The Two Covenants.
Murray, Andrew.
INTRODUCTION.
IT is often said that the great aim of the preacher ought to be to translate Scripture truth from its Jewish form into the language and the thought of the nineteenth century, and so to make it intelligible and acceptable to our ordinary Christians. It is to be feared that the experiment will do more harm than good. In the course of the translation the force of the original is lost. The scholar who trusts to translations will never become a master of the language he wants to learn. A race of Christians will be raised up, to whom the language of G.o.d"s Word, and with that the G.o.d who spoke it, will be strange. In the Scripture words not a little of Scripture truth will be lost. For the true Christian life nothing is so healthful and invigorating as to have each man come and study for himself the very words in which the Holy Ghost has spoken.
One of the words of Scripture, which is almost going out of fashion, is the word Covenant. There was a time when it was the keynote of the theology and the Christian life of strong and holy men. We know how deep in Scotland it entered into the national life and thought. It made mighty men, to whom G.o.d, and His promise and power were wonderfully real. It will be found still to bring strength and purpose to those who will take the trouble to bring all their life under control of the inspiring a.s.surance that they are living in covenant with a G.o.d who has sworn faithfully to fulfil in them every promise He has given.
This book is a humble attempt to show what exactly the blessings are that G.o.d has covenanted to bestow on us; what the a.s.surance is the Covenant gives that they must, and can, and will be fulfilled; what the hold on G.o.d Himself is which it thus gives us; and what the conditions are for the full and continual experience of its blessings. I feel confident that if I can lead any to listen to what G.o.d has to say to them of His Covenant, and to deal with Him as a Covenant G.o.d, it will bring them strength and joy: Not long ago I received from one of my correspondents a letter with the following pa.s.sage in it:a""I think you will excuse and understand me when I say there is one further note of power I would like so much to have introduced into your next book on Intercession. G.o.d Himself has, I know, been giving me some direct teaching this winter upon the place the New Covenant is to have in intercessory prayer a I know you believe in the Covenant, and the Covenant rights we have on account of it. Have you followed out your views of the Covenant as they bear upon this subject of intercession? Am I wrong in coming to the conclusion that we may come boldly into G.o.d"s presence, and not only ask, but claim a Covenant right through Christ Jesus to all the spiritual searching, and cleansing, and knowledge, and power promised in the three great Covenant promises? If you would take the Covenant and speak of it as G.o.d could enable you to speak, I think that would be the quickest way the Lord could take to make His Church wake up to the power He has put into our hands in giving us a Covenant. I would be so glad if you would tell G.o.d"s people that they have a Covenant." Though this letter was not the occasion of the writing of the book, and our Covenant rights have been considered in a far wider aspect than their relation to prayer, I am persuaded that nothing will help us more in our work of intercession, than the entrance for ourselves personally into what it means that we have a Covenant G.o.d.
My one great desire has been to ask Christians whether they are really seeking to find out what exactly G.o.d wants them to be, and is willing to make them. It is only as they wait, "that the mind of the Lord may be showed them," that their faith can ever truly see, or accept, or enjoy what G.o.d calls "His salvation." As long as we expect G.o.d to do for us what we ask or think, we limit Him. When we believe that as high as the heavens are above the earth, His thoughts are above our thoughts, and wait on Him as G.o.d to do unto us according to His Word, as He means it, we shall be prepared to live the truly supernatural, heavenly life the Holy Spirit can work in usa"the true Christ life.
May G.o.d lead every reader into the secret of His presence, and "show him His Covenant."
ANDREW MURRAY.
WELLINGTON, SOUTH AFRICA,.
1st November 1898.
CHAPTER I.
A Covenant G.o.d.
"Know therefore that the Lord thy G.o.d, He is G.o.d, the faithful G.o.d, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments."-DEUT. vii. 9.
MEN often make covenants. They know the advantages to be derived from them. As an end of enmity or uncertainty, as a statement of services and benefits to be rendered, as a security for their certain performance, as a bond of amity and goodwill, as a ground for perfect confidence and friendship, a covenant has often been of unspeakable value.
