ALL ROADS LEAD TO CHRIST BIBLICAL COVENANTS, PART 2ALL ROADS LEAD TO CHRIST BIBLICAL COVENANTS, PART 2
Theologians of all kinds focus on Christ as the key to understanding the biblical covenants.
—LARRY PETTEGREW1
THE PALESTINIAN COVENANT
As part of the Abrahamic Covenant, God guaranteed to Israel the Promised Land as an everlasting possession. The Palestinian Covenant (Deut. 28–30:20) reaffirms and further develops that guarantee. Like the Abrahamic Covenant it amplifies, it is eternal and unconditional, securing Israel’s title deed to the Promised Land and its future and final restoration and conversion.2 Theologian C. I. Scofield explains that the Palestinian Covenant contains seven elements:
1. Israel’s dispersion from the land for disobedience (Deut. 28:63–68, 30:1).
2. The future repentance of Israel while in the dispersion (Deut. 30:2).
3. The return of the Lord (Deut. 30:3; Amos 9:9–14; Acts 15:14–17).
4. Restoration to the land (Deut. 30:5; Isaiah 11:11, 12; Jer. 23:3–8; Ezek. 37:21–25).
5. National conversion (Deut. 30:6; Romans 11:26, 27; Hosea 2:14–16).
6. The judgment of Israel’s oppressors (Deut. 30:7; Isaiah 14:1, 2; Joel 3:1–8; Matt. 25:31–46).
7. National prosperity (Deut. 30:9; Amos 9:11–14).3
Neither the Abrahamic Covenant nor the Palestinian Covenant guarantee Israel immediate and continuous possession of the land, though they do promise full, complete, and permanent possession of it in the future. In fact, writes Walter Kaiser, “Sixty-nine times, the writer of Deuteronomy repeated the pledge that Israel would one day ‘possess’ and ‘inherit’ the land promised to her.”4 God promises Israel, “If you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God . . . the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth” (Deut. 28:1). This means if Israel is obedient it will occupy the land, be prosperous there, and enjoy safety and protection (Deut. 28:3–7).5
When Israel doesn’t obey, it is subject to God’s curses and punishments (Deut. 28:15–68). Although these censures include God’s dispersion of Israel among foreign nations, the covenant also promises the eventual regathering of the people to the land, where they will live prosperously and faithfully, while He will punish their enemies.6 “God takes Israel’s relation to the land as a matter of extreme importance,” argues Dwight Pentecost. “God not only guarantees its possession to them, but obligates Himself to judge and remove all Israel’s enemies, give the nation a new heart, a conversion, prior to placing them in the land.”7
It may seem contradictory to describe this covenant as unconditional yet acknowledge that God made the Israelites’ blessings for the land conditional on their obedience and even inflicted punishment on them for disobedience. A simple explanation is that while enjoyment of the land (possession) is conditioned on obedience, ownership of the land is unconditional.8 So with this covenant, God, through His prophets, specifies that He will remove Israel from the land when it is disobedient. But He also promises it will eventually be restored in the future—in what some scholars refer to as the “millennial kingdom.”9 Before the Palestinian Covenant will be completely fulfilled, however, Israel must come to repentance and turn to the Messiah (Zech. 12:10–14). Jesus Christ, then, is integrally and foundationally connected to this covenant as well, for it will reach its fulfillment through Christ when He returns and reigns over Israel, which will then be fully restored to the land.
I also think it worthwhile to repeat a point I made in Jesus on Trial because I find it probative of God’s promises and, in this particular case, His faithfulness to Israel. Though today Israel does not yet occupy the land fully, the nation has returned there. This was foretold about 2,500 years ago by the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 31:38–40), while Isaiah (Isaiah 11:11–13) and Ezekiel (37:21–28) also prophesied that Israelites would be regathered in their homeland “from the four corners of the earth.” These prophecies were made before the Jews were dispersed in Babylon (beginning in 586 BC), and even more amazingly, before they were dispersed again for almost two thousand years by Rome (in 70 AD).
