covenant also enabled people to be forgiven their sins.

He shall burn all the fat on the altar as he burned the fat of the fellowship offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for the man's sin, and he will be forgiven. (Leviticus 4:26—NIV)

Some have implied the forgiveness under the old covenant was not as thorough as the forgiveness under the new covenant. This is faulty, unscriptural reasoning. When God says "he will be forgiven" (above) this is exactly what He means. The sinner will be forgiven. The death of the innocent animal made an atonement for sin.

God did not give His priesthood a new covenant so they could be forgiven more perfectly, He gave us a new covenant that would do away with sin for eternity: give us victory over the compulsions of sin; do away with the very presence of sin from us; destroy out of us our adamic nature; fill us with the moral Nature of Christ; and finally provide us with a new body that yearns after righteousness, holiness, and stern obedience to the Father.

The new covenant is vastly superior to the old, not because it forgives us and leaves us untransformed morally but because it puts an end to sin in our personality.

The blood of Jesus Christ is cleansing us from all sin while we are engaging in the program of salvation, that is, in the process of becoming a new creation in Christ.

For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. (Hebrews 8:12—NIV)

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (I John 1:7—NIV)

Forgiveness indeed is provided under the new covenant, but it is a supplement, not the main feature. The main feature is moral transformation, for without moral transformation there is no Kingdom of God.

Forgiveness solves our personal problems, to a limited extent, but it does not solve God's problem. God's problem is an angelic and human creation in which sin is rampant. God's problem is not solved when humans are forgiven, only when they have been set free from the presence of sin. Only then can they judge angels and govern the creation in righteousness and justice.

To be continued.