In His infinite condescension to our human weakness and need, there is no possible way in which men pledge their faithfulness, that G.o.d has not sought to make use of, to give us perfect confidence in Him, and the full a.s.surance of all that He, in His infinite riches and power as G.o.d, has promised to do to us. It is with this view He has consented to bind Himself by covenant, as if He could not be trusted. Blessed is the man who truly knows G.o.d as his Covenant G.o.d; who knows what the Covenant promises him; what unwavering confidence of expectation it secures, that all its terms will be fulfilled to him; what a claim and hold it gives him on the Covenant-keeping G.o.d Himself. To many a man, who has never thought much of the Covenant, a true and living faith in it would mean the transformation of his whole life. The full knowledge of what G.o.d wants to do for him; the a.s.surance that it will be done by an Almighty Power; the being drawn to G.o.d Himself in personal surrender, and dependence, and waiting to have it done; all this would make the Covenant the very gate of heaven. May the Holy Spirit give us some vision of its glory.
When G.o.d created man in His image and likeness, it was that he might have a life as like His own as it was possible for a creature to live.
This was to be by G.o.d Himself living and working all in man. For this man was to yield himself in loving dependence to the wonderful glory of being the recipient, the bearer, the manifestation of a Divine life.
The one secret of man"s happiness was to be a trustful surrender of his whole being to the willing and the working of G.o.d. When sin entered, this relation to G.o.d was destroyed; when man had disobeyed, he feared G.o.d and fled from Him. He no longer knew, or loved, or trusted G.o.d.
Man could not save himself from the power of sin. If his redemption was to be effected, G.o.d must do it all. And if G.o.d was to do it in harmony with the law of man"s nature, man must be brought to desire it, to yield his willing consent, and entrust himself to G.o.d. All that G.o.d wanted man to do was, to believe in Him. What a man believes, moves and rules his whole being, enters into him, and becomes part of his very life. Salvation could only be by faith: G.o.d restoring the life man had lost; man in faith yielding himself to G.o.d"s work and will. The first great work of G.o.d with man was to get him to believe. This work cost G.o.d more care and time and patience than we can easily conceive. All the dealings with individual men, and with the people of Israel, had just this one object, to teach men to trust Him. Where He found faith He could do anything. Nothing dishonoured and grieved Him so much as unbelief. Unbelief was the root of disobedience and every sin; it made it impossible for G.o.d to do His work. The one thing G.o.d sought to waken in men by promise and threatening, by mercy and judgment, was faith.
Of the many devices of which G.o.d"s patient and condescending grace made use to stir up and strengthen faith, one of the chief wasa"the Covenant. In more than one way G.o.d sought to effect this by His Covenant. First of all, His Covenant was always a revelation of His purposes, holding out, in definite promise, what G.o.d was willing to work in those with whom the Covenant was made. It was a Divine pattern of the work G.o.d intended to do in their behalf, that they might know what to desire and expect, that their faith might nourish itself with the very things, though as yet unseen, which G.o.d was working out. Then, the Covenant was meant to be a security and guarantee, as simple and plain and humanlike as the Divine glory could make it, that the very things which G.o.d had promised would indeed be brought to pa.s.s and wrought out in those with whom He had entered into covenant. Amid all delay and disappointment, and apparent failure of the Divine promises, the Covenant was to be the anchor of the soul, pledging the Divine veracity and faithfulness and unchangeableness for the certain performance of what had been promised. And so the Covenant was, above all, to give man a hold upon G.o.d, as the Covenant-keeping G.o.d, to link him to G.o.d Himself in expectation and hope, to bring him to make G.o.d Himself alone the portion and the strength of his soul.
Oh that we knew how G.o.d longs that we should trust Him, and how surely His every promise must be fulfilled to those who do so! Oh that we knew how it is owing to nothing but our unbelief that we cannot enter into the possession of G.o.d"s promises, and that G.o.d cannota"yes, cannota"do His mighty works in us, and for us, and through us! Oh that we knew how one of the surest remedies for our unbeliefa"the divinely chosen cure for ita"is the Covenant into which G.o.d has entered with us! The whole dispensation of the Spirit, the whole economy of grace in Christ Jesus, the whole of our spiritual life, the whole of the health and growth and strength of the Church, has been laid down and provided for, and secured in the New Covenant. No wonder that, where that Covenant, with its wonderful promises, is so little thought of, its plea for an abounding and unhesitating confidence in G.o.d so little understood, its claim upon the faithfulness of the Omnipotent G.o.d so little tested; no wonder that Christian life should miss the joy and the strength, the holiness and the heavenliness which G.o.d meant and so clearly promised that it should have.