Yet in 1948, the nation was reconstituted and millions of Jews have now returned to the land. When David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s principal founder, announced on May 14, 1948, that the new Jewish homeland would be called “Israel,” he cited Ezekiel’s prophecy. Even if the prophecy has not yet been completely fulfilled, it is utterly remarkable that a nation dispersed for two millennia would retain its identity and regather in the very land it left, and to which God said it would eventually return. Highlighting the astounding nature of these events, Josh McDowell observes that throughout history, every other nation that left its homeland lost its national identity within about five generations.10 Pastor Tony Evans further notes that no other nation in history vanquished from its land for fifty years or more has ever returned speaking the same language.11
THE DAVIDIC COVENANT
The Davidic Covenant, originally announced by the prophet Nathan, is God’s promise to David that his descendants will rule in Israel forever, and that He will elevate the nation of Israel to a kingdom under the rule of kings in David’s line (2 Samuel 7:5–16; 1 Chron. 17:10–14, 23–27; 2 Chron. 6:10, 15–17, 42, 7:17–18, 13:8, 23:3).12 As part of this covenant, David shall have a “house” (a royal dynasty), a throne (the symbol of royal authority), and a kingdom (a sphere of rule) in perpetuity. Disobedience will bring judgment and chastisement, but not the annulment of the covenant.13 The psalmist is unequivocal on this point: “If they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips. Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me. Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies” (Psalms 89:30–37).
This covenant is the source of the Davidic dynasty and of the promise for a temple, which would become Solomon’s Temple.14 This is referenced in Psalm 132, in which the psalmist pleads with God to remember that David had bemoaned the fact that he had a house when God didn’t, and so he asked God’s permission to build His Temple. The psalmist then reminds God of His covenant with David, which stipulates that He would place one of David’s heirs on the throne forever in Israel.
The Davidic Covenant includes these provisions:
1. God promises David, like He did Abraham, that He will make his name great (2 Samuel 7:9).
2. David will have a son who will succeed him as king, and God will establish his kingdom (2 Samuel 7:12).
3. This son will build the Temple (2 Samuel 7:13).
4. This kingdom, the throne, and the Davidic line will continue forever (2 Samuel 7:13).
5. God will center this dynasty in the Promised Land and provide His people rest and peace (2 Samuel 7:10).
6. God’s love will remain on this house forever, even when it sins (2 Samuel 7:15). Note that this is not hyperbolic language. By “forever,” God has His Son Jesus Christ in mind, Who will be the fulfillment of all these promises and will reign forever.15
This covenant constitutes an integral part of God’s salvation history. It is not explicitly referred to as a covenant when it is announced (2 Samuel 7:5–16), but that is made clear in 2 Samuel 23:5: “For does not my house stand so with God? For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure.” Psalms 89:3 confirms this—“I have made a covenant with my chosen one”—as does Psalms 132:11–12—“The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne. If your sons keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall teach them, their sons also forever shall sit on your throne.”
The covenant is unconditional for David, but not for his offspring16—that is, it is unconditional in terms of its ultimate fulfillment, but it does not guarantee that every occupant of the throne in David’s line will enjoy its blessings, as sin and faithlessness will assuredly interrupt it.17 As noted earlier, though God’s sovereign plans will always proceed, He will also make human beings accountable. Thus, the unbroken succession of kings in David’s line from generation to generation will depend on the particular king’s faithfulness, as later passages specify (1 Chron. 28:7; 1 Kings 2:3–4, 3:14).18 But God’s plan for the Davidic line to continue forever shall not be thwarted (2 Samuel 7:16; Jer. 33:17) and, as the New Testament confirms, will ultimately be fulfilled in Christ: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32–33).
The unconditionality and eternality of this covenant become clear when you consider that God announces the covenant with full knowledge that David will soon commit adultery and murder19—though David, a man after God’s heart, is repentant and appreciative of God’s faithfulness to His promises despite David’s disobedience, which David acknowledges with his dying breaths, quoted above in 2 Samuel 23:5.
