What is the essential difference between the old (Mosaic) covenant and the new covenant (established by Jesus Christ)? Is that the former is written on tablet, the latter is intrinsically established in our hearts? The view of where they are written is drawn from Jeremiah 31:31-32. “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers … after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write in it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” And again, “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36: 27).
A covenant is a bipolar (dual, two-way) relationship between the covenanter and the covenanted. In this relationship God has promised to be our God! He has promised to give His people rest and protections. On our part as God’s people, we should honour Him as our God, worship Him, keep away all idols, and be holy as He is holy. God gives the promise that He would not leave us to do alone, but He give us His Holy Spirit.
Human relationship with God has always been that of a people that err. Since Adam and Eve, through Moses to the prophets of Old Testament man has failed to honour his own part of the covenant with God in worship, trust, faith, loyalty, holiness, etc. Many a times we have disappointed God in this covenant relationship. However, being a loving, merciful and covenant-keeping and faithful God, He promised and set out to restore and bring us into a new and better covenant.
God’s promise of transiting us to a new covenant was fulfilled in the sacrifice of His only Son, and the subsequent infusion or release of the Holy Spirit to us. Thus, bringing us to a life of the Spirit. This life is spelt in Ezekiel 37:25-26 and it entails to: sprinkle clean water on us (v.25), make us clean from filthiness and idols, give us a new heart (v. 26), put a new spirit in us, remove the stony heart from us, give us a heart of flesh, put His Spirit in us (v. 27), make us walk in His statutes, make us keep His judgement and do them, make us His people (v28) and He will be our God.
God’s promises cannot be fulfilled outside His power in us through Christ Jesus. The presence of God cannot be evident in us unless there is a renewal of us by God Himself. God’s work in us moves from the external (outside) to the internal with the gift of a new heart and a new spirit. The outer purification is useless without the inner desire to live rightly before God. To live a godly life is to be imbued with the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the “Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22). And in establishing the internality (their being written in our hearts) of the foregoing Apostle Paul says, “Against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24).
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Consequently, in John 3:5, “Jesus answered: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” The connection between ‘water’ (for external cleansing) and ‘Spirit’ (for internal renewal and cleansing) as emphasised in the proclamation that: “I will put my Spirit within you,” shows our dependence upon the power of God. It also predicts an effective inward work of God in us if we are to have the ability to fulfil the new covenant.
The new covenant is not differentiated simply on the basis of where or how it is written. Of course, one is on tablet and the other is in our hearts. It is the contents and meaning of agreements the make them to be the same or different, and not where or how they are written. The New Covenant is new because the covenanters are from all nations, not just the Jews. They are those who will come to Jesus Christ. This is illustrated in the Greeks who were “among those who went up to worship at the feast…. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (John 12:20). It is for such – Gentiles – and the Jews as well, that Jesus Christ came into the world, to redeem and to save! The new covenant is thus about the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).
This statement summarises the ministry of Jesus Christ in the life of every true believer (Christian). It underscores why we must anchor our salvation in Him. It puts emphasis of the necessary being (‘except a corn’) of Christ. The cause and root (‘fall into the ground’) of our salvation is His death. He will die here among us in the world (‘put into the ground’). Christ’s sacrifice is altruistically offered for us so that we shall not be alone or alienated (not alone) from God with whom we have a covenant. To ‘bring forth’ is to resurrect with the aim of bringing ‘much fruit’ or ‘redemption of the world.’
All this is encapsulated by David Gooding in his book, An Unshakable Kingdom, “Just as Israel’s high priest eventually left the Most Holy Place and appeared a second time before the waiting people in and around the court of the tabernacle, so Christ will one day appear a second time at what we call his second coming (Hebrew 9:28). When Israel’s high priest appeared before the people the second time, he had to offer another sin offering. Christ will not have to do that at his second coming. He will come to save those who wait for Him (see 1 Thess 1:10). That He will complete their salvation by saving their very bodies. The dead will be raised incorruptible; the living will be changed and made immortal.”
Be blessed and shalom!!
Rev’d Dr Karo Ogbinaka lectures at the Department of Philosophy, University of Lagos. He is a member of the Editorial Board of The Trumpet
