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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Jerusalem, #7
Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. (Isaiah 60:21)
Because we do not understand what God is doing, what God's goal is, the work of the Kingdom of God in the earth has suffered loss.
God's goal is to create a Jerusalem in the earth that He can bless because its inhabitants practice righteousness.
The city of Jerusalem on earth will be the "heaven" of the future. People will pray to God on the earth rather than to God in Heaven. The Throne of God is coming to the earth in the new Jerusalem. This is the role of Jerusalem—to be the Presence of God on the earth.
At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart. (Jeremiah 3:17)
People who have received only the grace of imputed (ascribed) righteousness are of little use to God's goal concerning the planting of Jerusalem with a royal priesthood that practices righteousness.
If it were the Lord's intention to impute righteousness to Jerusalem, rather than to create a nation that can live in His blessing because of the righteous and holy conduct of the people, God could have done this easily in the first century. God could have come down and assigned legal righteousness to Jerusalem just as He sovereignly received Saul of Tarsus and commissioned him to be an apostle.
If God were to populate Jerusalem with believers who were justified by legally-assigned (imputed) righteousness but who still were bound by sin and self-will, how could the righteous and holy God of Jacob dwell among them? Will the Glory of God inhabit a city filled with sin and strife?
Will the nations glorify God when they behold the unrighteous works of the believers in Christ, as is the case in our day? How ignorant we have been of the redemption that is in Christ!
Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; Having your conversation [behavior] honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. (I Peter 2:11,12)
"Good works, which they shall behold."
The nations of the earth cannot behold ascribed righteousness. A Jerusalem that is glorious because of ascribed righteousness is not glorious in the sight of the nations.
The nations must behold the "good works" of the saints, as in the preceding passage from I Peter. The nations of the earth are waiting to behold saints whose manner of life gives clear evidence of the Person, ways, will, and eternal purpose of the God of Heaven.
To be continued.