Let us listen to the words in which G.o.d"s Word calls us to know, and worship, and trust our Covenant-keeping G.o.da"it may be we shall find what we have been looking for: the deeper, the full experience of all G.o.d"s grace can do in us. In our text Moses says: "Know therefore that the Lord thy G.o.d, He is G.o.d, the faithful G.o.d, which keepeth covenant with them that love Him." Hear what G.o.d says in Isaiah: "The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall My covenant of peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." More sure than any mountain is the fulfilment of every Covenant promise. Of the New Covenant, in Jeremiah, G.o.d speaks: "I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me." The Covenant secures alike that G.o.d will not turn from us, nor we depart from Him: He undertakes both for Himself and us.
Let us ask very earnestly whether the lack in our Christian life, and specially in our faith, is not owing to the neglect of the Covenant. We have not worshipped nor trusted the Covenant-keeping G.o.d. Our soul has not done what G.o.d called us toa""to take hold of His Covenant," "to remember the Covenant"; is it wonder that our faith has failed and come short of the blessing? G.o.d could not fulfil His promises in us. If we will begin to examine into the terms of the Covenant, as the t.i.tle-deeds of our inheritance, and the riches we are to possess even here on earth; if we will think of the certainty of their fulfilment, more sure than the foundations of the everlasting mountains; if we will turn to the G.o.d who has engaged to do all for us, who keepeth covenant for ever, our life will become different from what it has been; it can, and will be, all that G.o.d would make it.
The great lack of our religion isa"we need more of G.o.d. We accept salvation as His gift, and we do not know that the only object of salvation, its chief blessing, is to fit us for, and bring us back to, that close intercourse with G.o.d for which we were created, and in which our glory in eternity will be found. All that G.o.d has ever done for His people in making a covenant was always to bring them to Himself as their chief, their only good, to teach them to trust in Him, to delight in Him, to be one with Him. It cannot be otherwise. If G.o.d indeed be nothing but a very fountain of goodness and glory, of beauty and blessedness, the more we can have of His presence, the more we conform to His will, the more we are engaged in His service, the more we have Him ruling and working all in us, the more truly happy shall we be. If G.o.d indeed be thereby Owner and Author of life and strength, of holiness and happiness, and can alone give and work it in us, the more we trust Him, and depend and wait on Him, the stronger and the holier and the happier we shall be. And that only is a true and good religious life, which brings us every day nearer to this G.o.d, which makes us give up everything to have more of Him. No obedience can be too strict, no dependence too absolute, no submission too complete, no confidence too implicit, to a soul that is learning to count G.o.d Himself its chief good, its exceeding joy.
In entering into covenant with us, G.o.d"s one object is to draw us to Himself, to render us entirely dependent upon Himself, and so to bring us into the right position and disposition in which He can fill us with Himself, His love, and His blessedness. Let us undertake our study of the New Covenant, in which, if we are believers, G.o.d is at this moment living and walking with us, with the honest purpose and surrender, at any price, to know what G.o.d wishes to be to us, to do in us, and to have us be and do to Him. The New Covenant may become to us one of the windows of heaven through which we see into the face, into the very heart, of G.o.d.
Chapter II.
The Two Covenants: Their Relation.
"It is written, that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondmaid, and one by the freewoman. Howbeit, the one by the bondmaid is born after the flesh; but the son by the freewoman is born through promise. Which things contain an allegory: for these women are two covenants." -GAL.
iv. 22-24.
THERE are two covenants, one called the Old, the other the New. G.o.d speaks of this very distinctly in Jeremiah, where He says: "The days come, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not after the covenant I made with their fathers" (Jer. x.x.xi.). This is quoted in Hebrews, with the addition: "In that He saith a new covenant, He hath made the first old." Our Lord spoke Himself of the New Covenant in His blood. In His dealings with His people, in His working out His great redemption, it has pleased G.o.d that there should be two covenants.
It has pleased Him, not as an arbitrary appointment, but for good and wise reasons, which made it indispensably necessary that it should be so, and no otherwise. The clearer our insight into the reasons, and the Divine reasonableness, of there thus being two covenants, and into their relation to each other, the more full and true can be our own personal apprehension of what the New Covenant is meant to be to us.
They indicate two stages in G.o.d"s dealing with man; two ways of serving G.o.d, a lower or elementary one of preparation and promise, a higher or more advanced one of fulfilment and possession. As that in which the true excellency of the second consists is opened up to us, we can spiritually enter into what G.o.d has prepared for us. Let us try and understand why there should have been two, neither less nor more.