God is clear that there will always be a descendant of David’s qualified for Israel’s throne, and that one of his descendants will eventually rule over an everlasting kingdom. While this kingdom is certainly an earthly kingdom, it also has an important spiritual dimension. “The kingdom of Israel was not only a geo-political entity,” John Barry writes, “it was God’s kingdom, responsibility for which was vested in the line of David.”20
During the glory days of the United Kingdom, though the Temple is built under Solomon and the Davidic Covenant is partially fulfilled, the kingdom descends into a prolonged period of division and decline (1 Kings 12). Later, the prophets would announce a New Covenant that would continue and restore the Davidic Covenant, as explained below (Jer. 33:14–26; Isaiah 9, 11, 55:3; Ezek. 37:15–28).21
In the meantime, however, after the fall of Jerusalem and during the Babylonian Captivity and beyond, one would think that the later writers of the Old Testament would be concerned that the Davidic Covenant is in jeopardy. After all, even the greatest kings, David and Solomon, were seriously flawed. “Yet future expectation and the hope for a better world did not die;” write Craig Evans and Peter Flint, “instead, the horizon shifted to the end times and a golden age of peace, righteousness, and prosperity.”22 The prophets begin to frame the fulfillment of the covenant as being sometime in the future when a new David would come to power and usher in this golden era. In other words, they begin to associate the covenant with their expectation of a Messiah—the “anointed one”—Who will deliver Israel in the last days. In this way, the Davidic Covenant becomes the conceptual framework for Jewish messianic anticipations, which are voiced both in the Old Testament and other Jewish writings that precede the New Testament.23
One of the main themes of the gospels is that Jesus Christ fulfills God’s promises contained in the Davidic Covenant. Indeed, the very first verse of the New Testament introduces this theme: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1). This motif continues through the Gospels, as Jesus is referred to as the son (descendant) of David and as the eternal righteous king God promised in the covenant (see Matt. 9:27, 12:23; Mark 10:48, 12:35; Luke 18:38–39, 20:41).24 The idea is carried forward into Revelation, the last book of the Bible, in which John, in his opening vision, describes the reigning Christ as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” and “the Root of David” (5:5). Enhancing the theme, John quotes Jesus identifying Himself as “the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16).
So in the very first verse of the New Testament, five verses from the end of the New Testament, and countless times in between, Christ is identified as David’s reigning descendant. Let me suggest that this becomes an even more amazing demonstration of biblical continuity, unity, and divine intervention in history when you consider that God’s promise of a royal dynasty of kings was originally made to Abraham way back in the early chapters of Genesis (17:6, 11, 35:11). More astounding still is Jacob’s prophetic blessing to his son Judah of a coming ruler who would come out of his tribe. Significantly, Judah, the fourth son of Jacob’s wife Leah, is the first of Jacob’s sons in this series of blessings to receive nothing but praise from Jacob.25 Jacob tells Judah,
Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk (Gen. 49:8–12).
Gordon Johnston observes, “By divine design this enigmatically worded oracle speaks not only of the rise of the first historical king from the tribe of Judah (David), but also the ultimate eschatological [future] King (Jesus, who is the Christ).”26 There you have it, God’s promise to David of eternal divine kingship through his descendants in the land of Israel appears at the very beginning of the Bible and at the very end of the Bible; and at the very beginning of the New Testament and at the very end of the New Testament. Who can reasonably doubt that these are divinely placed bookends, crafted by our wondrous creator before time began?
