The Christian redemption is vastly more than forgiveness of sins. It is total transformation of personality.

By stressing imputed (ascribed) righteousness and neglecting the necessity for righteous character and behavior, many present-day Christian preachers and teachers are destroying the work of God in the earth. The heavens cannot be planted with people who are righteous only by legally assigned righteousness. The members of the Kingdom of God are not righteous only by ascribed righteousness. The new Jerusalem is not holy by ascribed righteousness.

The Scriptures do not teach that dying and passing into the spirit realm will accomplish our sanctification. It is not death that makes us holy, it is life—the Divine Life in Christ.

Jesus has commanded us to put to death, through the Spirit, our sins and rebellions. He has warned us that if we do not do this we will die spiritually (Romans 8:13).

The Lord Jesus sends fiery trials on us in order to purify us from our sins (I Peter 4:1). The members of the Body of Christ are learning to not practice sin.

Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. (I John 3:6)

Heaven, the new Jerusalem that is above, is being planted with Divine righteousness. The righteousness of God in Christ is being created in the members of the Body of Christ. This is the first work of Christ.

Nothing can be done about the restoration of our environment until the spiritual life of the Body of Christ has been established in righteousness of personality and behavior at the right hand of God in Heaven. We humans desire to enter the Paradise of God. God is interested primarily in our being transformed into His moral image and in our being sternly obedient to Him in every instance.

The spirits of the righteous must be made perfect before the work of restoration can proceed. If we hope to participate in the work of Christ, in the glory of the first resurrection, we must follow the Lord Jesus in every point in which He is putting to death our first personality and raising us into newness of life in Him. The rewards go to the conquerors.

Laying the foundations of the earth. It is the desire of the Father that His Kingdom come to the earth, that His will be done in the earth as it is in the heavens. When the spiritual travail has been accomplished in the heavenly realms, the will of God can be done in the earth as it is in Heaven. The strong man of sin must be bound before his house can be spoiled.

God has founded the earth, the physical creation, on the seas and the floods (Psalms 24). God deliberately has placed the material creation on an unstable foundation, having in mind to build everything eventually on Christ. Abraham understood this and was looking for the city that has foundations. That city is the new Jerusalem. The wall of the holy city has twelve foundations and in them are engraved the names of the Apostles of the Lamb.

Walls and foundations are exceedingly important in the Kingdom of God. Where there are no walls, as in Eden, sin enters.

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Psalms 11:3).

To be continued.