It is not unusual in our day for God to speak to someone personally and command him to do something, and for that individual then to disobey God. We cannot walk in such disobedience and remain under the pardoning grace of the Lord Jesus. In order to remain "under the blood" we must walk continually in the light of God's revealed will.

We have fellowship with God and are cleansed continually from all sin provided we walk in the light of God's will for our life.

Disobeying God is unthinkable. Disobedience is not tolerated in the Kingdom of God. The present willingness to disobey God is nourished by the concept of Divine grace as an unconditional, continuing pardon of our sins.

Unless God brings tribulation upon us the present generation of "Christians" is lost to the purposes of Christ. They are not abiding in Christ, they are not walking in the Spirit, and they are not obeying God—all because of the teaching that God's forgiveness is unconditional. It is not reasonable or practical to teach people that it is not critically important how they behave and then expect them to meet the stern demands of Christian discipleship.

The "ifs" of the new covenant have not been emphasized nearly enough by Christian theologians.

But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. (Hebrews 3:6)

For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; (Hebrews 3:14)

If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. (Hebrews 6:6)

"If we hold fast." "If they shall fall away."

Numerous preachers and teachers of our day are seeking to please their listeners. They are afraid to present the demands of Scripture. They are not teaching the fear of the Lord. They want the people to like them and come to them and so they are shielding them from the Holy One of Israel, like a mother who is afraid to severely chastise her children—afraid she will lose their love. They are not bearing a true witness of God. The blood of the sinning believers is on their hands.

Restoration, under the new covenant, is a gradual transformation of what we are. The resurrection of our body will be instantaneous but the other changes of our personality are gradual. It is a growing in grace.

We are not made a new creation the moment we receive Christ except in the sense of God's vision that was finished from the creation of the world. God sees us already glorified and now He is resting. We enter God's rest by ceasing from our own works of religious striving and by pressing into the power of Christ's resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.

God has said we are perfect in Christ in spirit, soul, and body. Now we must cooperate with the Holy Spirit until what is not yet in existence, except in God's mind, becomes flesh-and-bone reality.

To be continued.