Just for good measure, let me leave you with one final prophecy on this subject that involves Balaam, a Mesopotamian seer.27 Moab’s King Balak, fearful of the strength of the Israelites who were encamped in Moab and ready to enter the Promised Land, sends for Balaam to come to Moab to curse Israel (Num. 22:1–6). After initially refusing to come—because the true God of the Bible forbids him to go and prohibits him from cursing the blessed Israelites (Num. 22:12)—he ends up going and blessing Israel four times through four oracles (Num. 23–24). In his fourth and final oracle, Balaam, purporting to speak on behalf of the God of the Bible (Yahweh), declares, “The oracle of Balaam, the son of Beor . . . who hears the words of God, and knows the knowledge of the Most High, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling down with his eyes uncovered: I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth. Edom shall be dispossessed; Seir also, his enemies, shall be dispossessed. Israel is doing valiantly. And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion and destroy the survivor of cities!” (Num. 24:15–19). Referring to this prophecy, D. Stuart Briscoe affirms, “Though there is disagreement on details there has been agreement for centuries that this is a prediction of the arrival of the Messiah.”28
Is it not stunning that a pagan diviner of a foreign land is prevented from cursing God’s people, then transforms into a prophet for the true God to confirm that the Messiah will come from the tribe of Jacob? I think you’d have to be willfully blind not to see this as a messianic prophecy. But to add some heft to my conclusion, let me share Old Testament scholar Eugene Merrill’s observation: “The truth Balaam saw concerned primarily a star and a scepter that would originate in Israel in the future. Since poetically the star is parallel to the scepter [see our discussion on parallelism in Chapter 13], the star must also refer to royalty. This has now been strikingly confirmed in the prophetic texts from Mari (an ancient, influential city-state situated on the bank of the Euphrates in eastern Syria), which describe various kings by the epithet ‘star.’ The connection of this prophecy to that of Jacob, in which he predicted that a ruler over Israel would come from Judah (Gen. 49:10), is unmistakable.”29
Jesus Christ, Who in His humanity is a descendant of David, will ultimately fulfill the Davidic Covenant by sitting on the throne during His one-thousand-year reign and then for eternity.30 As the angel Gabriel tells Mary, “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:31–33). Jesus Himself confirms that “when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne” (Matt. 25:31).
As an interesting, faith-building sidebar, I’d like to point out that Old Testament critics sometimes seek to diminish the uniqueness of God’s sovereignty by alleging that the Mesopotamians and Babylonians also viewed their gods as proactively involved in the history of their people through their appointed rulers. But Carl F. H. Henry argues that these comparisons are superficial at best. The God of the Bible creates the universe and mankind out of nothing by His Word, and He “ongoingly preserves life, intervenes in nature and history for redemptive ends, and sustains and protects the nation for a preannounced purpose. The Hebrews do not impose upon their wars the polytheistic speculations concerning a struggle between the gods.” It’s not just that the God of the Bible is superior in every way to these unsophisticated “deities” described in Babylonian and similar writings, but the Bible presents prophecy and its fulfillment as a distinctive feature throughout the Old Testament. “Yahweh’s special relation to the Hebrew people through the [Mosaic] covenant, reaffirmed in the Davidic covenant, goes beyond any conception of divine covenant found outside Israel,” says Henry. “Among Yahweh’s incomparable activities is that he speaks before he acts and then vindicates in history his unique position and relation to his chosen people (cf. Deut. 33:29; 1 Samuel 2:2; Psalms 19:7; Isaiah 46:9).”31
THE NEW COVENANT
Explicitly identifying His body and blood as the New Covenant promised by the Old Testament prophets, Jesus proclaims, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). Thus, God’s series of progressive covenants is capped off by His New Covenant, which He first announces through the prophet Jeremiah:
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. . . . Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the city shall be rebuilt for the Lord . . . It shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever (Jer. 31:31–34, 38, 40; see also 50:4–5).
It was this profound Old Testament passage that motivated Church Father Origen to designate the last twenty-seven books of the Bible “the New Testament.”32 Jeremiah 31:31–34 is also the longest section of continuous text quoted in the New Testament—in Hebrews 8:8–12 and partially repeated in Hebrews 10:16–17.33
God likewise promises and further expands upon the New Covenant through the prophet Ezekiel. God tells Israel that to vindicate the holiness of His great name, which Israel and the other nations have profaned, He will gather the Israelites from the other nations to which they had been dispersed and bring them back to their own land: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols. I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezek. 36:25–28).
Isaiah also refers to this covenant: “‘And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,’ declares the Lord. ‘And as for me, this is my covenant with them,’ says the Lord: ‘My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children’s offspring,’ says the Lord, ‘from this time forth and forevermore’” (Isaiah 59:20–21).
As laid out by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the New Testament writers, the New Covenant is to be different from the Old or Mosaic Covenant, which the Israelites broke. The main provisions of the New Covenant are:
1. Regeneration: the people will be given new hearts and God’s Law will be internalized in their minds and hearts.
2. National restoration: God will be their God, the nation of Israel will be His people, and the nation of Israel will have an endless existence.
