THE NEW COVENANT

When God met with Moses on Mount Sinai, He made a covenant with the people of Israel.  The covenant was simply this: if the Israelites would carefully follow and obey the commandments and statutes that God delivered to Moses, then they would be blessed and inherit everlasting life.  Seemed like a fair trade, and a very good deal for the Israelites.  What they found was that this was not as easy as it sounded.  The harder they tried to keep the commandments, the more they found it difficult to do so.  Ultimately, God became grieved with His people and said, “They do always err in their heart; and they have not known My ways.” (Hebrews 3:10).  As a result, He spoke through His Prophet Jeremiah and said, “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which My covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people.  And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34). 

 

This new covenant is the very basis of our salvation today.  God knew that we were incapable of living out His law in our own strength.  He knew that the law was indeed spiritual, but we were carnal, full of the sin nature; and though our desire might be to please God, our abilities would fall far short of His expectations.  He knew that a change needed to take place that would transform us inwardly; therefore He sent His Son to not only atone for the sins which we had committed, but also to become the agent of change and work the transformation that we desperately needed on the inside.  He said He would, “put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.”  Unbelievably, He has given us the power to overcome our carnal nature and make us want to do His will rather than just have to do His will. 

 

The Prophet Ezekiel spoke these words to Israel, “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.  A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.   And I will put My spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them.  And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God.  I will also save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you.” (Ezekiel 36:25-29).  All of this was made possible by the infilling of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer through the new birth.  “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” (Romans 8:3).

 

Beloved, we have been set free from the burden of the law, not to do as we please and live as we want, but to be filled with God’s Spirit and fulfill the law of God from a heart of love and gratitude to the Savior of our souls.  We are told that, “the just shall live by faith.”  Therefore, the only way that we can please God in this life is by believing the promises that He has made to us concerning His Son and by the New Covenant that He has ushered in for us by the sacrifice of Himself.  Embrace this New Covenant and allow the Savior to change you from the inside out and fill you with His Holy Spirit.  Then you will say with Job, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee.” (Job 42:5).

 

“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.  The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” (St. John 3:5-8).

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