The gap of lawlessness in the civil realm, which we have just described, runs parallel to a similar problem in the Kingdom of God.

God, with the intention of achieving righteousness, peace, and joy for people, gave to us the Law of Moses. The Law is spiritual in origin. It is from God. When people obey the Law, and many Israelites strove to keep the Law as do numerous Jews today, they achieve a measure of righteousness, peace, and joy.

But human beings cannot keep the Law of Moses perfectly because of their carnality. The Law is spiritual but we are bound in the chains of lust and self-seeking.

Again, with the intention of achieving righteousness, peace, and joy for people, God has given to us the law of the Spirit of life in Christ. God has given to us His Holy Spirit in order that we may be led in the paths of righteousness, that we may possess God's peace, and that we may be filled with the joy of God's Presence while we yet are in the present world. Also, we have the hope of the perfect righteousness, peace, and joy that will come to us with the Lord's return from Heaven.

When the human being believes in Christ, repents of his sins, is baptized in water, is filled with the Holy Spirit, and then takes up his cross and follows Christ, he begins to achieve (and more so each day of his pilgrimage) righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. He takes God's route to joy, which is by way of righteousness and peace.

The saint may be in distress for a season, but the end of his pilgrimage will be perfect righteousness, perfect peace, and perfect joy.

An obstacle has arisen with respect to God's plan for righteousness under the new covenant. The interpreters of the Scriptures have misunderstood God's goal. They have taught that the purpose of the Christian redemption is to cover our sins so we may be accepted into Heaven when we die. They have made the Divine salvation primarily an act of forgiveness rather than what it is in actuality—the re-creation through Christ of the human personality so that God's law is placed in the mind and inscribed in the heart (Hebrews 8:10).

Without realizing it, the teachers of the Bible have done precisely what the kingdoms of the world have done. They have put human happiness and peace first and have given righteousness a minor role.

By righteousness we mean turning away from the pursuit of our own interests in the world, putting to death through the Spirit the lusts of our flesh, and taking up our cross and following Christ with our eyes fixed on Him. Such a pursuit of righteousness can bring the disciple into difficult tests of his faithfulness to God and his trust in God, but there is no other path to peace and joy. It is the right way to live.

The result of limiting the Christian redemption to forgiveness of our behavior, neglecting the change in behavior that is the main part of the new covenant, has been the falling of Christian people into the gap of lawlessness—the same gap inhabited by so many of the citizens of the governments that were created by and for the people.

To be continued.