3. A comprehensive knowledge of and personal relationship with God through the personal ministry of the indwelling Holy Spirit: they will all be taught personally and individually by God Himself.
4. Full justification and forgiveness: their sins will be wholly removed.
5. Jerusalem will be rebuilt and shall remain intact forever.34
God specifies that this covenant is unconditional in spite of Israel’s disobedience. (Note how He repeats the promise “I will” as He spells out the covenant’s stipulations in Ezekiel 36:23–36.)35 The covenant is unconditional because it is being instituted not for Israel’s sake, but for the sake of God’s holy name (Ezek. 36:21–22). Furthermore, God declares the covenant to be everlasting (Jer. 32:40; Ezek. 16:60, 37:26; Isaiah 61:8–9).36
Dr. Norman Geisler succinctly captures the differences between the Old Covenant and the New. The Old Covenant, he explains, is temporal while the New is everlasting; the Old is written in stones, the New on hearts; the Old involves the blood of animals, the New involves the blood of Christ; the Old entails many sacrifices, the New involves one permanent sacrifice; the Old is mediated by Moses, the New by Jesus Christ; the Old anticipates forgiveness, in the New forgiveness is realized through the cross; in the Old there is no permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as is guaranteed for believers in the New; in the Old God is approached through Aaron the high priest and his successors, in the New Christ is our High Priest; and the Old Covenant is celebrated by sacrifices that anticipate the cross while the New Covenant is celebrated by Communion—looking backward to the cross.37
In his announcement of the New Covenant, Jeremiah promises that one day God will replace the Old Covenant—the Mosaic Covenant—with a better one. The writer of Hebrews avers, “But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. . . . In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete” (8:6, 13). The New Covenant is superior, among other reasons, because it cannot be broken and because it brings immediate access to God’s presence for believers in Jesus Christ, as the writer of Hebrews attests. Another priest has arisen, he says, “who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. . . . For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness (for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God. . . . For those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath, but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him: ‘The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever.”’ This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant” (7:16–22). The writer also encourages believers to approach God with confidence: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (4:16). He later relates that this New Covenant is also superior to the Old because it is established by the blood that Christ shed for us once for all times (7:27).
The Mosaic Covenant gives people rules showing what they ought to do but provides no means by which they, as fallen human beings, can wholly obey those rules. The New Covenant is different, explains Roy Zuck, though “the difference would not lie in the basic demand of the covenant itself but in the people’s capacity to obey it.”38 Christians are empowered to obey its commands because Christ has given believers the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8; 1 Cor. 12:13; 2 Cor. 3:4–18). He has put His Law into our minds and written the Law on our hearts (Heb. 8:10). Moreover, the New Covenant is eternal (Heb. 13:20), and through it we may have a permanent personal relationship and fellowship with God—and “He shall be our God, and we shall be His people.”39 The New Covenant, as God promised, guarantees believers that they will experience a change of heart based on the new spirit within them (the indwelling of the Holy Spirit). This change of heart will reach perfection for believers when they meet Jesus in the afterlife, when they will be glorified and freed from the presence of sin (Romans 8:18–30).40
Finally, the spiritual blessings of the New Covenant are far superior to all preceding covenants because Jesus died and atoned for our sins (Heb. 9:24–28). He reveals God to us through Himself “as the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature” (Heb. 1:3; John 14:9). The New Covenant involves the finished work of Christ on the cross in order that believers may, through faith in Him, appropriate His work and be legally declared righteous so that when God looks on believers, He doesn’t see our wretched sinfulness. As Charles H. Spurgeon argues, “If the Holy One of Israel shall look upon us as we are He must be displeased; but when He sees us in Christ Jesus He is well pleased. . . . When the Lord looks this way we hide behind the veil, and the eyes of the Lord behold the exceeding glories of the veil, to wit the person of His own dear Son, and He is so pleased with the cover that he forebears to remember the defilement and deformity of those whom it covers. God will never strike a soul through the veil of His Son’s sacrifice. He accepts us because He cannot but accept His Son, who has become our covering.”41 Through faith in Jesus Christ, we experience the New Covenant promise that our sins will be completely forgiven and we will receive eternal life in the Son.
