We are told in the bible that, through
Jesus, we have a new and better covenant.
Yea! – a new and better covenant! So what does that mean exactly? What
in the world is a covenant anyway?
A covenant is simply an agreement or
promise between two parties. In many cultures covenants, treaties, contracts,
pledges or bonds are sealed by various means. In western cultures, typically,
covenants or contracts are signed on paper by all involved parties. In biblical
times, there was almost always a need for the shedding of blood to create a
covenant.
Throughout history, God has dealt with
humankind through covenants, and the most powerful covenant of all has always
been a blood covenant. The Old Covenant was based on the shed blood of animals.
The New Covenant was established on the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Not knowing the difference between the
two covenants has caused many people to be double-minded in the way they live,
and in the way they think about God.
The Old Covenant was based on the
Mosaic Law. This was much more than just
the Ten Commandments. There were 613 rules, regulations, ordinances and commandments,
which had to be followed to the letter.
In Deuteronomy 28:1, we find that a
person under the law must, “…diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all
His commandments…,” to get blessings from God.
Well, that
doesn’t sound so tough… at least on the surface. That is, until you realize
that He was saying that all 613 of God’s commandments
had to be obeyed completely. James says in 2:10, “…If someone obeys all of God’s laws
except one, that person is guilty of breaking all of them.”
In fact, according to Deuteronomy 6, the person under the Mosaic
Law had to keep all of God’s
statutes, and commandments, and their children and grandchildren had to keep
them all of the days of their lives, just so that things would go well.
The Old Covenant’s rules can be summed
up in what the apostle Paul called, “the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). In other words, if you sin under the law, you
die. Paul also called the Old Covenant,
the "ministration of death and condemnation,"(2 Corinthians 3:6-8).
The law was conditional. Do this right, then
God will do that. It was based upon
conditional promises, and ultimately no one could meet all of the conditions,
because, the law was “weak through the flesh” (Romans 8:3).
The effect of the Old Covenant was that
those under the law always strove to perform but could never live up to it
completely. It was a vicious cycle, and God found a fault with the Old
Covenant.
“For if that first covenant
had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.
Because finding fault with them…” Hebrews
8:7-8
Wait a minute! “…finding fault with
them…” Them who? The “them” that God found fault with in the Old Covenant was
the people! Under the law, no matter how hard they tried, the people could
never perform good enough to hold up their side of the covenant!
So God promised them a new covenant…
“Because
finding fault with them, He says: ‘Behold, the
days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with
the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—
9 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day
when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because
they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those
days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and
I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying,
‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of
them. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and
their lawless deeds I will
remember no more.’ 13 In
that He says, “A new covenant,”
He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old
is ready to vanish away.” Hebrews
8:8-13
So what makes the New Covenant Better?
One of the blessings of the New
Covenant is that it is based solely on the shed blood of Jesus, not on our
performance. Jesus was the spotless Lamb
of God, who took away the sins of the world.
He met all the conditions and fulfilled the Old Covenant so completely
that the bible says that we are no longer slaves to sin!
“Knowing this, that our old man was
crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that
we should no longer be slaves of sin.” Romans 6:6
The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ
Jesus (Romans 8:2), has made me free… Through
the New Covenant, we have been set free from sin and have become slaves of
righteousness! (Romans 6:17; 22). Paul
called the New Covenant the "ministration of the spirit and
righteousness" (2 Corinthians 3:8-9).
(To be continued...)
