The New Covenant

The Gift of the Spirit is essential to the New Covenant promised by God in the Hebrew Bible for His people.

The New Testament connects the “Promise of the Spirit” to the “Blessings of Abraham,” the promise that God would bless the nations through the Patriarch. The Gift of the Spirit is part of the covenant given to Abraham that is fulfilled in the “New Covenant” established by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. His sacrifice made the promises of renewal and “circumcised hearts” a present reality.

The Apostle Peter connected the Gift of the Holy Spirit to the “blessings” for the nations promised to Abraham during his sermon on the Day of Pentecost. The gift received by the 120 disciples on that day, and by 3,000 converts following Peter’s sermon, was in fulfillment of what God promised the Great Patriarch centuries earlier.

• “The promise is for you, and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” - (Acts 2:38-39, Genesis 12:1-3, 17:7).

[Photo by Benjamin le Roux on Unsplash]

Unfortunately, Israel failed to keep the covenant. Though the nation had sworn to perform “all the words which Yahweh has spoken,” history attests to Israel’s failure to keep its covenant obligations. The Israelites could not meet their covenant obligations since they did not have the Spirit. Without the Gift’s empowerment, they could never fulfill the “righteous requirements of the Law” - (Exodus 24:1-8, Numbers 11:1-15).

The Mosaic legislation anticipated Israel’s failure and the need for something beyond the Torah. After predicting the scattering of Israel, God promised that after the nation truly repented, the people of Israel would “return to me and obey my voice with all their heart and soul.” God would gather His people from all nations and “circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed to love Yahweh your God” - (Deuteronomy 30:1-6).

The themes of renewal and this circumcision of the heart were addressed by the prophet Jeremiah. God would “make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” but not a covenant according to the one He made with their forefathers at Mount Sinai – (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would provide a New Covenant. By His Spirit, He would write His laws in the hearts of His people. This circumcision of the heart came to fruition in the “New Covenant” prophesied by Jeremiah and inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth through his sacrificial death and resurrection.

The Prophet Ezekiel later added the essential element of the Spirit to the New Covenant expectation:

• (Ezekiel 36:24-28) – “Therefore will I take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all the lands, and will bring you upon your own soil… And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and my spirit will I put within you and will cause that in my statutes you shall walk, and my regulations you shall observe and do.”

SPIRIT AND COVENANT

Thus, the Book of Ezekiel combines the promises of the New Covenant, the Gift of the Spirit, and the circumcised heart. Centuries later, the Apostle Paul applied these promises to the congregation in the city of Corinth, likewise the Author of the Letter to the Hebrews to his readers:

• (2 Corinthians 3:1-6) – “You are our letter, inscribed in our hearts, noted and read by all men, manifesting yourselves that you are a letter of Christ, ministered by us, inscribed, not with ink, but with the Spirit of a Living God; not in tablets of stone, but in tablets which are hearts of flesh… Not that of our own selves sufficient are we to reckon anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also has made us sufficient to be ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.”

• (Hebrews 8:6-13) – “But now has he obtained a more excellent ministry, by so much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second. For finding fault with them, he said, Behold, the days come, says the Lord, That I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt. For they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws into their mind, and on their heart also will I write them. And I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people… For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. In that he says, A new covenant, he has made the first old. But that which is becoming old and aged is nigh unto vanishing away.”

The prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel pointed to the centrality of the Spirit under this future and greater covenant. With the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, the long-awaited “New Covenant” commenced, and this was confirmed by the outpouring of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

The connection of the Gift of the Spirit to the Abrahamic Covenant and the “New Covenant” illustrates the continuity of what God is doing today in the Church with His redemptive purposes given originally to Abraham and the nation of Israel.

Neither the Church, the New Covenant, nor the Gift of the Spirit was an unforeseen interim stage or necessary detour in God’s redemptive plan. They are fundamental parts of His covenant promises, and they have been so from the beginning.

Only today, God is forming “one new man” comprised of Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus Christ. No longer is the covenant and its glorious promises limited to the nation of Israel or the small territory of Canaan, nor is membership in this community based on biological descent from the Patriarch.

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SEE ALSO:

• One New Man - (By his death, Jesus formed one covenant community - One New Man - based on faith in him, not ethnicity or nationality – Ephesians 2:11-22)

• One Message for All - (Jesus commanded his disciples to proclaim the Good News of his salvation and kingdom to every inhabited corner of the Earth)

• The Covenant - (The promises to Abraham are fulfilled through Jesus in the New Covenant inaugurated by his Death and Resurrection)

• Buenas Noticias para Todos - (La Buena Noticia anunciada por Jesús de Nazaret ofrece salvación y vida a hombres y mujeres de todas las naciones y pueblos)