The reason is to be found in the fact that, in religion, in all intercourse between G.o.d and man, there are two parties, and that each of these must have the opportunity to prove what their part is in the Covenant. In the Old Covenant man had the opportunity given him to prove what He could do, with the aid of all the means of grace G.o.d could bestow. That Covenant ended in man proving his own unfaithfulness and failure. In the New Covenant, G.o.d is to prove what He can do with man, all unfaithful and feeble as he is, when He is allowed and trusted to do all the work. The Old Covenant was one dependent on man"s obedience, one which he could break, and did break (Jer. x.x.xi. 32). The New Covenant was one which G.o.d has engaged shall never be broken; He Himself keeps it and ensures our keeping it: so He makes it an Everlasting Covenant.
It will repay us richly to look a little deeper into this. This relation of G.o.d to fallen man in covenant is the same as it was to unfallen man as Creator. And what was that relation? G.o.d proposed to make a man in His own image and likeness. The chief glory of G.o.d is that He has life in Himself; that He is independent of all else, and owes what He is to Himself alone. If the image and likeness of G.o.d was not to be a mere name, and man was really to be like G.o.d in the power to make himself what he was to be, he must needs have the power of free will and self-determination. This was the problem G.o.d had to solve in man"s creation in His image. Man was to be a creature made by G.o.d, and yet he was to be, as far as a creature could be, like G.o.d, self-made.
In all G.o.d"s treatment of man these two factors were ever to be taken into account. G.o.d was ever to take the initiative, and be to man the source of life. Man was ever to be the recipient, and yet at the same time the disposer of the life G.o.d bestowed.
When man had fallen through sin, and G.o.d entered into a covenant of salvation, these two sides of the relationship had still to be maintained intact. G.o.d was ever to be the first, and man the second.
And yet man, as made in G.o.d"s image, was ever, as second, to have full time and opportunity to appropriate or reject what G.o.d gave, to prove how far he could help himself, and indeed be self-made. His absolute dependence upon G.o.d was not to be forced upon him; if it was really to be a thing of moral worth and true blessedness, it must be his deliberate and voluntary choice. And this now is the reason why there was a first and a second covenant, that in the first, man"s desires and efforts might be fully awakened, and time given for him to make full proof of what his human nature, with the aid of outward instruction and miracles and means of grace, could accomplish. When his utter impotence, his hopeless captivity under the power of sin had been discovered, there came the New Covenant, in which G.o.d was to reveal how man"s true liberty from sin and self and the creature, his true n.o.bility and G.o.dlikeness, was to be found in the most entire and absolute dependence, in G.o.d"s being and doing all within him.
In the very nature of things there was no other way possible to G.o.d than this in dealing with a being whom He had endowed with the G.o.dlike power of a will. And all the weight this reason for the Divine procedure has in G.o.d"s dealing with His people as a whole, it equally has in dealing with the individual. The two covenants represent two stages of G.o.d"s education of man and of man"s seeking after G.o.d. The progress and transition from the one to the other is not merely chronological or historical; it is organic and spiritual. In greater or lesser degree it is seen in every member of the body, as well as in the body as a whole. Under the Old Covenant there were men in whom, by antic.i.p.ation, the powers of the coming redemption worked mightily. In the New Covenant there are men in whom the spirit of the Old still makes itself manifest. The New Testament proves, in some of its most important epistles,a"especially those to the Galatians, Romans, and Hebrews,a"how possible it is within the New Covenant still to be held fast in the bondage of the Old.
This is the teaching of the pa.s.sage from which our text is taken. In the home of Abraham, the father of the faithful, Ishmael and Isaac are both founda"the one born of a slave, the other of a free woman; the one after the flesh and the will of man, the other through the promise and the power of G.o.d; the one only for a time, then to be cast out, the other to be heir of all. A picture held up to the Galatians of the life they were leading, as they trusted to the flesh and its religion, making a fair show, and yet proved, by their being led captive to sin, to be, not of the free but of the bond woman. Only through faith in the promise and the mighty quickening power of G.o.d could they, could any of them, be made truly and fully free, and stand in the freedom with which Christ has made us free.
As we proceed to study the two covenants in the light of this and other scriptures, we shall see how they are indeed the Divine revelation of two systems of religious worship, each with its spirit or life-principle ruling every man who professes to be a Christian. We shall see how the one great cause of the feebleness of so many Christians is just this, that the Old Covenant spirit of bondage still has the mastery. And we shall see that nothing but a spiritual insight, with a wholehearted acceptance, and a living experience, of all the New Covenant engages that G.o.d will work in us, can possibly fit for walking as G.o.d would have us do.