While the New Covenant is better than the Old, let’s not assume that is because our perfect and holy God didn’t get it right the first time. The trouble with the Mosaic Covenant, says Dr. Walter Kaiser, was not the fault “of the covenant-making God nor with the moral law or promises reaffirmed from the patriarchs and included in that old covenant.” No, “the problem was with the people.”42 It’s important, argues Kaiser, that we don’t make the Law the scapegoat for our problem with sin because “the law itself is ‘holy,’ ‘righteous,’ ‘good,’ and ‘spiritual’ (Romans 7:7; 12:14).”43 Wayne Strickland, likewise, observes that the Mosaic Law “is a reflection of the moral perfection of its Giver.”44 As the psalmist affirms, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” (Psalms 19:7)—and as Robert Mounce reminds us, “Since the law is God’s law, it must of necessity be consistent with his holy nature (Isaiah 6:3).”45
Kaiser notes that both Jeremiah and the writer of Hebrews agree that the fault is with the people and not the Law. Jeremiah “points the finger,” says Kaiser, when he says, “they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them.” The writer of Hebrews adds, “For he finds fault with them when he says: ‘Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah . . . for they did not continue in my covenant” (Hebrews 8:8–9).46
If there is a virtual consensus that the Law itself is holy, good, and even perfect, why couldn’t it suffice to bring an end to man’s sin? Paul explains that it is simply impossible for the Law to do so: “If a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law” (Gal. 3:21). Paul is saying that no law can give life; that’s not its purpose. The Law sets the standard but, as discussed above, it doesn’t animate fallen human beings to obey it. The New Covenant, however, changes our hearts and empowers us to live more righteously.
In the above passage, note that Paul homes in on the idea of “life” in connection with the infusion of righteousness. This says it all, doesn’t it? Isn’t Paul giving us here a thumbnail sketch of the Gospel? Life doesn’t come through a thing, but through a Person, Jesus Christ, Who is capable of obeying the Law and did so, in order that through His sinless life and sacrificial, substitutionary death, those with faith in Him could have life and have it abundantly. So let’s not blame the Law for our own depravity. The Mosaic Law, writes Rev. H. D. Spence, “had a perfectness of its own. If there had been a Law fitted to give life . . . it would have been the Mosaic Law. It was raised above all mere human law. . . . That it did not actually effect righteousness was simply because that was impossible.”47
We must think of the New Covenant as the consummation of its predecessor covenants and thus the capstone of salvation history. O. Palmer Robertson validates this point: “Because of its unique role in gathering together the various strands of covenantal promise throughout history, this last of God’s covenants appropriately may be designated as the covenant of consummation. This covenant supersedes God’s previous covenantal administration.”48 Unarguably the New Covenant completely fulfills the Old, as is conveyed in Dr. Geisler’s contrasts of the two, related above. Consider also this statement by the writer of Hebrews: “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from the dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant” (9:13–15).
The New Covenant fulfills the other covenants of salvation history.49 It restores and completes the Davidic Covenant because, as noted, Jesus is in the line of David and He will assume, for eternity, kingship over Israel and the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22–24). Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock note that “the most well known fact of the New Testament proclamation of Jesus, namely that He is the Christ, is a proclamation that He is the Davidic king, the King of Israel.”50 Jesus fulfills the Adamic Covenant as the new Adam (Romans 5:12–21), Who transforms believers into a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). Scott Hahn summarizes, “The notion of covenant reaches its zenith in Christ, who fulfills the divine covenants not only in who He is, as the eternal Son of the Father, but by what He accomplishes in causing us to share in the grace of His own divine sonship (1 John 3:1–2). The new covenant of Christ ends up fulfilling the old covenant in a way that surpasses the greatest hopes of ancient Israelites, even as it will exceed our own expectations (1 Cor. 2:9).”51
Additionally, the New Covenant fulfills that component of the Abrahamic Covenant whereby God promised to bless all nations and people through Abraham (Gen. 12:3, 17:4), a promise whose specifics were shrouded in mystery until the New Testament revelation. The matter is clarified in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in which he describes the mystery of the Church, which was not mentioned in the Old Testament: “For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles—assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph. 3:1–6).
