Week 41: We are People of the "New Covenant"

This week's Bible reading unfolds like this:

* Sunday (Epistles): Hebrews 8-10
* Monday (Law): Numbers 33-36
* Tuesday (History): 2 Chronicles 16-20
* Wednesday (Psalms): Psalms 119
* Thursday (Poetry): Proverbs 29-30
* Friday (Prophecy): Micah
* Saturday (Gospels): Acts 5-6

While we cover a rich variety of reading this week, allow me to focus on one of the most important theological concepts that followers of Jesus Christ should understand...the new covenant.

Scripture
"If the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second covenant to replace it. But when God found fault with the people, he said:

"'The day is coming, says the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel and Judah.

'This covenant will not be like the one
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
and led them out of the land of Egypt.
They did not remain faithful to my covenant,
so I turned my back on them, says the Lord.

'But this is the new covenant I will make
with the people of Israel on that day, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their minds,
and I will write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people'" (Hebrews 8:7-10).

Observation
The inspired author of Hebrews makes the revolutionary claim that we are people of the "new covenant." The so-called "old covenant," is what constitutes the first 39 books of the Bible, called the Old Testament. The new covenant that the writer of Hebrews refers to here is embodied in the last 27 books, called the New Testament (starting with Matthew and ending with Revelation).

The writer of Hebrews begins this section by observing that if there had been nothing wrong with the first covenant, there would have been no need for God to institute another. But there was something wrong with it - namely, "the people." It's not that the first covenant was fatally flawed in its own right. The problem was (and has always been) humanity's failure to obey God's commands.

The first covenant made no legal provision for grace and forgiveness. Its primary purpose was to lay out God's perfect and pleasing will. The Ten Commandments (part of the first covenant) lay out the dos and don'ts for us clearly enough. But the sacrificial system that the first covenant instituted only provided forgiveness for the sins we committed innocently (i.e. accidentally). The first covenant made no provision for the forgiveness of willful sin. There was no sacrifice or ritual to forgive the sins people committed on purpose. For willful offenses the first covenant called for either excommunication or death.

It's not that God never forgave people for willful sin during the first covenant. He did. For example, God forgave David when he sinned willfully against Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah. But every time he did, it pointed to the need for a new covenant in which the conditions of God's unconditional love and forgiveness were spelled out specifically.

According to this passage, we are related to God by means of the new covenant, which is based on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, for example, he said that his body was broken (killed) for us and his blood, "the blood of the new covenant," was shed for the forgiveness of our sins. And when Jesus broke the bars of death by rising from the dead, he did so not just for himself. He did it for all who by faith have entered into the new covenant of God's grace.

Application
This realization opens our minds to a number of helpful insights. For starters, it helps us understand that some of the severe judgments pronounced against certain sins that we may commit today will not be visited on us as members of the new covenant. It helps us understand why we no longer have to sacrifice bulls and goats. For, as the writer of Hebrews says elsewhere, Jesus Christ is God's once-for-all-time sacrifice for the sins of humanity. It also helps us understand the role of the Holy Spirit, who directly infuses our hearts with a sense of divine knowing. As Jeremiah, whom the writer of Hebrews quotes in this passage, says:
"I will put my laws in their minds,
and I will write them on their hearts."

But perhaps the best takeaway we can glean from this passage is that through the new covenant we have the closest, most intimate relationship any human beings can have with their Maker. The writer invokes the most intimate covenantal language: "I will be their God...and they will be my people."

God is ours and we are his.

This is simple, mysterious, and wonderful.

The covenant relationship we have with God is one of tenderness, closeness, peace, and joy.

So the point of application is this: becoming the people we already are.

New covenant people can't get enough of God. They want to talk with him, walk with him, learn from him, and please him. Not because they've got to, but because they get to. Not out of fear of impending doom, but out of overflowing gratitude for the gift of everlasting life...a life that began the moment we became new-covenant people.

Prayer
O Lord, forgive us for our distractedness. Forgive us for carrying fear and guilt, the burdens you already lifted from us when we became yours as new-covenant people. You have given us unspeakable hope and joy. Help us understand that if we are citizens of the new covenant, we are yours and you are ours. For Jesus' sake, amen.

Have a great week!

Faithfully,
Chuck