So that the faithful Jew might be able to leave the Law of Moses and look to the Lord Jesus instead of the Torah, Paul advised him that he would be without condemnation. Believing in Christ is just as though he had kept the Law perfectly.

But Paul inserted a proviso. It is that freedom from condemnation is conditional. It depends on our walking in the Holy Spirit and not according to the desires of our flesh and mind.

In order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:4—NIV)

Imputed righteousness is preached today as an unconditional forgiveness. It is not. It is a continuing forgiveness, a continuing imputation of righteousness as long as we continue to live according to the Spirit. When we do not pray and read our Bible each day, are not careful to fellowship with fervent believers as possible, do not present our body a living sacrifice, do not deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus, the righteous requirements of the Law of Moses are not met in us. We are living in the flesh. We cannot scripturally claim to be without condemnation.

This is a tremendous error of our time and it has destroyed the moral and spiritual strength of the Evangelical churches. Justification has become bloated and poisonous to the point of eliminating the equally necessary grace of sanctification–everything is by belief. It is schizophrenic. It is split off from reality. It really is Gnosticism, not the Christian salvation at all.

The first of the three Divinely ordained kinds of righteousness is imputed righteousness. It is a "welcome home" for the righteous Jew who has despaired of meeting all the requirements of the Law of Moses, and for the Gentile who realizes he has done many things not in keeping with his conscience.

The Law of Moses ordains that the man who would find life must keep all the statutes of the Law. But Divine grace turns our gaze from the Law upward to where Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of God. The Holy Spirit becomes not only our Comforter but our Law. We follow Him and obey Him at all times. He enables us to serve the Lord as we should, and as we obey the Spirit the blood of Jesus Christ keeps us without condemnation in the sight of God.

Obeying the Word of Christ.

The second form of Divinely enabled righteousness is that of keeping the commandments of Christ and His Apostles; in other words, doing what the Bible teaches.

One would think that after two thousand years of Church history we would not have to be told that in order to please God we have to do what the Bible says. But Evangelical doctrine has so distorted the Apostle Paul's teaching of grace that the commandments of Christ are viewed as not an essential part of our salvation.

The truth is that we cannot possibly attain the third form of righteousness, which is the fullness of God in our personality such that we do right by nature, unless we are willing, in our adamic nature, to read the Scriptures and do what they say.

To be continued.