The New Covenant
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 2 Corinthians 5:17 NASB
New creature– It’s easy to be confused about the covenants. For centuries the Church has taught that the coming of the Christ meant a replacement of Israel, and as a result, a new covenant with Christians. Passages like Luke 22:20, “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,’” are enlisted to confirm that Israel’s position with God has changed. Of course, modern Messianic believers are quick to counter this replacement theology, and rightly so, but that often leaves us even more confused. What is the “new” covenant anyway? Is it nothing more than a renewal of the relationship between God and Abraham’s physical and spiritual descendants? Has the coming of the Messiah altered anything? E. P Sanders offers some important clarification.
“From one point of view it is accurate to say that the prophets see a renewal of several covenants – the Noahic (Isaiah 54:8-10), the Abrahamic (Isaiah 49:5-9, Jeremiah 33:25-26), the Mosaic (Jeremiah 31:31-36) and the Davidic (Jeremiah 33:19-26). But it is easy to see from Jeremiah 33:19-26 that the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants are closely related. There is in fact an essential unity to all the covenants. Jeremiah shows the unity between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant (chapter 31:31-34), for the new covenant is not a new thing replacing the old, but rather the old renewed and applied in such a way that it will be perfectly kept.”[1]
Thus Yeshua is the true Adam, the true Israel, the seed of Abraham and the son of David. But this means that something quite radical has happened. The “new” covenant is more than a reiteration of the Torah for Gentiles.
“These various identities of Jesus establish one clear point. Jesus Christ is the head of the new race. All who are united to him are members of that race, but only because he isthat race. Thus, who is ‘in Christ’ is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), that is, he belongs to the new order of which Christ is head.”[2]
The “new” covenant is a reconstitution of God’s promise to Abraham. Torah is still the operating system. It is true that it has not yet come to completion. But a significant step in the direction of the fully-established Kingdom has occurred. A new race has come into existence; a race in the Messiah, the summation of God’s intention for human being. Paul’s expression, kaine ketosis (new creation), isn’t just a change in spirituality or moral integrity. ketosis is on par with Genesis 2:7. Humanity itself has been altered. Yeshua is Adam again, as Paul points out in Romans 5. We who belong, who have been re-created in his image, walk differently, talk differently, think differently, not because we have been forgiven but because we have been reborn. That’s new!
Topical Index: new covenant, new creature, kaine ktísis, 2 Corinthians 5:17
[1]E. P. Sanders, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology, pp. 84-85.
“REBORN”, as far as I know, is not a scriptural term.
“Born AGAIN”, most similar to that term, is sometimes an English scriptural translation of the concept in some versions of the scriptures, but I think that it is not the best one. It seems to me these are religious terms and phrases, and with strong religious, cultural connotations, and which are potentially misguiding.
But there are also, in John 3, the phrases, “born ANEW”, “born FROM ABOVE”, “born OF THE SPIRIT”, and “born OF WATER AND SPIRIT” spoken of by Messiah.
Now THAT’S NEW…..being born it THAT WAY. Being “re-” ANYTHING, is not NEW! We are not to be “REBORN”. We are to be born in this NEW WAY, according to THE WAY, Yeshua, the “new Adam”, says is how we are to be born.
How important is it that we rightly understand this distinction?
Well, Messiah Yeshua said that unless one is born in THIS WAY, he cannot “see” or “enter the kingdom of heaven”. Now THAT’S pretty important, I would say. Now I believe we may rightly “get it”, but then if we do, we also ought to rightly “teach it”. Apart from TRULY experiencing THIS, we cannot even be “IN CHRIST”, and if we are not born in this way, we are not “IN CHRIST”, and we cannot then be a “NEW CREATURE”. Then the “old” has NOT passed away, and, behold, one is not in “the new covenant” and NEW THINGS HAVE NOT COME!
BE BORN FROM ABOVE! BE BORN OF THE SPIRIT! BE BORN ANEW! BE BORN OF WATER AND SPIRIT! BE A NEW CREATURE!
