GOD’S New Covenant of Salvation Contains SPECIFIC Details!

[I could apologize for the length of this essay. But, I do a lot of studying to produce my essays and they are produced for those who like to study rather than casually read a few thoughts.]

 

GOD’S New Covenant of Salvation Contains SPECIFIC Details!

 

Here in the American democracy-influenced culture of individualism, when we think of a “relationship” with God the INDIVIDUAL person instinctively comes to mind. While our relationship with the God of the Bible must be very personally intimate in order to “know” Him, the God of both His Old and New Testaments very rarely formed a covenant directly with certain individuals: men like Noah (Genesis 9:11-16), Abraham (Genesis 17:1-11), and Jacob (Genesis 28:10-22) come to mind.  To the rest of us, any God-created relationship – no matter HOW personally intimate it will be for us – was a relationship in which you were incorporated into a PEOPLE who were given a covenant by God. He will draw you to Him individually, but bind you into His covenanted people and into what they share in common – into their “fellowship” (“koinonia”; Acts 2:42)!

 

And our Creator God of the Bible has only formed two such covenants and covenanted people, one through Moses, the “most humble” man on Earth (Numbers 12:3), and finally one through Jesus, His “ beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17).

 

With regard to that “OLD Covenant,” it is not difficult to discover the specific details of belief, behavior, promises, and attitude that God included within the Covenant that He created with Israel through Moses: Basically, you just browse throughout Exodus to Deuteronomy and take good notes – LOTS of good notes!

 

With regard to His New Covenant, because of Satan’s cunning over the centuries, it has tragically became the norm among virtually all of our current versions of Christendom’s “Christianity” to either lose the very sense of a corporate “Covenant” that has specific binding details (typically of Protestantism), OR to actually maintain a people living under a binding corporate discipline that does contain specific details, but one that has both added to and subtracted from the covenant details under which the apostolically founded churches lived (as in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy)! And, sadly, the former boast about their God-given liberty while the latter their God-given authority!

 

Under such horrible circumstances, one can only hope that God applies to sincere individual Christians the principle that He had used with those Athenians: “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked…”.  But we must also remember what He NEXT said to them: “… but now commands all men everywhere to REPENT…!” (Acts 17:30).

 

 

THE NEW COVENANT: WITH HIS SON, JESUS

“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you.  For this is My blood of the NEW COVENANT, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.  But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom’” (Matthew 26:26-29).

 

It was this “new” covenant – INCLUDING all of its details! – that Jesus created, and which severed them from their previous bondage – from the curses created by Adam and Eve that had caused Satan to become their (and our) “god” and “ruler” (2 Corinthians 4:4; John 12:31; Galatians 4:1-7).  It was this new covenant that joined them instead to Him as the “LAST” and “SECOND” Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45-47).  Becoming grafted into Him through this covenant – WITH all of its details! – enabled them to share in what He had accomplished: “death” to this world and its “god” and sharing in a “first fruits” version of His resurrection and glorification (Romans 8:23, James 1:18).  In the eyes of God, THEY were now GOD’s holy “people,” and “nation”:

“But you are A CHOSEN PEOPLE, A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now YOU are THE people of God” (1 Peter 2:9-10).

These were the VERY same titles originally given to old Israel (Exodus 19:5-6), and had been shifted over to them!  That is why His apostle Paul called them “THE Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16).

All of those who were later called “Christians” in Antioch (Acts 11:26) were initially Jews, because God had brought the Jews into being by way of Abraham’s loins for this very purpose: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, BECAUSE you have obeyed My voice” (Genesis 22:18).

He had formerly provided a “preparatory” covenant for these spiritual descendants of Abraham, and had now provided a “Kingdom of Heaven” Covenant for them through His well beloved Son, as He had said He was going to do (Jeremiah 31:31). That initial covenant was for the humans who were, as John the Baptist implied about himself and all of us, “from below” (John 3:31). The covenant that Jesus brought with Him “from above” was designed to turn us who are “from below” into people like He was going to become after His resurrection and glorification! So He brought down to this kidnapped planet the “way of Heaven” that would prepare US for His heavenly glory!

That former “old” covenant contained descriptions of the doctrines, commands, promises, and attitudes that were for those who were to be so often unpleasantly stretched into the condition necessary for His eventual “incarnational” coming to them in the “fullness of the times” (Galatians 4:4).  And, likewise, the New Covenant that Jesus brought with Him from Heaven also contained the descriptions of the doctrines, commands, promises, and attitudes needed for them to enter into His Way of Heaven!

And just as it would be ridiculous to think that all that was needed to be faithful to the Old Covenant was to embrace belief in monotheism, so also is it ridiculous to think that all we need to do in order to be faithful to His New Covenant is to embrace OUR versions of, “Love one another as I have loved you”! (John 15:12)! Jesus and His teachings cannot be separated from one another and then turned into some kind of religious “menu system”!

