Part 13 - Embracing the new (and better!) covenant

One of the big issues I faced in my understanding of the Bible was what I perceived to be an obvious difference between the way God related to humans in the Old Testament, and how God was revealed to humanity through the person of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. I found that my heart was saying “listen to Jesus not the voices of the Old Testament”. But I wasn’t sure how to handle this with conviction until I read Andy Stanley’s book Irresistible.

To understand the importance of Stanley’s writings in the journey I was walking, it will help if I give a bit of biblical background into the two major sections of the Bible - the Old and New Testament.

The words “testament” and “covenant” can be interchanged, so when one reads the “Old Testament” it’s the story of the Jewish people under the laws of Moses, also known as the Old Covenant. All the stories and poetry and laws in the Old Testament trace their authority back to the laws of Moses found in our first five books of the Old Testament, when the “Mosaic Covenant” was established. It wasn’t called the “Old Testament” until the Christian church emerged after the life of Jesus.

Five centuries before the time of Jesus, the prophet Jeremiah inspired his fellow Jews living in exile under the Babylonian empire. Hidden away in the large book containing his prophetic words is a revolutionary teaching about a coming time when God would initiate a new way of relating with people: a new covenant.  It’s found in Jeremiah 31:31-34 and I’ve included it below (from the New International Version).

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.

“It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.

“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.

“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

For years as a senior pastor I had come back to this passage in wonderment. To me Jeremiah was pointing to a day when the laws of the Mosaic (Old) Covenant governing religious and social conduct would no longer be needed. He pointed to a brand new way of relating to God in which the ways of God would be written in people’s minds and hearts - not on a scroll or in a book or even a collection of books such as the Bible. This passage pointed forward to a time when people could know the Lord in a better, more intimate way.

As someone who spent hours every week dedicated to teaching others how to “know the Lord”, this made me wonder. And it seemed Jesus knew this scripture, because when his earthly life was about to be taken from him, he said these words to his disciples at the Last Supper, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:20, NIV) Jesus was initiating the New Covenant promised nearly 500 years earlier. But if this was true, what should I do with the Old Covenant laws and regulations? What was I to do with all the writings of the Old Testament that used the Mosaic covenant as their authority?

I just kept wondering about this until in 2019 a couple different friends pointed me to the book Irresistible by Andy Stanley. Here Stanley takes readers through the entire story of the Bible, highlighting the ways God is depicted as speaking and acting in the Old Testament and contrasting it with the ways of Jesus and his teaching. Then Stanley makes the bold, even revolutionary, argument that Jesus, Peter, Paul, the first generation of Christ followers, and the author of the book of Hebrews all agree: the Old Covenant is over - the New Covenant has come. And, he argues, this New Covenant is vastly superior to the Old one it replaced. 

Stanley’s exposition of the scriptures comes to a climax with the reminder of the words of Hebrews 8:13. Just after reminding readers of the words from Jeremiah 31 quoted above, the author writes: “By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.”

As I read Stanley’s book I was convinced that what had been rolling around in my head for years was actually “biblical”. I did not need to somehow eliminate the contradictions so evident between the God of the Old Testament and the God represented by Jesus and his life and teachings. Jesus initiated the New Covenant. The New Covenant was summed up by Jesus in multiple places in the Gospels as “Love God with all you’ve got, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Then on the night before his death he added one more to his disciples: “Love each other the way I’ve loved you.”

If this was true, then the absolute test of whether I was following Christ would be the evidence of love in my life. It would not be my adherence to ancient moral, religious, or social codes. It would not be whether or not I could line up Bible verses to justify my actions or inactions. It would be love. Love that followed the example and the teaching of Jesus. 

I realized that instead of trying to solve mysteries of the Bible, I would do well to stick with what Jesus said were the most important commands. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love each other.

My mind and heart continued opening to a more beautiful story. A story that God loved all people everywhere. A story in which I do not have to manage other people’s beliefs and life practices, but I could learn from them. Through acts of love I could point people to the God who created them and who loves them. I could point them to Jesus, the initiator of this new and better way of relating to God, leaving behind the older understandings of God from the Old Testament. And this was exactly the message Jesus came to proclaim.

As Stanley points out, the angel who announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds outside Bethlehem summarized what was happening as “Good news of great joy for all people.” The gospel was always meant to be just that, and I was learning to really believe it myself.

Good news. Of great joy. For all people.

Coming Soon: the final part -This is me