Like the previous covenants, God makes this New Covenant with Israel. In fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant, however, some promises of the New Covenant—the ones involving spiritual blessings, mainly forgiveness of their sins (and thus their redemption)—apply to all believers in Jesus Christ.52 We are all recipients of God’s blessings promised to Abraham—for Jesus Christ, who descended from Abraham, died for our sins and brings the blessing of eternal life for all those with faith in Him.
Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser comments that the New Covenant indeed fulfills the spiritual promises made to Abraham’s seed for Gentiles as well as Jews.53 As Paul explains, the Gentiles were at one time “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. . . . For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:12–13, 18–19). In his letter to the Galatians, Paul expands on the point, making it quite clear that all believers, including Gentiles, are Abraham’s offspring for purposes of the covenant promises: “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:26–29).
As is true for all the covenants beginning with the Abrahamic, God establishes the New Covenant with Israel, thus guaranteeing the permanency of the nation and of the city of Jerusalem. But I want to acknowledge there are at least two schools of thought on whether the covenant still applies to Israel. Roughly summarizing, Dispensationalists believe the covenant still applies to Israel (some even argue there are two separate new covenants)54 but that some of its blessings also apply to all believers, i.e., to the New Testament Christian Church. That is, though the initial promises and blessings were made specifically to the Jews and not the Gentiles, the Gentiles are nevertheless the beneficiaries of some of those blessings—namely the spiritual blessings, especially the promise of salvation. Covenant theologians, on the other hand, argue that Israel forfeited its blessings under the covenant through its rebellion and unbelief,55 and that the Church now stands in its place as the spiritual Israel.56
This issue is too complex to explore in depth here, but I do want to make a few important points. I believe the New Covenant was made with Israel and continues to apply to Israel. Let us never forget that God loves Israel, which is “precious” and “honored” in His eyes (Isaiah 43:4). In addition, when God articulates these promises through Ezekiel, He is quite explicit that He will fulfill the promises for the Israelites (Ezek. 36:16–20). Furthermore, while some of the covenant’s promises are spiritual in nature (e.g., the provision of a new heart and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit) and apply to Gentiles and Jews alike, other promises are material and specific to the nation of Israel.57
As Renald Showers observes, these promises are not being fulfilled in connection to the Church. For example, one of the promises is that the future nation will no longer be threatened by other nations. Obviously, the Church has been persecuted throughout history and continues to be to this day. As such, it is clear that those promises have not yet been fulfilled, but will be in the future with the nation of Israel. Paul adds heft to this idea, explaining that the New Covenant promises would be fulfilled for Israel at Christ’s second coming (Romans 11:25–29). Take special note how Paul says that God will not change His mind on this: “For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). The teachings of the Old Testament are wholly consistent with this notion (Isaiah 59:20–21; Jer. 32:37–44, 50:4–5; Ezek. 36:22–38, 37:21–28).58
In addition, I am convinced that Christian believers, including Jewish converts to Christianity, are also beneficiaries of God’s promises of spiritual blessings, initially through the Abrahamic Covenant, even though the Old Testament is silent regarding the relationship between the Church and the New Covenant.59 Note that when Jesus institutes the service of Communion He declares, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Paul quotes Jesus on this point, thereby confirming that the Church is under the New Covenant umbrella.60 Taken in context, Jesus is saying that the New Covenant promised to Israel by the Old Testament prophets also applies to the Church, and it would be commemorated by the Communion service. He speaks of the New Covenant, as if there were only one such covenant, and that makes sense because God, through His Old Testament prophets, only promised one New Covenant. At the time He makes the statement, Jesus is surrounded by Jewish men who would understand Him to be referring to that one and only New Covenant.61
