God’s Covenant To Man

“This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.” Luke 22:20

Dear Ones:

When God declares that He is making a covenant with man, and then declares what that covenant is, the first thing we must grasp is that the covenant is singularly, “God-made.” You never discover in Scripture where man has any input with respect to the covenant that God makes.  It is wholly of His creation, declaration, and realization.  Secondly, we need to see, that since man has NOTHING to do with a covenant’s conception and implementation, God does require of man a certain response to it.  That is faith.  It is a certain kind of faith which is expressed by a whole-hearted surrender and commitment to believe and obey God.  It is a faith which God gives when the cry of the heart appeals to His mercy, and saving grace.

Why is the matter of covenants so very important?  Scripture tells us that God has laid in Zion a cornerstone.  Paul tells us that this Cornerstone is Christ.  He goes on to declare that Christ is also the foundation.  The covenant of God is the written and expressed declaration of His commitment to sinful man, to save Him, in all facets of his existence, for time and eternity.  It is God’s declared, and proclaimed truth, of that cornerstone and singular foundation upon which man’s existence is to be built.  The Gospel is that specific proclamation of the truths associated with this covenant, and how man can, by the grace of God, respond to it.  Christ would seal the promises of this eternal covenant with His precious blood.

What about the NEW COVENANT, or New Testament, as opposed to the Old Testament covenants?  Is it a contradiction to the Old Testament covenants?  No, but it is an amplification which is based on “better promises.”  The magnitude of the revelation of God in His promises, and the “exceeding abundance” of the blessing in Christ in and available to the believer, is perhaps the most distinguishing element of this new covenant.  The revelation of God incarnate, in the person of Jesus Christ, being nailed to a wooden cross by the Romans, surrounded by His foes, and wept over by those who loved Him, was the declaration to all men everywhere that God’s appointed time in history had come to establish and seal His new, overwhelmingly blessed covenant towards men.  When Jesus said the words:  “It is finished,” the covenant was set, for time and eternity.  What was that covenant?  In essence it was that God would indeed, give to the people:  “…one heart, and one way, that they may fear (reverence) Me forever, for the good of them, and of their children after them.” (Jeremiah 32:39)  He would be even more specific in declaring: “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.” (31:33)  It was on the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out, according to the promise of God, that we see revealed the accomplishment of the covenant.  The body of Christ, the church, was born, and Christ by His Spirit, would not only be WITH the believer, but would come to dwell IN the believer.  It would be by the indwelling Christ in the heart, that God would write His law on the hearts of the believers.  Believers in Christ would be henceforth distinguished in the world by His manifest Life and His eternal and sovereign Love in their hearts by the Spirit.

Dear Father, give us grace to grasp the enormity and power of Your covenant to all men.  Enable us to see that,  as you established you covenant with the day and night,  so by the finished work of Christ, you would establish it with men. We thank and praise You in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Love, Dad