The New Covenant?
This may be a bit of a hot topic but it's one that needs to be discussed. I believe the misinformation surrounding this topic has led to the forsaking of Yahuah's word and the abolishment of His commands. We're going to take a look at the New Covenant. Are we in it? Are we partially in it? What are the qualifications for living in the New Covenant?
Let's work backwards starting with qualifications; we'll start with the most famous passage for the new covenant because I know every readers heart is jumping for Jeremiah 31!
31:31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. 33 “For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.”
Okay, so the red is what we'll mark as qualifications for the New Covenant. So far we have not like the old, law on our hearts, no need to teach. Are will still called to repent and come out of the world as the Israelites came out of Egypt? Can we quote every commandment and follow every statute without fail? Do we still need to spread the gospel of the Kingdom of God? Hmmm….
Ezekiel 36:24 For I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the lands; and I will bring you into your own land. 25 Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26 Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put My Spirit within you and bring it about that you walk in My statutes, and are careful and follow My ordinances.
Ezekiel reads very similarly to Jeremiah 31 with the imprinted law on our beings. The repeats of a new heart, new Spirit, and walking in the Law as His people is a covenant of peace. This qualification of peace we'll circle back to.
We also see in this passage the qualification of being gathered and brought into the land. What land? The Land of Promise, Zion. This has not happened yet. Abraham was brought into the land yet "sojourned in the land of Promise as a stranger….he was looking for a city having foundations, whose builder and maker is Elohim." Hebrews 11:8-10 This tells us plainly that the Promised Land of Inheritance is not on the earth at this time. We know the geographical location of where is will set between the Nile and Euphrates, but it has not yet come to pass.
Ezekiel 37:21 And say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says: “Behold, I am going to take the sons of Israel from among the nations where they have gone, and I will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; 22 and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king will be king for all of them; and they will no longer be two nations, and no longer be divided into two kingdoms. 23 They will no longer defile themselves with their idols, or with their detestable things, or with any of their offenses; but I will rescue them from all their dwelling places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them. And they will be My people, and I will be their God.
Again, we have another passage in Ezekiel speaking of gathering into the land. Where Judah and Ephraim were split, also known as Jews and Gentiles, they will be brought together as one. This is one we see in part which we'll define more shortly, but the physical gathering of all of spiritual Israel to the land hasn't come to pass. Another qualifier which was mentioned in the previous passage, is that there will be such a cleansing that a person will no longer be able to defile themselves with idols or sin of any kind. While yes, we have forgiveness of sin and conviction to avoid sin, we still do in this current human form, sin. We all have an unrecognized idol and have detestable thoughts. By the Spirit, through our Messiah we have power over sinful nature, but it still does exist.
Isaiah 35:4 Say to those with anxious heart, “Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The retribution of God will come, But He will save you.” 5 Then the eyes of those who are blind will be opened, And the ears of those who are deaf will be unstopped. 6 Then those who limp will leap like a deer, And the tongue of those who cannot speak will shout for joy. For waters will burst forth in the wilderness, And streams in the desert. 7 The scorched land will become a pool And the thirsty ground springs of water; In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, Grass becomes reeds and rushes. 8 A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for the one who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it. 9 No lion will be there, Nor will any vicious animal go up on it; They will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk there, 10 And the ransomed of the Lord will return And come to Zion with joyful shouting, And everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing will flee away.
This passage has become one of my favorites! We get a beautiful picture of the complete healing that comes about AFTER Yahuah brings vengeance upon the earth. In a previous passage, Isaiah states, "For it is the day of vengeance of Yahuah, A year of recompense for the cause of Zion."
A major qualification for abiding in the New Covenant is that the day of vengeance must come first. He is going to avenge all of the wrong, wiping out wickedness and lawlessness. He will redeem the dead in the faith, and bring about the ransom for their lives. The first resurrection. He is going to set everything right for His Holy Mountain to come down. THEN, the ransomed will come to Zion and partake in the covenant of everlasting joy and peace and healing.
Genesis 17:7 I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. 8 And I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land where you live as a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”
This is Yahuah's covenant with Abraham. We already mentioned the Hebrews 11 verse where Abraham recognized that he was a stranger in the land where he lived because the City of Promise had not yet come. Were all future generations of Abraham given an everlasting covenant? No, because we know Ishmael was excluded then further down the line Esau was excluded and so on. The descendants of Abraham that kept the covenant through faith and obedience hoped for the everlasting covenant of peace and everlasting possession of the land.