 

There is nothing vague in the NEW Covenant any more than there was under His earlier covenants! Just as the case with what God gave through Moses, EVERYTHING that Jesus teaches, promises, and commands is the basis for being faithful to His Covenants. For one example, your surrender and consecration to fulfill those detailed instructions in His famous “Sermon on the Mount” of Matthew 5-7 – in the seriousness and literalness in which HE taught and modeled them – determines whether you ARE in His “New Covenant”! The ancient churches had that commitment, and so must we! Many of us who assume that we are “members” of Jesus may turn out to be judged as mere “admirers” of Jesus!

 

Yes, the early apostolically founded “Holy Catholic churches” did teach and live out those detailed teachings of Jesus. It was in that DETAILED context of Christ’s teaching that Justin Martyr said around A.D. 155, “And let those who are not found living as He taught, be understood to be NO Christians, even though they profess with the lip the precepts of Christ; for not those who make profession, but those who do the works, shall be saved, as He said…” (First Apology, 16). And He was only repeating what Jesus Himself had said, and in the same specifically detailed context in which He had said it:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will go into the kingdom of heaven, but he who DOES the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). The specific context that Jesus had in mind meant the same as if He had said:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will go into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does NOT resist him who is evil, he who DOES turn the other cheek and goes the second mile to help your conqueror, and he who actually does love his enemies and blesses those who curse him, and he who DOES good to those who hate him, and who prays for those who mistreat him and persecute him… because THAT is the will of my Father who is in heaven!” Virtually ALL of contemporary Christendom’s religious denominations / churches / theological traditions are guilty of having converted His very specific way that leads to HIS version of “salvation” into the comfortably vague and abstract ways that we want Him to find acceptable! It rattles me deeply; does it rattle you?

 

The Evangelical Protestant requirement that you, “personally accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior” is something that the apostles and ancient Churches would certainly have agreed with; however, without requiring that confession to be joined to the specific context that Jesus and His apostles had in mind turns it into a deceptive SUBSTITUTE for His “new covenant.” What we post-Constantinian Christians have done is similar to the rewriting of the traditional marriage vows that is now common:

Traditional:

“I take you, N., to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better OR worse, for richer OR poorer, in sickness AND in health, to love AND cherish until DEATH parts us, according to GOD’S holy ordinance; and to this I PLEDGE you my faith.”

“I take you, N., to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and OBEY until DEATH parts us, according to GOD’S holy ordinance; and to this I give you my faith.”

In those vows some very specific commitments were made, broken only by death. Imagine what they had vowed being replaced by some vague promise, like “I promise to be a good wife/husband.” Such modified New Covenant vagueness can do more harm than good, because it so easily creates the impression that, “I have NOW been ‘born again’ through faith in Christ, just like Jesus and Peter described,”  when all that GOD heard you actually pledging was something like, “I want to pursue a few of the teachings of Jesus more seriously” – which turns you into an INQUIRER rather than a born-again Christian!

Even in that case, the God, “who desires all men to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4)), will continue to be faithful to continue to work with you in order to accomplish within you what He had accomplished within them – in the way He did so with me; but now He will also have to do the painful but needed tearing down of your house that had been built upon sand:

“But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be compared to a foolish man who built his house on the sand; and the rain fell, and the rivers rose, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall!” (Matthew 7:26-27).  That also is what He had to do with me, and “great was MY fall”!

 

It seems rather obvious to me that even in the apostolic and early churches not everyone was expected to know ALL of the detailed commands of Jesus at the time of their baptism after being “cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37). Some would know more than others, but all would be giving a “blank check” of ALL that they were to Jesus as their new “MASTER” – unconditional and unqualified surrender to His exclusive authority over them. But those same apostles who had done that “cutting” made sure to minister what may have been missing at the beginning:

“So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls.  They were CONTINUALLY DEVOTING THEMSELVES TO THE APOSTLES’ TEACHING and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:41-42). And those apostles of Jesus and “elders” were not men who provided things for you to “consider”: “… they have devoted themselves for service to the saints … be in SUBJECTION to such men and to everyone who helps in the work and labors” (1 Corinthians 16:15-16).

 

It is the team of local church presbyters/overseers (“bishops”)/pastors who have both the responsibility and the authority to teach and enforce those many covenant “specifics” – the many specific teachings, promises and commands that are part of the New Covenant commitment. It is done by their public teaching, personal counselling, and the disciplinary decisions about which they have come to a common mind.

 

BUT, the leaders of ANY church or “denomination” must not have the arrogance to think that the Lord whose mighty and omniscient Spirit inspired the writings of His holy apostles ever needed to have their writings and visions “expanded” or modified in any way, any more than we should assume that we have the right to use our genetic engineering skills to restructure in any way the human body that He designed for His first man and woman! What HE builds needs NO improvement or “adjustments” in order to “keep up with the times”! The writings of the New Testament are not REFLECTING any first century cultures – they are CREATING a supernaturally defined culture that is to endure until He returns to take personal charge! If we want to do what He was able to do THROUGH His first congregations then we have to teach, obey, and experience precisely what He had done TO them!

 

For example, we are under an apostolic command to “confess your sins to one another” (James 5:14-16), and will therefore be judged if we do NOT do so. When reformation leaders freed us from mandatory and regular confession to “PRIESTS” they also did a horrible job in getting us to continue the disciplined and regular confessing our sins in the way that James commanded! I do not know how many times I have heard Protestants actually BOAST that they only need to confess their sins to God!

