God is love, and if He brings us to Paradise, our new environment will be so much better than anything we have ever experienced that extreme diligence in pursuing God's will in order to walk around with a crown on our head may not appear to be worth the effort.

So we will proceed to discuss our transformation into the moral image of the Lord and our pursuit of the fullness of eternal life. It readily can be seen that whether we perceive entrance into Paradise as our goal, or entrance into eternal life and the Kingdom of God as our goal, makes a profound, practical difference on the manner in which we view the importance of serving the Lord Jesus with diligence.

Our Transformation into a New Creation in the Moral Image of Christ

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; (II Corinthians 5:17,18)

"All things are become new."

The result of the new covenant, the Christian covenant, is a new personality. Because the new personality has been formed from the death of our adamic nature and the creation of Christ in us, the new personality is righteous, holy, and obedient in behavior.

The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. (I Corinthians 15:47,48)

Every covenant of God from the beginning of time has had as its goal the creating of men and women in the moral image of God. Each succeeding covenant presents increased demands on our behavior and each succeeding covenant offers more Divine provisions to enable us to meet the increased demands and make the necessary changes in our personality.

The new covenant, as is true of all other Divine covenants, has as its goal our change into the moral image of Christ and our union with the Father through the Lord Jesus. The demands on our personality are total. The available grace far exceeds the provisions of any other covenant.

No covenant other than the new covenant is able to transform our adamic nature into the Nature of Christ.

It is supremely ironic that in our day the Divine grace issued under the new covenant is understood to be a waiving of the demand for change into God's image, instead of what grace actually is—the Divine provision to make such change possible!

We enter Paradise by grace (which we define as "unconditional forgiveness"), it is taught. But what about God's desire for righteous children? Will Adam and Eve return to the garden and eat of the tree of life even though there has been no change in their personality?

The two dimensions of the new covenant. There are two great dimensions of the new covenant. One dimension is that of forgiveness. The other dimension is that of transformation into Christ's moral image (and later His external image if we pursue Christ throughout our discipleship).

To be continued.