Purpose of the New Covenant
03.23.09
Purpose of the New Covenant
(All Bible verses quoted are from the New King James Version)
The primary purpose of the new covenant was not for God to come and change our external behaviour. Rather it was God changing the way He relates to us.
Under the Old Covenant, God dealt with the external problem, namely people’s sins. They were punished and cursed when they sinned and broke the laws. But under the New Covenant, God dealt with the internal problem, namely our fallen sinful nature. He changed us from the inside, giving us the very nature of his Son, Jesus Christ, and credited the perfect obedience of Jesus to our account.
Our old sinful nature has been crucified with Christ, and our spirits made 100% righteous (2 Cor 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him). And this is the way He now sees us – blameless and fully righteous in His sight (Col 1:21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled 22 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight)
Rom 6:6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Before we came into Christ, we were enemies of God, and we were alienated from Him in 2 ways:
1) We had a sinful nature inside us and we were slaves to this sinful nature, running after every evil thing to gratify the desires of our flesh (Eph 2:3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.) We were alive to sin (because of our sinful nature) and dead towards God.
2) We were also under the law, which utterly condemned us and showed us how sinful we were. Rom 3:19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
But Rom 6:6-7 says that we are now dead to sin. We are now friends of God, and we were united with Him in 2 ways:
1) Our sinful nature was crucified with Christ, and our spirits have now been made alive towards God. The perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ has been imputed to us, and all the benefits and blessings of His obedience has now been credited to us because of our faith in Him.
2) The law has been nullified, nailed to the cross with Jesus (Col 2:14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross) and God now relates to people again like He did in the days of the Bible before the law was given, not imputing their sins against them, but instead delighting in us with the love and passion of a proud Father. God doesn’t just see us as if we’ve never sinned – He sees us now as if we have perfectly obeyed all the laws our entire life!
Eph 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Yours in Grace
Andre van der Merwe
It is essential for Christians to understand that they are saved not because they do not sin, but because their sins are foregiven, and the blood of Christ continually (not repetatively) cleanses us of our sins:
“But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin” (1 John 1:7). Again, sin here is in the singular form. This does not mean that the blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses the root of sin. The preceding part shows that if we walk in the light as God is in the light, we will have fellowship one with another. After this it says that the blood of His Son also cleanses us from every sin. If this cleansing referred to our sinful nature, and we walked in the light as God is in the light, we would have no sin. How then would there be sins for the blood of the Lord Jesus to cleanse? It is when we walk in the light of the gospel, as God is in the light of revelation, that we see the blood of the Lord Jesus solving all the problems related to our sin. In verse 9 it clearly says that we have sins (plural). Again, we have sins! Therefore, we can see that sin (singular) refers to the sin that dominates within us as master, while sins (plural) refer to our outward conduct. Sin (singular) refers to the whole problem of sin, while sins (plural) refer to specific sins.
If we look at Christ with the eyes of faith and believe that we have been crucified with Christ, we will see that the power of Christ will save us and free us from the power of sin within us. The first step of salvation gives us peace and satisfaction; it causes us to enjoy happiness. The second step of salvation gives us power to be freed from sin and walk in His way. when we feel sin within us we use the Power of the Holy Spirit to confront that sin. When we slip up and fall into the flesh and sin, we confess those sins, the blood of Christ cleanses us and purges us of that unrighteousness so that we a restored to full fellow ship in Christ.
Hi Marco
Walking in the light as God is in the light, is a result of God giving us his righteousness – John is talking about our position here, not our behaviour. In fact most of your arguments against the GRACE message comes from the book of John (and I’ll bet you’ll be throwing some verses from James at us as well pretty soon). That is mostly because legalists that read the book of John see it as a book that tells us what we are supposed to do, instead of reading it in the correct context. John wrote this book to his “little children” who had just come out of the teaching of Gnostics. John was by no means trying to tell them to “DO THIS!” or “DO THAT!” No he was telling them how secure they were in Christ, assuring them of their eternal salvation.
You are in essence contradicting yourself in your previous argument. 1 John 1:7 says EVERY sin, and that to me pretty much means EVERY sin. Rom 6 clearly tells us that our sinful nature (the old man) has been crucified and buried with Christ. It has been REMOVED, Christ cut it out of us with the circumcision not made with hands: Col 2:11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. If you believe you can “walk in the light” based on your own obedience, why then would you need the blood to continually cleanse you? Because now you are doing it all yourself! No, we walk in the light because we have been given the righteousness of God: 2 Cor 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Yes when we look at our behaviour we will clearly see that we make mistakes every day, but that is because our minds have not been renewed yet. You can read our 2-part series on this topic here:
http://www.newcovenantgrace.com/why-do-christians-sin-pt1/
http://www.newcovenantgrace.com/why-do-christians-sin-pt-2/
In Grace
Andre van der Merwe