Brother Thompson, you are putting us under condemnation. No I'm not.

Do you know the difference between condemnation and conviction? Condemnation occurs when the preacher tells you that you are a rotten sinner and God is angry with you. Then he sends you home to meditate on your failures.

Conviction occurs when the preacher hits on some practice of yours that is sin, and then invites you to the altar to confess your sin to Christ and to get forgiveness and cleansing.

In both instances, when you are condemned and when you are convicted, you feel uncomfortable. The difference is condemnation leaves you depressed but conviction invites you forward for forgiveness and deliverance.

A true minister of God, when he is following the Holy Spirit, will bring people under conviction just about every time he preaches. Then he will show them the way to forgiveness and cleansing.

A minister that does not bring his listeners under conviction is like the unrighteous supervisor telling the customers to change their accounts. He is suing for peace with them and will live with them in their cages for eternity.

Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. (Ephesians 4:27)

Now here is a commandment we can do. We can quit stealing. We can labor with our hands doing what is good. We can give to him who is needy.

If we are spiritually bound so it is difficult to quit stealing, we don't want to labor with our hands doing what is good, we have a hard time with being generous, then we need to get help from the elders of the church. If they will pray and ask God He will send deliverance so we can do what the Scripture commands.

Jesus requires of us that if someone compels us to go a mile we volunteer to go two. How do we handle this? We pray. As we said before we are not dealing with arbitrary and specific statues like the Law of Moses. What Christ and His Apostles commanded are guidelines that work properly only as we pray and get the mind of the Spirit of God.

For example, if we try to obey the Sermon on the Mount in our own wisdom and strength we will find we are developing a hard religious spirit that does not yield the fragrance of Christ. We will be miserable and expect everyone else to be miserable, and become angry when they are experiencing peace and joy and not forcing themselves as we are.

The new covenant is one of the Spirit of God. The guidelines are in the New Testament. Each passage is to be taken with utmost seriousness and prayed about.

However, the new covenant, as we have stated before, does not consist in our obedience to the commandments of Christ and His Apostles. The new covenant is the forming of Christ in us. This is eternal life and the Kingdom of God.

The point is, however, that Christ will never be formed in us except as we obey the Apostles.

First, forgiveness. Next, obedience to the doctrine of the Apostles. Next, the forming of Christ in us. These are the three steps that lead us from Moses to Christ. The three steps operate properly only as we take our place with Christ on the cross and are raised together with Him.

As long as we count ourselves crucified and resurrected with Christ the Law of Moses has no dominion over us whatever. We now are keeping the eternal moral law of God because it no longer is we who are living but Christ who is living in us, and the atoning blood of Jesus is keeping us from all condemnation.

Can you imagine the moral light that would be coming from the Christian churches if all the members were crucified with Christ and were living by His resurrection Life? The secular governments would then have clear moral guidelines because of the witness being borne by God's people.

But all our talk about grace, rapture, and Heaven is of little help to mankind. People want to see Jesus. When He is lifted up in the churches all the nations will be drawn to Him.