This truth of there being two stages in our service of G.o.d, two degrees of nearness in our worship, is typified in many things in the Old Covenant worship; perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the difference between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place in the temple, with the veil separating them. Into the former the priests might always enter to draw near to G.o.d. And yet they might not come too near; the veil kept them at a distance. To enter within that, was death. Once a year the High Priest might enter, as a promise of the time when the veil should be taken away and the full access to dwell in G.o.d"s presence be given to His people. In Christ"s death the veil of the temple was rent, and His blood gives us boldness and power to enter into the Holiest of all and live there day by day in the immediate presence of G.o.d. It is by the Holy Spirit, who issued forth from that Holiest of all, where Christ had entered, to bring its life to us, and make us one with it, that we can have the power to live and walk alway with the consciousness of G.o.d"s presence in us.
It is thus not only in Abraham"s home that there were the types of the two covenants, the spirit of bondage and the spirit of liberty, but even in G.o.d"s home in the temple. The priests had not yet the liberty of access into the Father"s presence. Not only among the Galatians, but everywhere throughout the Church, there are to be found two cla.s.ses of Christians. Some are content with the mingled life, half flesh and half spirit, half self-effort and half grace. Others are not content with this, but are seeking with their whole heart to know to the full what the deliverance from sin and what the abiding full power for a walk in G.o.d"s presence is, which the New Covenant has brought and can give. G.o.d help us all to be satisfied with nothing less. [1]
[1] See Note A, on the Second Blessing.
Chapter III.
The First Covenant.
"Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice, and keep My covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me."a"EX. xix. 5.
"He declared unto you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform, even ten commandments."a"DEUT. iv. 13.i "If ye keep these judgments, the Lord thy G.o.d shall keep unto thee the covenant,"a"DEUT. vii. 12.
"I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, which My covenant they brake."a"JER. x.x.xi. 31, 32.
WE have seen how the reason for there being two Covenants is to be found in the need of giving the Divine and the human will, each their due place in the working out of man"s destiny. G.o.d ever takes the initiative. Man must then have the opportunity to do his part, and to prove either what he can do, or needs to have done for him. The Old Covenant was on the one hand indispensably necessary to waken man"s desires, to call forth his efforts, to deepen the sense of dependence on G.o.d, to convince of his sin and impotence, and so to prepare him to feel the need of the salvation of Christ. In the significant language of Paul, "The law was our schoolmaster unto Christ." "We were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith, which should afterwards be revealed." To understand the Old Covenant aright we must ever remember its two great characteristics a"the one, that it was of Divine appointment, fraught with much true blessing, and absolutely indispensable for the working out of G.o.d"s purposes; the other, that it was only provisional and preparatory to something higher, and therefore absolutely insufficient for giving that full salvation which man needs if his heart or the heart of G.o.d is to be satisfied.
Note now the terms of this first Covenant. "If ye will obey My voice and keep My covenant, ye shall be unto Me a holy nation." Or, as it is expressed in Jeremiah (vii. 23, xi. 4), "Obey My voice, and I will be your G.o.d." Obedience everywhere, especially in the Book of Deuteronomy, appears as the condition of blessing. "A blessing if ye obey" (xi. 27).
Some may ask how G.o.d could make a covenant of which He knew that man could not keep it. The answer opens up to us the whole nature and object of the Covenant. All education, Divine or human, ever deals with its pupils on the principlea"faithfulness in the less is essential to the attainment of the greater. In taking Israel into His training, G.o.d dealt with them as men in whom, with all the ruin sin had brought, there still was a conscience to judge of good and evil, a heart capable of being stirred to long after G.o.d, and a will to choose the good and to choose Himself. Before Christ and His salvation could be revealed and understood and truly appreciated, these faculties of man had to be stirred and wakened. The law took men into its training, and sought, if I may use the expression, to make the very best that could be made of them by external instruction. In the provision made in the law for a symbolical atonement and pardon, in all G.o.d"s revelation of Himself through priest and prophet and king, in His interposition in providence and grace, everything was done that He could do, to touch and win the heart of His people and to give force to the appeal to their self-interest or their grat.i.tude, their fear or their love.
