Firm Foundations – Session 7 : The New Covenant

Notes:

The New Covenant

Read Gal.3:5-9. God is a God of covenant. In order to relate to Him correctly we must understand covenants.

  • The Promise Covenant which God made with Abraham is the central, supreme covenant in the Bible.
  • It concerns God’s plan for worldwide redemption and is the same as the New Covenant, centering on Jesus, (Gal. 3:8).
  • In both these covenants righteousness is imputed to those who believe in Christ.

So why was the Mosaic Covenant necessary and what is its relationship to the Promise Covenant? In Galatians 3 Paul makes these 4 points:

1) God’s Covenant of Promise with Abraham is not annulled, modified or replaced by the Law, (Gal.3:15-17)

  • Gal. 3:15. Once ratified, an unconditional covenant is unable to be modified or nullified by man’s behavior.
  • God alone stood behind the Promise Covenant with Abraham, (see Heb.6:13-18). It is an unconditional covenant.
  • Gal. 3:16. God never made a covenant directly with us, or we with Him. The promises were made to Abraham and Christ. We are included because we are in Christ.
  • Gal. 3:17. The Law came 430 years after the Promise Covenant. Whatever its purpose was, it in no way annulled God’s covenant with Abraham.

2) The Law is never presented as an alternative to faith as a means of salvation, (Gal.3:18)

  • Gal. 3:18. God did not save Abraham by the law but through faith in God’s promise concerning the coming Seed.
  • If righteousness could have come through the Law, then God would never have sent His Son to die for us. ‘…if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law’ (Gal.3:21).

3) The purpose of the Law was to support the Covenant of Promise, (Gal.3:19-25)

  • Gal. 3:19a. If the law did not impart righteousness and does not sanctify us, why was it given?
  • It was given ‘because of transgressions,’ e. Israel’s. They were inclined towards idolatry. The law kept them marked out as a people separated unto God.
  • When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt He made a covenant with them which governed them nationally, civilly, ceremonially and morally. This was the only way they could be preserved as a distinct people who were called to keep alive the promise of the Coming Seed. They were ‘kept under guard by the law’ (Gal.3:23).
  • Gal.3:21-22. The law is not the enemy of the Promise. It served and supported the Promise.
  • It was an interim, temporary measure; not a perpetual covenant, as some say, (Gal.3:19&25).

4) The Law tended towards being cursed; the Promise is characterized by blessing, (Gal.3:10-14)

Contrast Gal. 3:9&10. Under the New Covenant:

We are free from the curse because Christ became a curse, i.e. an ‘accursed one’ for us.

  • This curse was openly demonstrated by the way that Christ died. Under the law, a person who was hanged upon a tree was cursed, ‘…his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which theLord your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God’ (Deut.21:23).
  • Jesus suffered the curse of the law until He cried, ‘It is finished,’ i.e. until both the law and its curse was fulfilled.
  • The only way a believer can now be exposed to a curse is by attempting to live by the law.
  • Gal. 3:13-14. We are not cursed but blessed, (see also Gal. 3:8&9).
  • We should be studying the blessings, not the curses! E.g. see Eph.1:3-14;  1 Cor.2:9-12.

The Old and New Covenants are illustrated in the allegory of Sarah and Hagar, Gal.4:21-31

  • Judaizers boasted that they were Abraham’s sons, i.e. physical descendents. But he had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, to different mothers. The status of each son was determined by the status of their mother. He asked, ‘Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman’ (Gal.4:21-22).
  • These represented the two covenants of Promise (Sarah) and Law (Hagar). ‘…which things are symbolic. For these are thetwo covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar— for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children— but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all’ (Gal. 4:24-26).
  • Paul asserts, ‘Now we, brethren, as Isaacwas, are children of promise’ (Gal. 4:28).
  • But he asks the legalists: ‘Who is your mother?’
  • Law and grace cannot co-exist. One has to go. When Hagar and Ishmael were cast out, peace came to Abraham’s home. Only when we break with legalism will we know peace. ‘…what does the Scripture say?‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman”’ (Gal.4:30).
  • Don’t try to mix covenants. Don’t cut a piece out of the garment of the new covenant to patch up the garment of the old covenant! Throw away the old garment and wear the new one!
  • We are to fight against any attempt of re-enslavement to the Law. ‘Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free,and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage’ (Gal.5:1).