I have been thinking about the parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount about the house built on sand vs. the one built on stone. Both were good beit – real houses – but the foundation determined whether they stood or fell in the storm. We are fronted with a measure of faith to build on. Everyone on the planet wants love and tries to get it. We all try to get connected; we all attempt to build. I think those of us born with silver spiritual spoons in our mouths: inheritors of long legacies of ancestors who were blessed and who made correct choices and were well connected themselves (I count myself in that group): can easily assume that we did something ‘right’ ourselves, or that doing right is somehow ‘easy’.
Freedom of choice is a precious legacy, handed down by those who kept that freedom intact. It can be relatively easy, within that already existing structure of freedom of choice, to spend our measure of the gift of faith constructing connections – relations – that APPEAR to be true love: working, functional ways of getting through life with ourselves, our version of God, even, as well as with those around us. We may even have delightful encounters with nature and with healthy lifestyles, too. It may appear that we have it all figured out, but I have seen that these elaborate lives, built by spending the Father’s inheritance the way WE think it should be spent, can be wiped out. Connections built by the flesh on sand cannot stand in the storms of life.
To get the very life of Christ – His connections with the rest of reality and with heaven – in us means we have to trade in what we started out with. I think that those who have suffered disaster or who started out without large legacies can find it easier to find the bottom of their insufficient selves. Experience is the best teacher – the only teacher since the Tree, in fact – and since none of us start out with the capacity to believe either how utterly dependent in design we were created to be as symbionts for the indwelling Spirit of God, or how utterly unable we are to establish relationships without Him, none of us start out ‘naturally’ wanting to live that design. It seems to take disasters that wipe the whole thing out to convince most of us what failures we are without that partnership with the bedrock of heaven, which is the new life dwelling in us.
Love is not something we can do without the Lover doing it through us. “Co-reigning with Christ” – that great Rock that can only be found in the wilderness of our true soul condition – means we have to completely abandon the thrones built on the sands of self sufficiency. So many times that can only happen after an epic flood wipes out our entire world of relationships with reality as we know it. The old life must be put to death, and if we cannot do it, a merciful Hand can step in to do it for us. A “new covenant” is about the original one, like Skip has pointed out, built on a better foundation – a foundation Who came to show us what that symbiotic relationship with heaven looked like: exactly Who that foundational Rock is; so we would not continue to make the sand mistake. Time to build again; “on better promises”. Halleluah!
Just these added comments because I am not so sure we have the ability to “choose” with such individual independence.
“The greatest damage done by neglect, trauma, or emotional loss is not the immediate pain they inflict but the long-term distortions they induce in the way a developing child will continue to interpret the world and her situation in it. All too often these ill-conditioned implicit beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies in our lives. We create meanings from our unconscious interpretation of early events, and then we forge our present experiences from the meanings we’ve created. Unwittingly, we write the story of our future from narratives based on the past.”
“Parenting, in short, is a dance of the generations. Whatever affected one generation but has not been fully resolved will be passed on to the next. . . ‘The generations are boxes within boxes: Inside my mother’s violence you find another box, which contains my grandfather’s violence, and inside that box (I suspect but do not know), you would find another box with some such black, secret energy—stories within stories, receding in time.’”
“If individuals are part of a multigenerational family system, families and individuals are also parts of a much larger whole: the culture and society in which they live. The functioning of human beings can no more be isolated form the larger social context than can that of a bee in a hive. It is not enough, therefore, to stop at the family system as if it determined the health of its members without regard to the social, economic and cultural forces that shape family life.”
And it is exactly within that relatively functional or disfunctional legacy that we continue to make choices, or what we THINK are choices. The legacy hands us foundational lies to the extent that it did not hand us love, that is so true, and to the extent we were handed lies for the paradigm we subsequently think love is, is the extent that we cannot function – make real choices that work – in reality. We start out on the wrong foot, so to speak.
Some of us did start out relatively well loved, at least in some ways, and so therefore were given the theoretical ability to choose correctly. However, those of us who were loved, to the extent that we were loved, seem to tend to take that love – those correct connections with reality – and run with it, instead of choosing to cooperate correctly with heaven to continue to be able to make correct choices. The instant we do that, however, is the instant we start to build on the sands of conditional, fleshly contracts, which are all compromises with reality instead of real constructions by true faith OF reality. When we do that, the choices to connect with reality can seem to work, but I think they are all conditional confederacies with the flesh instead of true links with heaven – true function in reality.
