Eric Casagrande     /         Genelyn Novabos

  

 

The New Covenant

 

When the fullness of time had arrived, God Himself came to dwell on the Earth with man, through the person of Jesus Christ.  As was foretold by the prophets many centuries earlier, He was born to a young virgin, in the small town of Bethlehem, Israel. It was with this same nation, almost 1,500 years previously, that God had entered into what we now refer to as the Old Covenant.

With this in mind, it is important to remember that all the gospel accounts  (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), tell the story of events which took place while the Old Covenant was still in effect. The New Covenant did not begin until after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus came to create a new and better covenant. But before that could be accomplished however, something had to be done to address the issue of the Old Covenant. You can’t have a New Covenant if the Old Covenant is still in effect.  Simply ignoring it, or tossing it out the window because it’s not working, isn’t a viable option. The Word of God must be fulfilled in its entirety. But how?

The answer to this issue becomes apparent in Matthew 5: 17-18, where Jesus tells the people:

   

“Do not think that I have come to destroy

the law or the prophets; I did not come

to destroy, but to fulfil.

  

For truly I say to you, Until heaven and

earth pass, not one jot or tittle shall pass

from the law until all be fulfilled.“ 

  

Now I should point out that many Christians, usually those who are caught up in legalism, have erroneously interpreted the latter verse to mean that the Old Covenant, based on the law with all of its impossible demands, will continue to be in force until everything prophesied within God’s word has been fulfilled (i.e. until the final battle following the Millennial Kingdom).

But this interpretation is clearly false, being pulled far out of context from what Christ is actually teaching. What do those verses (17 and 18), have in common with each other? Very simple.  They both speak of the law and its fulfillment.

Therein lays the secret to its interpretation.  Christ was not saying that all of the commands and laws of God will remain until “doomsday”.  What is being said here, is that the law won’t pass away until it finally becomes fulfilled.

  

“For truly I say to you, Until heaven and

earth pass, not one jot or tittle shall pass

from the law until all [the law] be fulfilled.“

  

Would you like to guess who that “someone” was who fulfilled all the law? 

Jesus Christ!

Thus, it was Christ’s priority to completely fulfil every single letter of every single one of God’s more than 600 laws and commandments, throughout the entire course of his life, thereby satisfying, once and for all time, the requirements of the Old Covenant.  Once this had been accomplished, it could be legally folded up and replaced by a New (and better) Covenant!

Now the Old Covenant consisted of laws that were holy. They were, after all, God’s laws. But the problem was that while the law was holy, it had no capability of making even one single follower holy! So it is fair to say that, by this standard of measurement, it failed miserably. Nobody was able to live up to any of its demands.

The Old Covenant was completely perfomance-based. Man needed to do something first, and then God would respond second.  The manner and degree in which God responded, was entirely based upon whether or not the people of Israel kept their end of the agreement.

But it never worked out, because while God was fully capable of keeping His end of the deal, nevertheless man was weak, and unable to live up to his responsibilities under the covenant. Therefore, instead of receiving any of the promised  blessings through the law, Israel was constantly being cursed.

So in the end, a new and better covenant was needed. But there was, however, one very obvious sticking point. As previously noted, all of the laws and commandments of God (more than six hundred in total), being the very foundation upon which the Old Covenant was created, had to first be completely satisfied, before it was set aside.  Furthermore, the legal responsibility to meet the requirement of those laws, rested squarely on man’s shoulders.

Of course this was the catch, because nobody in all of human history had been able to live up to even a tiny fraction of the impossible demands of God’s laws.

How in the world could this problem be overcome?

Well God had a plan, and He didn’t wait until the last moment to come up with it. He created His plan before the foundation of the world. It was given the green light and ready-to-go before God did anything else!

The Old Covenant, as stated, was between God and Israel. It was not a covenant between God and any of the other nations of the Earth. As I’ve also mentioned, the covenant was faulty. Nobody was able to live up to its high demands. So when creating a new covenant, it has to be one that is workable for both parties.

A covenant is only good when both parties to it are able to live up to all of their expectations. This is precisely where the Old Covenant had failed. God was able to perform what was required of Him, but Israel could not respond in kind.

God knew ahead of time that His first covenant with man would fail. So it really didn’t come as a surprise to Him when things fell apart. But if God knew it was going to fail, then it’s obvious that it wasn’t designed to save man and make him holy, in the first place. 

The very purpose behind God creating the Old Covenant laws and commandments, was to very clearly show mankind, in unmistakable terms, God’s incredibly high standard of holiness! Once mankind then saw just how great is God’s holiness, and saw the impossibilities of obtaining right standing through the keeping of the law, he would realize his need for a Savior to rescue him!

So how would the Old Covenant laws and commandments be fulfilled, and just as importantly, how would this New Covenant be any different than the first, with all of its impossible demands?  Because you see, even with this New Covenant in place with its grand designs of redeeming mankind from sin and spiritual death, you haven’t addressed the major issue. You’d still have a very strong God, partnered up with a very weak and hopeless man.

In order for any agreement to work there needs to be two strong parties.

Well, when God laid out the plans to redeem mankind through the New Covenant, He was fully aware that while He would be able to live up to His responsibilities, nevertheless, mankind did not have a representative on its side, who could do the same. So therefore God Himself entered into the Earth, through a young virgin girl, and became a man, through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see where this is going?

You need to have a strong God, and a strong man, in order to make the New Covenant work. But while God was fully strong, man was fully weak. So to overcome this problem, and have it strong on both sides, God took on the form of a man, through Jesus Christ, and came into the world to fulfil all the requirements on man’s side of the agreement.

God Himself fulfilled both sides of the New Covenant!

God the Father fulfilled all of the necessary requirements from His side, while God the Son, in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God yet fully man, came into the Earth and fulfilled every one of the requirements of the law under the Old Covenant on man’s side, so that it could be folded up and put away. Then he went to the cross, and poured out his blood, in order both to ratify and guarantee the terms of the New Covenant with God the Father, on behalf of all mankind!

Oh hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus!

So now the plan is fool-proof! It absolutely cannot fail!  The New Covenant is eternally secure, because God Himself is the guarantor of both sides of it! This is why it is often referred to in the Bible as a “better covenant”. And we are the beneficiaries of it through our representative, Jesus Christ!

Hallelujah!