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The New Wineskin - Understanding the New Covenant
In Jesus‘ exchange with the woman at Jacob’s well, He tells her that there was coming a time when true worshippers will worship God in spirit and in truth. In other words, He was telling her that there was going to be a change in how we worship God. Jesus shows us in this exchange that worship would no longer be confined to any particular physical location.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when you shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.
But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him.
God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:21, 23,24).
We are shown that because of Jesus’ sacrifice, the believer is enabled to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit and we become the temple of God. - Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? (I Corinthians 3:16).
In the inner sanctuary of our beings, we can retreat into God’s presence and worship Him at any moment of the day. This relationship is what God desires and is one of the goals of the New Covenant.
We worship God in and through the Holy Spirit through which He indwells us, and in the Truth, which is Jesus who is “…The way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except by Me” (John 14:6). Jesus enables us to have this relationship with God through faith in His death and resurrection from the dead, which is the fulfillment of the plan of redemption that God established for the human race before the foundation of the world.
Under the New Covenant, the Old Covenant is transformed from a book of rules to follow, into a guide for successful living. We recognize that the requirements of the law are there for the health and welfare of believers and all people.
We are no longer under the law for our justification. It is the condemnation that has been done away with. We are now free to study the entire counsel of God’s word in the light of the New Covenant’s revelation, so we may continue to grow and be furnished in righteousness, as the Apostle Paul instructed Timothy. –
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. (II Timothy 3:16,17).
As Jesus’ said, our righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees who were outwardly righteous, but inwardly they were a graveyard of dry, lifeless bones (Matthew 23:27).
In the New Covenant the emphasis is on inner reformation, not outward religiosity. The New Covenant takes us up to a higher level and is all about the reformation of the inner man, the moral law written on the heart.
The transformed life results in selfless service to others which is exemplified in the sheep of Matthew 25. They are being commended not for any legalistic adherence to the law, but for outwardly expressing God’s law of love.
What God is seeking for in the life of the believer is fully developed fruits of the spirit. These fruits are Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control (Galatians 5:22,23). These fruits can only be obtained and developed by abiding in the vine of Christ (John 15) who produces the fruit in the believer’s life over time, by His Holy Spirit. Without Him we can do nothing (John 15:5).
Love is the fulfilling of the law, which is the internalized law in the heart prophesied by Jeremiah. –
Behold, the days come, says 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 broke, although I was an husband to them, says the LORD:
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, says 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 neighbor, 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, says the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
Everyone who receives this new covenant will “Know the Lord.” Under this Covenant is also promised the forgiveness of sins. “I will remember their sin no more.”
This New Covenant was prophesied throughout the Old Covenant through multitudes of foreshadows and typologies. Jeremiah’s prophecy was intended to be a comfort to the Lord’s people who were about to endure a brutal captivity. It was a promise of God’s love, restoration and forgiveness. He vows His devotion to His people even though they must endure the consequences of their sins.
Adam and Eve were clothed with the symbolic skins of the first sacrifice and received God’s forgiveness, but they were still expelled from their garden paradise. Likewise, all of us must also endure the consequences of our sins.
The prophet Jeremiah labored for God at a time when God’s people had fallen into gross apostasy. While they had violated the ordinances of the law, God was more concerned with their behavior toward each other. They were outwardly religious, but as God revealed to Jeremiah, His people showed no evidence in their lives that they knew God. And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not Me, says the LORD (Jeremiah 9:3).
It is in the wake of these words of admonishment, that God tells them that unless they repent they would go into a 70 year captivity in Babylon. At the end of that time He would restore them to their land and He would make a new covenant with them (Jere. 31:31-34, 32:39,40, 24:7).
This covenant would be instigated by the Messiah, the “messenger of the covenant” (Malachi 3:1), who was given “for a covenant of the people.” -
“I the LORD have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand, and keep you, and give you for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles” (Isaiah 42:6).
“The Messenger of the Covenant” would come when the new temple was built. We know from Daniel’s prophecies that the Messiah would be killed and the city would be destroyed again (Daniel 9:26). Jesus fulfilled that prophecy. He came, and was killed before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.
When God said He was going to forgive their sins under the New Covenant, He was telling them prophetically that their current system of animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins was going to be changed. And indeed it was, when the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, forty years after Jesus’ instigated the New Covenant. During that forty year period, (the same amount of years the Hebrews were tried in the wilderness) the Jews were given a chance to hear and receive the Gospel before their old system was finally eradicated.
The prophecy of the New Covenant that was given by Jeremiah was in relation to his prophecy of the Israelite’s captivity. The Israelites had broken all of the previous covenants that God had made with them. The New Covenant was promised by God to restore the relationship with Him that had been broken. This new “Everlasting Covenant” also contained within it a promise of eternal life, …”for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (from Jeremiah 31:34).
“Incline your ear, and come to Me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David (Isaiah 55:3). “Hear and your soul shall live.” Unless this covenant was received, this life could not be accessed.
Under the Old Covenant it was believed that salvation could only be obtained by diligently keeping all the commandments and ordinances of the law. When the people failed, forgiveness was obtained by repentance and animal sacrifices. Those sacrifices were designed to be foreshadows of the last sacrifice for the remission of sins which is achieved for us by the Messiah Jesus.
Through faith in His death and resurrection from the dead, the Holy Spirit is released into us. The Lord then operates through His Holy Spirit in us to change us into the people He wants us to be, formed after the image of His Son, who in turn is the image of the One True God of Israel. Thus the law is internalized, written on our hearts, the inward man.
As we respond to the inner workings of God through His Spirit in us, we are gradually changed into the people He wants us to become.
Under the New Covenant, We are justified by Jesus’ sacrifice for us and not by our own righteousness or religious effort. Our salvation is a free gift and we are saved and justified by faith alone. Jesus was specific in telling us that there would be a change in the covenants. The old wine skins of legalistic self- effort would be replaced by the New Wineskins of a transformed spirit-led life.
The moral law is kept naturally by following Jesus, who leads us away from sin, not into it.
Under the New Covenant, the law is not done away with, it is expressed as we are transformed into the image of Jesus, the people God has ordained us to become.
God said, “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them” (Isaiah 42:1).
He has told us of those new things. And with joy, those who have received the salvation given to us by accepting the New Covenant can sing a new song.
O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth (Psalm 96:1). Copyright 2022 by H.D. Shively
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