I think we can attempt to ‘choose’ love, using our measure of gifted faith, all day long, but if we are believing lies about love that we got handed, love does not actually happen. Even if we are loved correctly, we can still choose to squander that love by insisting that we enjoy the connections for our own advantage instead of continuing to cooperate with heaven in the exercise of that ability to choose – that love – we got handed. At both those points I think we can become tempted to do deals with earth instead of heaven; with sand instead of Rock. Building on sand is about choices that seem to work but that all depend upon earth instead of heaven for function; for love. Y’all, those are not real choices: those are not good ways to spend our faith in love, for they will all fail us. Eventually.
I contend that a true choice is a choice that actually works. Those choices can only be made in full cooperation – covenant – with our Creator. The rest is just “sinking sand”.
Good Quotes. From where?
Gabor Mate, When the Body says NO
Could this be in part what Numbers 14:18 addresses ‘iniquity of the fathers visited upon the children?’ Generational patterns born from trauma, neglect, loss?
Please look at past investigations of the Hebrew panda (visited) in Exodus 34:7 (you can find it by searching the web site from the home page). While generational patters do involve unconscious interpretation of the world for children, that does NOT mean that GUILT is attributed to the children.
I should have said, ‘generational patterns rather than ‘guilt’. I’d love to study the Hebrew word panda. thank you
Laurita I am not sure where this comment fits into your discussions of love. I had one grandmother who loved me unconditionally, and I think all the rest of her grandchildren felt this same love. As I have gotten older and grandchildren entered the picture, I have tried to show them that kind of unconditional love. I have tried to make every one of them feel like they are my favorite grandchild. I look back on my grandmother with great admiration as she showed us her love and introduced us to Jesus as our Lord and Savior. I am attempting to replicate this in another generation as I interact with my grandchildren. (I practiced this with my own children too) One of the greatest compliments we ever had was from a lady who said we were a family with four only children.
It is so sad to me that so very few people outside the Christian community seem to truly love their children, grandchildren, mates or anyone they are associated with. I’m no saint, but I try. There are people who I can respect, but not love and sadly there are those I just plain detest. Jesus Christ is the only one who can love unconditionally.
Fits right in. True love is covenant love: love in conjunction with the will of God; love “which does not seek her own”. When I was loved by those around me who were choosing to do the will of God, it made a little place in my life of freedom to choose to do as I had been done by. I promptly set out to do just that – on my ‘own’, of course. But, without that vital covenant relationship with the will of God. I could not, for the life (or death) of me, replicate that love. It did not ‘work’ ‘on its own’. I ended up ‘choosing’ myself into a big hole. The rest of that descending disaster you guys already know. My experience, anyway.
“We…walk differently, talk differently, think differently, not because we have been forgiven, but because we have been reborn.” Actually, being forgiven is a major component of the New Covenant! Jer. 31:34, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” Paul recognized this. In Rom. 4:5-8, he contrasts this blessing of forgiveness (as expressed by David) with the fruitless identity-based works of code-keeping, available to those who “believes in him who justifies the ungodly….” Knowing I am forgiven is a major motivation for walking differently, talking differently, and thinking differently. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ…
Yes, but, remember that the forgiveness of Jeremiah’s prophecy is tied to the ULTIMATE forgiveness of the fully established kingdom. It hasn’t happened yet, or at least it has only happened in some small measure. We wait.
Thanks for this TW today Skip. It’s filled with much to think about…much Truth. May more and more people come to understand what it truly means to be a “new creature.” You’ve added more clarity today. May HaShem continue opening the eyes of the blind.
I was taught new creation implies: new capacity, new relationship and new nature or mannerism in how things are approached and done.
Read with 1 Cor 15:20-22 it is a progressive change from Adam into Christ. From living to survive into becoming a saviour unto others as we read of in Job 38 – 42 and Isaiah 45:1-15. To name those I used in my evangelistic era from the OT.