Its work was not without fruit. Under the law, administered by the grace that ever accompanied it, there was trained up a number of men whose great mark was the fear of G.o.d, and a desire to walk blameless in all His commandments. And yet, as a whole, Scripture represents the Old Covenant as a failure. The law had promised life; but it could not give it (Deut. iv. 1; Gal. iii. 21). The real purpose for which G.o.d had given it was the very opposite: it was meant by Him as "a ministration of death." He gave it that it might convince man of his sin, and might so waken the confession of his impotence, and of his need of a New Covenant and a true redemption. It is in this view that Scripture uses such strong expressionsa""By the law is the knowledge of sin: that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may become guilty before G.o.d." "The law worketh wrath." "The law entered, that the offence might abound." "That sin by the commandment might appear exceeding sinful." "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." "We were kept under the law, shut up to the faith, which should afterwards be revealed." "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith." The great work of the law was to discover what sin was: its hatefulness as accursed of G.o.d; its misery, working temporal and eternal ruin; its power, binding man down in hopeless slavery; and the need of a Divine interposition as the only hope of deliverance.
In studying the Old Covenant we ought ever to keep in mind the twofold aspect under which we have seen that Scripture represents it. It was G.o.d"s grace that gave Israel the law, and wrought with the law to make it work out its purpose in individual believers and in the people as a whole. The whole of the Old Covenant was a school of grace, an elementary school, to prepare for the fulness of grace and truth in Christ Jesus. A name is generally given to an object according to its chief feature. And so the Old Covenant is called a ministration of condemnation and death, not because there was no grace in ita"it had its own glory (2 Cor. iii. 10-12)a"but because the law with its curse was the predominating element. The combination of the two aspects we find with especial clearness in Paul"s epistles. So he speaks of all who are of the works of the law as under the curse (Gal. iii. 10). And then almost immediately after he speaks of the law as being our benefactor, a schoolmaster unto Christ, into whose charge, as to a tutor or governor, we had been given, till the time appointed of the Father. We are everywhere brought back to what we said above. The Old Covenant is absolutely indispensable for the preparation work it had to do; utterly insufficient to work for us a true or a full redemption.
The two great lessons G.o.d would teach us by it are very simple. The one is the lesson of SIN, the other the lesson of HOLINESS. The Old Covenant attains its object only as it brings men to a sense of their utter sinfulness and their hopeless impotence to deliver themselves. As long as they have not learnt this, no offer of the New Covenant life can lay hold of them. As long as an intense longing for deliverance from sinning has not been wrought, they will naturally fall back into the power of the law and the flesh. The holiness which the New Covenant offers will rather terrify than attract them; the life in the spirit of bondage appears to make more allowance for sin, because obedience is declared to be impossible.
The other is the lesson of Holiness. In the New Covenant the Triune G.o.d engages to do all. He undertakes to give and keep the new heart, to give His own Spirit in it, to give the will and the power to obey and do His will. As the one demand of the first Covenant was the sense of sin, the one great demand of the New is faith that that need, created by the discipline of G.o.d"s law, will be met in a Divine and supernatural way. The law cannot work out its purpose, except as it brings a man to lie guilty and helpless before the holiness of G.o.d.
There the New finds him, and reveals that same G.o.d, in His grace accepting him and making him partaker of His holiness.
This book is written with a very practical purpose. Its object is to help believers to know that wonderful New Covenant of grace which G.o.d has made with them, and to lead them into the living and daily enjoyment of the blessed life it secures them. The practical lesson taught us by the fact that there was a first Covenant, that its one special work was to convince of sin, and that without it the New Covenant could not come, is just what many Christians need. At conversion they were convinced of sin by the Holy Spirit. But this had chiefly reference to the guilt of sin and, in some degree, to its hatefulness. But a real knowledge of the power of sin, of their entire and utter impotence to cast it out, or to work in themselves what is good, is what they did not learn at once. And until they have learned this, they cannot possibly enter fully into the blessing of the New Covenant. It is when a man sees that, as little as he could raise himself from the dead, can he make or keep his own soul alive, that he becomes capable of appreciating the New Testament promise, and is made willing to wait on G.o.d to do all in him.
Do you, my reader, feel that you are not fully living in the New Covenant, that there is still somewhat of the Old-Covenant spirit of bondage in you?a"do come, and let the Old Covenant finish its work in you. Accept its teaching, that all your efforts are failures. As, at conversion, you were content to fall down as a condemned, death-deserving sinner, be content now to sink down before G.o.d in the confession that, as His redeemed child, you still feel yourself utterly impotent to do and be what you see He asks of you. And begin to ask whether the New Covenant has not perhaps a provision you have never yet understood for meeting your impotence and giving you the strength to do what is well-pleasing to G.o.d. You will find the wonderful answer in the a.s.surance that G.o.d, by His Holy Spirit, undertakes to work everything in you. The longing to be delivered from the life of daily sinning, and the extinction of all hope to secure this by our efforts as Christians, will prepare us for understanding and accepting G.o.d"s new way of salvationa"Himself working in us all that is pleasing in His sight.
