The Two Covenants

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be 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 God, and they shall be my people. 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: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Jer. 31:31-34.

THE first covenant was made with the people of Israel at the time of their departure out of Egypt. This covenant no longer exists. The new covenant long since took its place. But a very serious error prevails in the minds of many persons respecting the points of difference between these two covenants. The old covenant was made with the Hebrew people. For this reason, whatever entered into it is supposed to be Jewish. Thus the law of God is summarily set aside as Jewish; and thus might the God of Israel himself be discarded as a Jewish God. But the new covenant is held up to our admiration, because it is, as they say, not made with the Jews, but with the Gentiles. The old covenant belonged to the Jews, and with it we have no concern; the new covenant is made with the Gentiles, and we, as Gentiles, are interested in it.

How can men thus carelessly read the Scriptures? The language of inspiration is very explicit in stating that the new covenant is made with the same people that were the subjects of the old covenant. Thus Jeremiah, speaking in the name of the Lord, says: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah." And he further alludes to the fact that the new covenant is made with the Hebrew people when he adds: "Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt." And yet again he identifies the Hebrew people when he says: "This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel." And Paul quotes at length, in Hebrews 8, this entire statement of Jeremiah respecting the old and new covenants being severally made with the Hebrew people, and, as if this were not enough, he makes a statement in Rom. 9:4, 5, that exactly meets the case. Thus he says of the Hebrews: "Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever." Thus it appears that everything valuable God has given to the world through the instrumentality, or by the means, of the Hebrew people. These who choose to do so can venture to despise the law of God because given to the Jews, and to reject Christ because he came of the Jews. But one thing they cannot do; they cannot say, "We accept the new covenant because it pertains to the Gentiles, whereas the first covenant, and the law, etc., pertained to the Jews." No such distinction can be drawn. Both the covenants pertain to the Hebrew people, according to the explicit statement of Paul; and both are said by Jeremiah and Paul, or rather by the Spirit of inspiration speaking through them, to be made with Judah and Israel.

The fact being thus clearly established that the two covenants are both made with the Hebrews, it becomes a matter of interest to inquire into the reason of this thing. Why did God thus honor one nation and pass by all others? Undoubtedly there was a sufficient reason for this action, and that reason we shall find fully laid open to our view in the Bible. The first thing which Paul has enumerated as pertaining to the Hebrews, is "the adoption;" and if we can understand why God adopted this family, we shall readily understand why all the other things which he has named should also pertain to this people.

Know, then, that God did not adopt the family of Abraham as his first action in behalf of mankind. He attempted thus to make his own the family of the first man, Adam, the common head and father of the human race. But at the end of the antediluvian age, only eight persons remained upon the earth who feared the God of heaven. There was no alternative with him but to witness the extinction of piety in the earth, or else, by an awful lesson of judgment, to destroy every wicked man from the earth. And for this reason came the deluge. And now one family alone remains—the family of Noah, who is the second head of the human race. And this family, thus instructed in diviine truth, and thus warned by God's terrible judgments, might all have been, if they would, the heritage of the Almighty. But when men began again to multiply upon the earth, they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They forgot God. They plunged into sin. They united under Nimrod to build Babel. As they set God at defiance, he placed his curse upon them by confounding their language. Gen. 10 and 11. In the fourth century after the flood, only a handful of godly persons remained. Abraham, in the midst of this dense moral darkness, for even his immediate ancestors were idolators (Josh. 24:2), was so pre-eminent in virtue that he was called the friend of God. James 2:23. God said that he knew Abraham, that he would command his children and his household after him, and that they would keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment. Gen. 18:19. God had pledged himself at the time Noah and his family came forth from the ark, never again to drown the world. Gen. 9:15.

But he must do something to save this one faithful family from ruin, and, by means of them, to preserve in the earth some degree of true piety, and to retain among men a body of faithful worshipers. To do this, he adopts this family of Abraham, his friend, and separates them by circumcision and the rites of the ceremonial law, from all the rest of mankind. Thus Abraham became the third grand father of mankind. Not the father of the whole race, like Adam and Noah respectively; but the father of the people of God. This was the adoption.

He gave up the rest of mankind to idolatry and atheism, not because he was willing that they should perish, but because they would not hearken to his voice. Yet, though he thus adopted this one family, he did not so reject the rest of mankind that he did not make provision for any of them to be received among the Hebrew people if they would become circumcised and unite with the Hebrews in his service and worship. The adoption was just, and right, and necessary. By means of it God preserved his knowledge and his worship in the earth.

The Hebrew people being thus adopted, and by means of circumcision set apart from the rest of the world, found to their great profit that, though they were separated from the world, they were united to Him who made the heavens and the earth. They had the Lord for their God. They had much advantage "every way;" the adoption, the glory, the two covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, the promises, the fathers, and the Messiah. And yet Paul says their chief advantage was that the oracles of God were committed to them. Rom. 3:1, 2. It is not best to scorn the law of God because it was committed to the Hebrews. It is not best to despise the new covenant, as Jewish, because, like the old covenant, it is made with Israel. Nor is it best to reject Jesus as the Messiah, because he comes of that despised race; and finally, it is not best to have some other God besides the God of Israel. Our God, indeed, bears that title because he was for long ages worshiped by the Hebrews only, and by the Gentiles almost not at all. Yet that is not his fault, but ours. And so of all the sacred things committed to the Israelites. They were not Jewish, or Hebraic, but divine. In fact, we must have a part in these precious treasures which God gave to this people, for their preservation through the long period of Gentile darkness. They are of equal value to us, and we must share in them. "Salvation," said our Lord to the woman of Samaria, "is of the Jews." John 4:22.

The opening work in the establishment of the new covenant must, at least, be as early as the closing hours of the life of Christ. In the last memorable evening of his life, as he was about to be betrayed into the hands of the Jewish rulers, our Lord gave the cup, representing thereby his own blood, into the hands of his disciples, saying as he did it: "This cup is the new testament [covenant] in my blood, which is shed for you." Luke 22:20. Here is the first mention of the new covenant by our Lord. It is evident that the shedding of his blood, and the pouring out of his soul unto death, was that which should give validity to the covenant. Isa. 53; Heb. 9. The opening event, therefore, in the ratification of the new testament, or covenant, was on that memorable night in which the Saviour was betrayed, when he, the mediator of the new covenant on the one part, and the eleven apostles on the other part, as the representatives of the people of God, entered into solemn contract with each other. He, by giving them the cup representing his own blood, pledged himself to die for them; they by accepting it, thus pledged themselves to accept of salvation through his blood, and to fulfill the conditions connected therewith.

Indeed, we must date the preliminary acts in the establishment of the new covenant, from the opening of Christ's ministry. Our Lord began to preach at the close of Daniel's sixty-ninth week. Compare Dan. 9:25; Mark 1:14, 15. The remaining, or seventieth week, he was to employ in confirming the covenant with many; and in the midst of the week, he caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease, by being offered himself upon the cross, as their great antitype. Heb. 10:5-10. We must, therefore, assign the ministry of Christ to the introductory work of establishing the new covenant, or new testament. His preaching was a public announcement of its principles. He assigned to the law of God its just place. He laid down the keeping of the commandments as the condition of eternal life. Matt. 5:17-19; 1:16-19. He revealed the ground of pardon, viz: the sacrifice of his own life. Matt. 20:28. He also stated in distinct terms the conditions on which that sacrifice could benefit men; viz: faith and repentance. John 7:24; Mark 1:15. We cannot, therefore, deny that the ministry of Christ was the opening work in the establishing of the new covenant.