But for those who want to be within His “New Covenant,” when we are confessing our “sinning,” against WHICH standard are we to judge about what constitutes our “sins”?  The answer, of course, is the standard created by each and every one of the commands that Jesus and His apostles taught and modeled! Therefore, we openly confess things like “I have NOT turned the other cheek in the following way…”, or “When that guy insulted me, I insulted him back!”, or “The Holy Spirit prompted me to give to that beggar, but I ignored His prompting”, or “the Japanese attacked the worldly nation in which I live, so I signed up to and agreed to destroy them with my nation’s worldly violence, rather than choose a non-violent way to help deal with any evil.” In other words, a true Christian confession of sins is required to go MUCH deeper than the violation of those “Ten Commandments.”

It was – and still is – ALL that He taught, promised, and commanded in the Gospels that is the standard that Jesus uses to determine what constitutes both our faithfulness and our UNfaithfulness! That standard WAS used for some centuries by His apostolically founded churches FAR more faithfully than it became after their alliance with the Roman Emperor and his pagan culture – but also FAR more faithfully than the vaguer and more worldly standard that the Protestant churches adopted after their various alliances with Protestant state leaders in the supposed “Reformation” of the sixteenth century! Of ALL of those churches, it was only the “Anabaptists,” who were hated and feared by all sides, who would have considered the use of any violence as a “sin” against God to be “confessed”!

In modifying the detailed New Covenant standards, the churches now acted as if it had the authority to overrule the divine authority that they CLAIM belongs to Jesus. That is similar to the World War Two Japanese military dictatorship claiming that their emperor was divine, but merely using that “divinity” to accomplish what THEY wanted to accomplish!  LIP SERVICE divinity!

 

CONCLUSION:

Having that so-called “personal relationship with Jesus,” which is the hallmark of Evangelical Protestantism’s evangelistic call, is a vague MANmade relationship with Jesus. God invites us ONLY into His well thought out COVENANT relationship, a covenant that has ALL of the specific doctrines, promises, and commands that He taught and that are recorded within the Gospels. Inextricably yoked together, they form a “package” that cannot be separated from the “person” of Jesus. There is no “accepting Christ as Lord and Savior” or having a “personal relationship with Jesus” without accepting ALL that He specifically taught, promised, and commanded. And it is the leaders of what He called “MY Church” that have the responsibility and authority to make sure that no one is accepted for baptism into union with Him who is not discipled into that “… faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:4). They have the authority and responsibility to teach, defend, and require that all of the members of His ecclesiastical “body” not teach anything other THAN that body of faith!

That body of “delivered” faith was originally created by the teaching that Jesus gave directly to His apostles, both during their three years of discipling “boot camp” and after His resurrection (Luke 24:45, Acts 1:3). He then “burned” into them all that He had taught them by that fiery Pentecostal Holy Spirit  They then created and “burned” new Christians,  raised up congregations, selected, trained, and ordained presbyters and teachers to teach and “contend earnestly” for that body of faith (Jude 1:3). God also raised up New Covenant prophets to function precisely in the same way that His Old Covenant prophets did (e.g., Agabus in Acts 11:27; 13:1-3, 32; 21:8-9), including being a check on the great authority of those leaders, so that they do NOT become what, in fact, they DID become after they had silenced the voice of prophecy in later centuries!

 

Individuals were NEVER permitted to decide for themselves what is being taught in those apostolic writings, nor was any idea of democracy ever within the mind of God for His church: “Unless the LORD builds the house,

they labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 127:1). Acts 15 describes how GOD’s church was created to deal with issues that arise within the People of God. Alas, no Protestant denomination has ever been able to figure out how to  restore that original authority within any of their churches! And the two groups that DO claim to possess that authority to speak in the name of Christ cannot seem to come to the same conclusions about issues that each of them believes to be essential to remain true to Christ in the way that the leaders could accomplish in Acts 15! They cannot share the Holy Eucharist with each other or accept the other’s leadership decisions as having any binding authority, making THEM to be the first divisive source of “denominational” Christianity!

David lamented over the death of his beloved Jonathan, “How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” The same can be said of what has happened to what Christ called “MY Church,” except that HIS church’s “weapons of war” were quite different weapons “… because the weapons of our warfare are not physical, but are powerful in God for demolishing strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

 

Our churches and church leaders that do not embrace CHRIST’S standard as specifically spelled out within the Gospels will be judged as embracing a later, man-made versions of “Christianity” and “church,” rather than the version brought to earth by Jesus and spread by His chosen and Spirit-led apostles! That is why James said, “My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment” (3:1).

If you do not have access to a denomination whose leaders are embracing all of those “specifics” contained within His New Covenant, then your task is to make sure that at least YOU are doing so! NONE of our official denominational documents or ecclesiastical councils decisions are going to be used when we look our Creator in the face! “The grass withers, the flower fades, [ecclesiastical documentation disappears,] But the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

 

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Reed Merino, M.Div.

ReedMerino.com

“Blueprint for a Revolution: Building Upon ALL of the New Testament”