Renald Showers offers another reason to conclude that the same New Covenant applies to the Church, which is that the New Testament applies the very same spiritual blessings to believers who make up the Church. Believers are spiritually regenerated (Titus 3:5), and they receive forgiveness of their sins (Eph. 1:7, 4:32; Col. 1:14; John 2:12), receive an indwelling of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), and receive a new nature because the Law is written on their hearts (Rom. 7:22; 2 Cor. 3:3; 2 Peter 1:4).62 One last and compelling reason to believe the New Covenant blessings apply to the Church is that Paul states that the apostles of the Church are “ministers of a new covenant” (2 Cor. 3:6).63
Since many—probably most—Covenant theologians believe the Church has become the spiritual Israel and replaced literal Israel as the beneficiary of the New Covenant, it follows that they believe there never will be a fulfillment of the New Covenant for literal Israel. But Dispensationalists see no conflict between the New Covenant applying to the Church now, and the notion that the fulfillment of its promises for Israel will occur in the future. “The Abrahamic Covenant’s promise that all nations would be blessed through its provisions (Gen. 12:3) does not in any way annul the other provisions (e.g., the land promise) to Abraham and his physical descendants,” claims Dr. Norman Geisler. “Jesus inaugurated a spiritual (mystery) form of the kingdom in Matthew 13; there is still a political messianic form to come.”64 When it’s all said and done, this is the crux of the disagreement between Dispensationalists and Covenant theologians on the New Covenant—the former believe its promises are still applicable to Israel and the latter do not.65
In summary, most conservative theologians, including both Dispensationalists and Covenant theologians, believe that many of the promises of the New Covenant apply to the Church, whether or not those promises are a result of the Church becoming a “spiritual Israel” (Covenant view), or a result of a separate new covenant (some Dispensationalists), or of the Church being grafted into the blessings of the New Covenant (most Dispensationalists). Concerning this “grafting in,” Paul warns the Gentiles not to be arrogant about the unbelief of the Jews: “But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you” (Romans 11:17–18).
All camps also seem to agree that the New Covenant has not been fulfilled by Israel, though they disagree over whether it ever will. Generally speaking, Dispensationalists believe it will and Covenant theologians believe it will not.
If you want to clear your head of all the confusion, don’t worry about Dispensationalist or Covenant theology—let the theologians debate that among themselves. Just understand that almost all Bible-believers agree that the spiritual promises contained in the New Covenant (as opposed to the material and national ones that by their terms could only apply to Israel) apply to the Church—to believers in Jesus Christ—whether or not they think there is a separate new covenant applying to them. And how could we believe otherwise, as the spiritual promises are nothing less than the Gospel itself: forgiveness of sins, spiritual regeneration, and indwelling of the Holy Spirit for all who place their saving faith in Jesus Christ? Thus we see the exquisite unity of the Bible from the beginning of the Old Testament through the end of the New in the outworking of God’s promise-plan through His progressive covenant promises in His salvation history. The Bible, from first to last, is about our Savior, Jesus Christ!
God’s covenants constitute a progressive thread running through the Bible and through God’s salvation history that leads to and achieves finality in Jesus Christ. “The heart of this consummative realization consists of a single person,” says O. Palmer Robertson. “As fulfiller of all the messianic promises, he achieves in himself the essence of the covenantal principle: ‘I shall be your God and you shall be my people.’ He therefore may be seen as the Christ who consummates the covenant.”66 Note that this echoes my earlier argument that the primary element underlying all the covenants—a golden thread that God has woven into His Word from beginning to end—is God’s promise, “I will be their God and they shall be my people.”
Robertson continues, “In this single person all of God’s purposes find climactic fulfillment. He is the head of God’s kingdom and the embodiment of God’s covenant. . . . Because the various strands of hope for redemption converge on this single person, he becomes the unifying focus of all Scripture. . . . In the person of Jesus Christ, the covenants of God achieve incarnational unity. . . . He himself guarantees the unity of the covenants, because he himself is the heart of each of the various covenantal administrations.”67
Now that we have a good grasp of the relationship between the various biblical covenants and Jesus Christ, in the next chapter we’ll take a look at some of the other signs of Jesus—some big, some small—that fill the pages of the Old Testament.