CHAPTER IV.
The New Covenant.
"But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their G.o.d, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."a"JER. x.x.xi. 33, 34.
ISAIAH has often been called the evangelical prophet, for the wonderful clearness with which he announces the coming Redeemer, both in His humiliation and suffering, and in the glory of the kingdom He was to establish. And yet it was given to Jeremiah, in this pa.s.sage, and to Ezekiel, in the parallel one, to foretell what would actually be the outcome of the Redeemer"s work and the essential character of the salvation He was to effect, with a distinctness which is nowhere found in the older prophet. In words which the New Testament (Hebrews viii.) takes as the divinely inspired revelation of what the New Covenant is of which Christ is the Mediator, G.o.d"s plan is revealed and we are shown what it is that He will do in us, to make us fit and worthy of being the people of which He is the G.o.d. Through the whole of the Old Covenant there was always one trouble: man"s heart was not right with G.o.d. In the New Covenant the evil is to be remedied. Its central promise is a heart delighting in G.o.d"s law and capable of knowing and holding fellowship with Him. Let us mark the fourfold blessing spoken of.
1. "I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts." Let us understand this well. In our inward parts, or in our heart, there are no separate chambers in which the law can be put, while the rest of the heart can be given up to other things; the heart is a unity. Nor are the inward parts and the heart like a house, which can be filled with things of an entirely different nature from what the walls are made of, without any living organic connection. No; the inward parts, the heart, are the disposition, the love, the will, the life. Nothing can be put into the heart, and especially by G.o.d, without entering and taking possession of it, without securing its affection and controlling its whole being. And this is what G.o.d undertakes to do in the power of His divine life and operation, to breathe the very spirit of His law into and through the whole inward being. "I will put it into their inward parts, and write it in their hearts." At Sinai the tables of the Covenant, with the law written on them, were of stone, as a lasting substance. It is easy to know what that means. The stone was wholly set apart for this one thinga"to carry and show this Divine writing. The writing and the stone were inseparably connected. And so the heart in which G.o.d gets His way, and writes His law in power, lives only and wholly to carry that writing, and is unchangeably identified with it. So alone can G.o.d realise His purpose in creation, and have His child of one mind and one spirit with Himself, delighting in doing His will. When the Old Covenant with the law graven on stone had done its work in the discovering and condemning of SIN, the New Covenant would give in its stead the life of obedience and true holiness of heart. The whole of the Covenant blessing centres in thisa"the heart being put right and fitted to know G.o.d: "I will give them an heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their G.o.d; for they shall return unto Me with their whole heart" (Jer. xxiv.
7).
2. "And I will be their G.o.d, and they shall be My people." Do not pa.s.s these words lightly. They occur chiefly in Jeremiah and Ezekiel in connection with the promise of the everlasting Covenant. They express the very highest experience of the Covenant relationship. It is only when His people learn to love and obey His law, when their heart and life are together wholly devoted to Him and His will, that He can be to them the altogether inconceivable blessing which these words express, "I will be your G.o.d." All I am and have as G.o.d shall be yours. All you can need or wish for in a G.o.d, I will be to you. In the fullest meaning of the word, I, the Omnipresent, will be ever present with you, in all My grace and love. I, the Almighty One, will each moment work all in you by My mighty power. I, the Thrice-Holy One, will reveal My sanctifying life within you. I will be your G.o.d. And ye shall be My people, saved and blessed, ruled and guided and provided for by Me, known and seen to be indeed the people of the Holy One, the G.o.d of glory. Only let us give our hearts time to meditate and wait for the Holy Spirit to work in us all that these words mean.
3. "And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord."
Individual personal fellowship with G.o.d, for the feeblest and the least, is to be the wonderful privilege of every member of the New Covenant people. Each one will know the Lord. That does not mean the knowledge of the mind,a"that is not the equal privilege of all, and that in itself may hinder the fellowship more than help it,a"but with that knowledge which means appropriation and a.s.similation, and which is eternal life. As the Son knew the Father because He was one with Him and dwelt in Him, the child of G.o.d will receive by the Holy Spirit that spiritual illumination which will make G.o.d to him the One he knows best, because he loves Him most and lives in Him. The promise, "They shall be all taught of G.o.d," will be fulfilled by the Holy Spirit"s teaching. G.o.d will speak to each out of His Word what he needs to know.