•The old covenant is a covenant of hope, a guide to the eternal. The new covenant is a covenant of completion where all that was hoped for is fulfilled, forever!
Deuteronomy 30 “So it will be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have placed before you, and you call them to mind in all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you, 2 and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul in accordance with everything that I am commanding you today, you and your sons, 3 then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. 4 If any of your scattered countrymen are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back. 5 The Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will be good to you and make you more numerous than your fathers. 6 “Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, so that you may live. 7 And the Lord your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecuted you. 8 And you will again obey the Lord, and follow all His commandments which I am commanding you today. 9 Then the Lord your God will prosper you abundantly in every work of your hand, in the children of your womb, the offspring of your cattle, and in the produce of your ground, for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good, just as He rejoiced over your fathers; 10 if you obey the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.
This is a long one but a perfect explanation of all prophecy throughout Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and so on. There are both partial fulfillments for a particular time of repenting, and future promises. We know the nation of Israel was scattered and Judah went into exile. Some turned back to Yahuah and were brought back to land, but only for a short period of time in the grand timeline. This promise of everlasting blessing has not yet come to pass. Waves of God's people are turning back to Him and obeying His commandments, this again is partial fulfillment of His promise. But our enemies have not yet been squashed and abiding in Zion with perfect peace is still what we hope for. We also find that we are promised to keep the commandments without fail, as Ezekiel 36 and Jer. 31 state, they will literally be a part of our being! - Our new resurrected bodies.
So, where does this lead for the "new testament" descriptions of the new covenant?
Luke 22:15 And He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16 for I say to you, I shall not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; 18 for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body, which is being given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 20 And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup, which is poured out for you, is the new covenant in My blood.
This is going to be a difficult point to make. God does not accept physical human sacrifice. As we know, Jesus uses parables, or metaphors. He was not a literal lamb; He is not actually bread; we do not literally drink His blood- in fact this is pagan and illegal in God's Torah. So what DO we have?
•He is likened unto a lamb- spotless and obedient unto death.
•He is likened unto bread- satiating and a sweet aroma as a grain offering unto the Father.
•He allowed His blood to be spilled like a drink offering poured out when a covenant is affirmed.
Hebrews 5:7 In the days of His humanity, He offered up both prayers and pleas with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His devout behavior. 8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. 9 And having been perfected, He became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey Him, 10 being designated by God as High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
His sacrifice was that of obedience unto death. Isaiah 53 lays out everything He would go through and endure, the wrath of the Father was placed upon Him in order to keep it from us. This is HOW God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. The new, everlasting covenant had already been promised, and the way to enter into that covenant was prophesied from the beginning. The hope for the Messiah and obedience to the covenant was the salvation of the "Old Testament." Hope in the Messiah and obedience to the covenant is still the path of salvation today. The difference is that we live in the age where He is High Priest in His resurrected body. He is the First Fruits of the resurrection, ministering in the temple made without hands, able to send the Holy Spirit to believers. We are closer than ever before to the inheritance!
•We still hope for our new bodies at the first resurrection where the Law will become part of our being.
•We still hope for the Kingdom, the land Zion.
•We still hope for everlasting peace- no more pain, trials, or suffering.
We have this hope knowing that He who promised will see it to completion. This is the reason for our faith!
The Messiah rising to His appointed position as High Priest ushers in the New Covenant, He has inherited our inheritance that will come at a day no man knows. Until then, we are commissioned to proclaim the Kingdom is coming and given the Holy Spirit as a deposit to heal, set free, raise up, and boldly proclaim truth just as He gave us example. The Spirit now is a portion (deposit: 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1:13-14) of what will be total reality in Zion, when we inherit the New Covenant in completeness as resurrected, spiritual beings.
For now, we are still learning the commands, resisting sin, teaching our neighbor, and practicing the behavior that will be instinctual in the land. The New Covenant is the same behavior instructed in the Old Covenant, with the addition of fulfilled promises: doing the covenant behavior without fail, while gathered in the land with El' Almighty and King Messiah in our midst as a resurrected immortal.
Hebrews 8:13 When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is about to disappear.
We are spiritually in the New Covenant by faith in Messiah who has obtained it. But physically, we are still in the Old Covenant, sojourners in the land, hoping towards our new reality of eternal life with Him.