THE BLESSING OF THE NEW COVENANT

"This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds. Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more." Hebrews 10:16-17]

There is a basic difference between the covenant God had with Israel, [the Old Covenant] which was founded upon the Law of Moses as the standard of behavior, and the New Covenant Jesus has established and ratified with His blood, which is our standard of behavior. The Old has been fulfilled in the New as it was Christocentric in its ultimate purpose from the beginning. As a result, all that is about Christ, His obedience, His death, His resurrection, His life, is accredited to our account and is our spiritual portfolio.

This is what it means when it says, "In Christ we HAVE ALREADY been blessed with ALL spiritual blessings....". Being Christocentric also shows the New Covenant is Grace centered rather than Law centered. [read rules here] Don't hear me say grace wasn't existent in the Old, but it WAS revealed in picture form [Sacrifices, feast days etc.] with all the pictures fulfilled in Christ Himself.

Some people try to make the ten commandments applicable to the New Covenant by dividing the Law of Moses into three parts, Thus they wind up with the ceremonial, the civil, and the moral law, [made up of the ten commandments] and they say the moral law extends to the New Covenant since it is descriptive of the character of God. That makes for easy remembering, but the problem is the Jews would never recognize such a division. The law was "one Body" of law and could not be broken into parts. Whatever happened to the Law of Moses happened to all of it. It was, as I said, entirely fulfilled in Christ.

That is not to say the New Covenant is antinomian. [Without law.] In the New Covenant we are "in-lawed" to Christ as I Corthians 9 says. We are to "hear ye Him" as admonished by the Father at the baptism of Jesus. And, by the way, nine of the ten commandments are repeated in the New Covenant scriptures, with only the "Sabbath" commandment not being repeated. This is because the "sabbath' was a unique sign given to Israel in their covenant with God. As New Covenant people our "Sabbath" is an "Eternal Sabbath," according to Hebrews, and we New Covenant people rest every day of our lives in the Grace of God. [Hebrews 4:9-10]

Welcome to the New Covenant! And, since our relationship with God is based on it, maybe our lifestyles should reflect it as well. What would this look like? Someone simply put it this way. "Under the Old Covenant of law, OBEDIENCE was the ROOT of all God’s blessings. But under the New Covenant of GRACE God blesses us first IN CHRIST, and OBEDIENCE is the FRUIT of having been blessed."

You can see our obedience is a "THANK YOU FOR" rather than a "BLESS ME BECAUSE kind of thing." The blessings of the New Covenant are quite revealing of GRACE, are they not!

Paul B.