4. "For I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember their sin no more." The word for shows that this is the reason of all that precedes. Because the blood of this New Covenant was of such infinite worth, and its Mediator and High Priest in heaven of such Divine power, there is promised in it such a Divine blotting out of sin that G.o.d cannot remember it. It is this entire blotting out of sin that cleanses and sets us free from its power, so that G.o.d can write His law in our hearts, and show Himself in power as our G.o.d, and by His Spirit reveal to us His deep thingsa"the deep mystery of Himself and His love. It is the atonement and redemption of Jesus Christ wrought without us and for us, that has removed every obstacle and made it meet for G.o.d, and made us meet, that the law in the heart, and the claim on our G.o.d, and the knowledge of Him, should now be our daily life and our eternal portion.
Here we now have the Divine summary of the New Covenant inheritance.
The last-named blessing, the pardon of sin, is the first in order, the root of all. The second, having G.o.d as our G.o.d, and the third, the Divine teaching, are the fruit. The tree itself that grows on this root, and bears such fruit, is what is named firsta"the law in the heart. [2]
The central demand of the Old Covenant, Obey My voice, and I will be your G.o.d, has now been met. With the law written in the heart, He can be our G.o.d, and we shall be His people. Perfect harmony with G.o.d"s will, holiness in heart and life, is the only thing that can satisfy G.o.d"s heart or ours. And it is this the New Covenant gives in Divine power, "I will give them an heart to know Me; and I will be their G.o.d, and they shall be My people; for they shall turn to Me with their whole heart." It is on the state of the heart, it is on the new heart, as given by G.o.d, that the New Covenant life hinges.
But why, if all this is meant to be literally and exactly true of G.o.d"s people, why do we see so little of this life, experience so little in ourselves? There is but one answer: Because of your unbelief! We have spoken of the relation of G.o.d and man in creation as what the New Covenant is meant to make possible and real. But the law cannot be repealed that G.o.d will not compel. He can only fulfil His purpose as the heart is willing and accepts His offer. In the New Covenant all is of faith. Let us turn away from what human wisdom and human experience may say, and ask G.o.d Himself to teach us what His Covenant means. If we persevere in this prayer in a humble and teachable spirit, we can count most certainly on its promise: "They shall no more every man teach his neighbour: Know the Lord, for they shall all know Me." The teaching of G.o.d Himself, by the Holy Spirit, to make us understand what He says to us in His Word, is our Covenant right. Let us count upon it. It is only by a G.o.d-given faith that we can appropriate these G.o.d-given promises.
And it is only by a G.o.d-given teaching and inward illumination that we can see their meaning, so as to believe them. When G.o.d teaches us the meaning of His promises in a heart yielded to His Holy Spirit, then alone we can believe and receive them in a power which makes them a reality in our life.
But is it really possible, amid the wear and tear of daily life, to walk in the experience of these blessings? Are they really meant for all G.o.d"s children? Let us rather ask the question, Is it possible for G.o.d to do what He has promised? The one part of the promise we believea"the complete and perfect pardon of sin. Why should we not believe the other parta"the law written in the heart, and the direct Divine fellowship and teaching? We have been so accustomed to separate what G.o.d has joined together, the objective, outward work of His Son, and the subjective, inward work of His Spirit, that we consider the glory of the New Covenant above the Old to consist chiefly in the redeeming work of Christ for us, and not equally in the sanctifying work of the Spirit in us. It is owing to this ignorance and unbelief of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as the power through whom G.o.d fulfils the New Covenant promises, that we do not really expect them to be made true to us.
Do let us turn our hearts away from all past experience of failure, as caused by nothing but unbelief; do let us admit fully and heartily, what failure has taught us, the absolute impossibility of even a regenerate man walking in G.o.d"s law in his own strength, and then turn our hearts quietly and trustfully to our own Covenant G.o.d. Let us hear what He says He will do for us, and believe Him; let us rest on His unchangeable faithfulness and the surety of the Covenant, on His Almighty power and the Holy Spirit working in us; and let us give up ourselves to Him as our G.o.d. He will prove that what He has done for us in Christ is not one whit more wonderful than what He will do in us every day by the Spirit of Christ.
[2] On the law written in the heart, see Note B.
CHAPTER V.
The Two Covenantsa"in Christian Experience.
"These women are two covenants: one from Mount Sinai, bearing children unto bondage, which is Hagar. Now this Hagar answereth to Jerusalem that now is, for she is in bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. With freedom did Christ set us free. Stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage."-GAL. iv. 24-81, v. 1.