It is the covenant that fulfills the longing of God, granting men and women the gift of His life so that in this present time they live the life of the age to come. This gift makes them His children, giving them the unspeakable privilege of enjoying intimate friendship with Him.
Friend of God
If the heart of the covenant is to be united as one to Him by the Spirit, the goal of the covenant is to know Him.
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The New Testament knows nothing of an isolated believer living in a private relationship to God. Each individual believer is joined to Christ and therefore to His body, the people of God.
People of the Spirit
The covenant is not with us as individuals but with the “people” who are in Christ, with whom the covenant is made. We have an intensely personal relationship with God in Christ, but we do not have an individual relationship; it is a corporate one.
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But how does this actually work out in life? How do we live from Christ our lives day by day? We have seen that the believer stepping out of the baptismal waters is in a new world in Christ, with new potential that he or she has never known before. Limitations known in the old life have gone in the resurrection of Jesus; signposts that directed us in life have been removed and new ones erected. We can never think about life in the same way again.
Walk in the Spirit
We look at our world that has been our comfortable home since we can remember, all we took for granted as part of life— the selfishness, greed, anger, and envy—and see now that it is finished and passing away to give way to the real in Christ. We are coming alive to the new creation built on the infinite, unconditional love of God, in which all the expressions of love—the kindness and compassion, the forgiveness of our enemies—are the normal behavior. In baptism, we have been joined to this world in Christ; in the covenant meal, we are embraced and participate in Him who is the life of this new world.
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The Christian life may be summed as the consciousness that He lives within us, and we draw upon His infinite life in every situation we find ourselves in. This means that as we grow in Christ and become mature, we will have an increasing sense of our own weakness that we might no longer trust in ourselves and so proportionately live from His strength.
Christian Life
Many believers live in the frustration of trying to arrive at where they already are! Imagine the confusion of the person who is sitting down while continually being told to sit down! Yet in meeting after meeting believers are urged to die with Christ, and they go forward to pray and be prayed for instead of realizing that the Spirit placed them in Christ and, therefore, into His death and resurrection when they believed upon Jesus.
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In understanding the covenant, there are two phrases that are of supreme importance. The first is the expression “in Christ”; it is a phrase that indicates that we are vitally in and part of the historical events that took place, and it is a phrase that indicates that by the Holy Spirit, we have actually been joined and made one with Jesus Christ so that His history has become our history. We are vitally one with Him in all that He has accomplished and all that He is now in the heavens.
Breath of God
The second phrase that we find throughout the New Testament is “in the Spirit”; it indicates the dynamic experience of the power of the Spirit actually joining us to Christ and His work and making it real in our lives. What originated in eternity in the loving heart of God the Father was effected in history by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son and is received and experienced by the people of God through the work of the Holy Spirit.
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We have seen that Jesus lived and died as our representative; therefore, the men and women who believe are participators and sharers in all that He suffered, endured, and earned. On the cross, He stood as us not in some monstrous pretend game but in awful, agonizing reality. We were truly there in Him and He as us received pardon, justification, and resurrection. These blessings of covenant were given to Him first as our representative and then to us as we are united with Him and participate with Him through the Spirit.
Sins Remembered No More
When God raised Him from the dead, He declared that the penalty for our sins, which Jesus had freely taken, had been paid in full; our sentence placed on Him was fulfilled. Jesus risen from the dead is Jesus no longer carrying our sins that took Him to death. He as our representative was forgiven of all our transgressions; our guilt no longer weighs Him down, and He has been freed from all necessity of further punishment for them. If Jesus is alive from the dead, we are forgiven of all our sin!
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We gather with our people—this company of lost prodigals now found, forgiven, made new, and crazy with joy at the thought of His love—to worship and give Him thanks. In our gathering and encouraging one another, the Spirit is present, establishing us in the reality and causing the unreality to increasingly be seen for what it is.
Covenant Meal
At the center of this worship is the meal of the covenant, where we meet with the eternal God, partake of His death-conquering life, are embraced by His love, and participate in the covenant promises. It is known by many names: the Holy Communion, the Eucharist (or the great thanksgiving), the Lord’s Supper, or the Mass.
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The covenant, above everything else, means union, the coming together of two parties to make a functional one. In the making of the old human covenants, the parties took each other’s name to indicate that they were united as one. But in the new covenant we do not merely take His name, but His Spirit actually joins us to Him and we are made truly one. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17). The miracle of the new birth, by which we pass from the death of sin into the eternal life of the new covenant, is to be understood as our being actually joined to Christ.
Entering the Covenant
Union with Christ is not to be thought of as an advanced mystical experience, a higher life reserved for the elite, but the common experience of the whole body of believers. To become a Christian is to enter into Christ and partake of His life and be His vehicle of living on earth.
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We have taken note that covenants in Bible times were sealed with an oath taken by both of the parties to the covenant. Their taking oaths and calling on God to be their witness was the guarantee of the covenant. In the new covenant that God makes with us, He swears by Himself; He is the guarantee both of the human and divine side that the covenant shall be made and kept.
The Oath of God
This is the absolute certainty that we have of the covenant: It is made and guaranteed by God. If the covenant had been made with us, then it would have depended upon our oath for its fulfillment and would have been broken within hours of being sworn to. But sworn to by God, it is as sure and unchangeable as God is.
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I have a special treat for you this week. While I was researching Chp 9 of Malcolm Smith’s Power of the Blood Covenant, I came across a RARE message Malcolm gave nearly 25 years ago! This is not available anywhere!
Jesus and the Pharisees
This is a very long message though. Just over one hour! Malcolm loves to talk!! But I think you will be blessed by it, and it really makes a lot of sense to listen to this where we are in our study on the blood covenant.
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