CHAPTER SIX

THE PROMISED RELATIONSHIP:
A NEW-COVENANT PEOPLE

The work and person of Jesus Christ are at the very center of the New Testament, as we considered in the last chapter. When we move one step outward to our second concentric circle for understanding the New Testament, we find Christ’s people: Christ came for a people!

Because of sin, mankind, though created in the image of God, lost the ability to perfectly image God. Christ came and displayed that image once more. But not only that! He came to make a people for God, a special covenant people particularly called to reflect God’s image to all creation. We have seen that the “covenant” language in the Bible is not cold, legal language, but relational language. We have also seen that Jesus Christ uses this sort of language of Christians when he offers us the “new covenant in my blood”—words we recall when we partake of the Lord’s Supper. This new covenant signifies the new relationship that we Christians, God’s people, have with God.

Christ as a Mediator for His People

How did Christ accomplish this? At one point, Jesus says to his followers, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19). He was standing in the temple at the time, but he did not mean the building; he meant himself. In the New Testament, Jesus himself is the new temple. He is the new meeting place for God and his people. He is the mediator.

You see, Christ came not only to fulfill the Old Testament hope for Messiah as prophet and king; he came to fulfill the hope for a priest. Jesus our mediating priest grants us a new relationship with God by solving the riddle of the Old Testament which we saw at the close of chapter 4: how can the Lord “forgive wickedness” and yet “not leave the guilty unpunished”? When Jesus was nailed to the cross, the guilt of all who would ever repent and put their trust in him was punished. He received that punishment! He stood in for the guilty, so that the guilty might be forgiven. After his resurrection, Jesus used the Old Testament to teach these lessons:

Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. . . .

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:27, 45–47)

Christ’s suffering provides a way for us his people to be forgiven, which is exactly what the Lord had promised through the prophet Isaiah:

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,

yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the

punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isa. 53:4–6)

This is what Christ did! He was pierced. He was crushed. And he had our iniquities laid upon him. His own body provides the priestly sacrifice we need to stand in between God and us so that we might be God’s own people. As Jesus taught his disciples, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45; cf. Gal. 4:4–5; Philippians 2).

Christ as Substitute for His People

In giving himself, Christ combined an amazing strength and humility. One of the best portrayals of this occurs in Revelation 5. The apostle John is told to look and see the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He turns to see the Lion, but what does he behold? A Lamb. The message is not that there are two gods; the message is that the Lion is the Lamb. The Lion of Judah has become the Lamb slain for our sins. This is the story of our great God. He has become our sacrificial lamb—our substitute. And by acting as our substitute, he has purchased us, his church, with his own blood (Acts 20:28).

So Christ is the answer to the Old Testament’s riddle. And in Christ, the people are made holy. The very thing that God wanted of his people in the Old Testament, that he planned toward, that they never achieved on their own, God now has through Christ: a remnant, a nation, a people to praise him with lips and lives of holiness. He has a new-covenant people who are genuinely holy in Christ.

The Scriptures for Our Salvation and Holiness

When we open the New Testament, we find throughout its pages this all-important emphasis on salvation from sin to holiness. Paul tells the Ephesian Christians they have been saved (Eph. 2:8–9). He tells the Corinthian Christians they are being saved (1 Cor. 1:18). And he tells the Christians in Rome they shall be saved (Rom. 5:9). Christians are already counted as holy in Christ; we are being made holy even now; and someday, thanks to God, we will be holy in ourselves. The work of the kingdom of God has begun in us, and we look forward to its completion.

The New Testament paints the contrast between the world and the kingdom of God starkly. The world is marked by unbelief; the kingdom of God is marked by faith. The world is characterized by bondage and darkness; the covenant people of God enjoy freedom and light. The world knows only death; those belonging to the kingdom are promised eternal life. Hate and fear typify the first; love typifies the second. Apart from the covenant in Christ, our lives are marked by lawlessness. In Christ, we abide in God. The Scriptures have been given to the people of God so that they will perceive these contrasts, discover where salvation is found, and know what God’s judgment will entail. So our own church’s statement of faith (taken from the 1833 New Hampshire Confession) begins with the words:

Of The Scriptures: We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge us; and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the world, the true centre of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tried.

Books of the New Testament

Following after the Gospels, which focus on the identity of Jesus Christ, the rest of the New Testament helps define and fill out what it means for us to be the special covenant people of Christ. If you look back to the table of contents for the New Testament, you see the four Gospels. Then you see the book of Acts, which is really the transition from these Gospels to the books about living as God’s people. In Acts, the gospel expands outward from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and, beginning with the three missionary journeys of Paul, to the ends of the world. After Acts you see a number of books that are letters, and these letters describe what it means to live as God’s specially covenanted people.

Paul wrote the first thirteen of these letters. Originally a noted rabbi of the stricter sort of Jews, Paul was remarkably converted by God as he was traveling, in his words, to persecute some Christians “to their death” (Acts 22:4).

Following Paul’s letters are eight more, written by James, Peter, John, Jude, and one unknown author (Hebrews). As we read through all of these letters, we find that the promises made by God in the Old Testament have been kept in God’s new-covenant people. You see, God has desired to show himself not merely in Christ but in a community of people who live and love one another in a manner that displays God’s character to the world. If we are Christians, that is happening this very day in our churches!

Thy Kingdom Come

As Christians, we often pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10 KJV). Have you ever wondered what that means? Some people limit their hopes to those things they can achieve in their own strength. But Christianity has never been like that. As Christians, we have always put our hope in something that goes beyond what we can bring about by our own power. Peter writes in his second letter, “We are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:13). This kingdom come, this new heaven and new earth, this home of righteousness, points us to the fulfillment of our final and first hope: the whole world being put right. This is the third movement of God’s plan in the New Testament as it extends from Christ to his covenant people to the outermost circle—his whole creation. Let’s turn there now.