There are numerous verses in the Book of Psalms that refer to righteous people who were serving God under the Law of Moses.

As for the father and mother of John the Baptist:

. . . they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. (Luke 1:6)

God has given us the perfect sacrifice, His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we no longer can obtain righteousness by observing the Sabbath day, being circumcised, keeping the Passover, refraining from eating pork. God will not impute righteousness to us if we attempt to gain righteousness through the works of the Law now that God has made the perfect, complete atonement.

This is what Paul was maintaining.

We Gentiles, not being oriented properly toward the concept of righteousness for righteousness sake (apart from residence in Paradise), have interpreted Paul to mean God has given man a new way of pleasing Him. Righteous, holy, and obedient behavior are no longer necessary because an eternal righteousness has been given to us, an eternal amnesty has been declared. We now are eligible for residence in Heaven.

In this we have missed the heart of God entirely! We do always err because our heart is wrong!

God imputes righteousness to us apart from the Law when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. God then expects that we will obey Jesus and His Apostles. The blood atonement covers our sins while the new creation is being formed. The new covenant is not a new way of pleasing God in which we believe in Jesus and live according to the lusts of the flesh.

When we maintain we now are righteous apart from righteous, holy behavior because we have received Jesus, and then continue to walk in the lusts of the flesh, we demonstrate that we do not have the faintest idea of the redemption that is in Christ.

Christian scholars have constructed a philosophy of grace that is abstract—removed from behavior. It is as though God has called us righteous on the basis of accepting Christ without any thought of changing our conduct. This is a delusion.

It may be compared to the Israelites remaining in Egypt and stating that God had freely given them the land of promise as an inheritance; or reaping non-existent crops in the desert because God had given them the feast of Pentecost to observe.

The current Christian theology presents a removal from that which is actually true, a withdrawal from reality. Indeed, the scholars teach that the Church is a parenthesis in the plan of God, a mystery not found in the Old Testament. Yet several passages of the New Testament reveal it is a continuation of the Old, not something different from the Old or not found in the Old.

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; (Hebrews 1:1,2)

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. (Luke 1:68-75)

To be continued.