And as far as I can understand we will not know why as God gives us a new name or life direction as Jacob experienced after his night struggle with the angel. It is not about becoming a soul right for heaven but becoming a heavenly soul…
Better read my book, Crossing, before you conclude Jacob’s night at the brook was about becoming a heavenly soul. 🙂
Skip.
Faith for me implies the crossing paradigm we are often trapped in…
We need faith to believe God can change or deliver. Other than the Circle Maker which in my view is a mocking of God to prove a conviction… that a human’s faith can force God to deliver to justify our needs, but that there…
Faith brings us this far… The acknowledgement that I am but dust from earth for earth. The same principle as you testified of the voidness you felt a week or so ago. That voidness is what God needs us to reach so that this faith of ours provides us enough confidence to move away from our past.
To let go. To drift as a leaf down a stream. To be the sand pebble in the oysters mouth so that the sea can wash over it and the substance in the oysters mouth can make this pebble of flesh a pearl as God knows is possible. Without the settling of the pebble the oyster ‘s natural surviving instinct of letting the seawater wash through its shell and mingle with its substance cannot create the new gem. The pebble must settle or get stuck with nowhere else to go…
We can either get stuck in seeking out evidence or proof that God provides and cares or we can submit and follow His spirit which as you have said before guides us to unchartered ways… The TW on Tough Love.
It is not what I want but what I am willing to stop doing to proceed in the Godly calling. Yes, the evidence will always be my reason or as John reminds us in Revelation the gospel of Christ Jesus is our redemption.
Not Yeshua but the manifestation of that truth in our lives…
Me I am not crossing yet. I am still developing faith trying as far as possible not to forget to reveal the righteous deeds that are needed to prove the strength in my faith and not the truth of God’s faithfulness.
And that is the new creation I understand Paul is refering to. It is not something we can form it is something God makes stand out in our way of living. And as Yeshua said we all will be redeemed through our own faith. Not doctrine, not choice of living but have we enough confidence to let go so that God can bless or rather guide to the next phase in our dying in Adam to be manifested in Christ or annointed so that He can redeem and call others as we go about discussing and living out our truth and by accepting we have enough…
All that I observe using my senses ends when I have no more senses to use. But all that God has created through my submission unto his will can never be changed as he is as he was and will always be… Far above our understanding we just observe that which He knows we need to start searching…
And this is eternal life that we know God and this redeeming new creation He has provided. Nothing beyond reality but everything transforming reality into a living testimony of His will… Not by what e say or proclaim but what we do that get others to testify of His redeeming power.
Torah the beginning to reprimand ourself not others. Christ the redemption manifested in our lives to guide others.
The lifelong struggle is to stay in the race so that my deeds can follow and become a lasting legacy. Yes, I have not yet accepted a life after death purpose for life on earth. I have accepted a life through death. Adam must die, not be represented in a new form, so that Christ can be a reality in my life.
Another classic T.W. having read all the comments my head is realing a bit. This is meat, strong meat to feed the hungry soul. We are in true life only if we have our life in and through the Spirit and life of Messiah. He heals our disfunctional opporating systems by consistently purgeing or data bases and RAM through obidiance and repentance. Interestingly Rabbi Lord Sacks suggests the closest Biblical Hebrew word to to obidienace is Shema ; Listen carefully, having your understanding transfomed by the word and your will become whole . You will learn to perceive reality. Yeshua disillusions us carefully, incrimentaly over time. He walks us out of the wilderness of self imposed, or inherited dillusions and illusion into the promised land of true life. One step, one day, one moment at a time. Just trust and follow; its that’s easy and that hard!
Shema… yes. Yeshua is the door to the Father. One with Yeshua to be one with the Father. John 17. Shalom.
While looking for something completely different the other day—the same day this TW was post—I came across this Habakkuk 1:5 pesher at Qumran:
– Florentino Garci̒a Marti̒nez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English, 2nd ed., transl. Wilfred G. E. Watson (Netherlands: Brill, Leiden/Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), p 198.