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God's
Covenants and The Law
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God
has maintained one eternal purpose in Christ which has been expressed
through a multiplicity of distinct historical covenants. Prominent
among these are those designated the Old Covenant (also known as the
Mosaic or First Covenant) and the New Covenant. The former, confined to
the people of Israel alone, was established while that nation was
assembled before Mt. Sinai and was later made obsolete through its
fulfillment by the life and death of Jesus the Messiah. The Old
Covenant was comprised wholly of shadows pointing ultimately to Jesus
and His body, the Church. Therefore, the age in which it remained
operative was at all times a period of immaturity as compared to the
age of fulfillment which was inaugurated with Christ's first advent.
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The Old Covenant, containing a
single, unified law code, was a legal, conditional covenant requiring
perfect and complete obedience of all those under it. On the one hand,
it promised life to all who obeyed it, and, on the other hand, it
pronounced a curse upon all its transgressors. Therefore, it
inescapably brought death to all who sought to be justified by it-- not
because of a deficiency in the law (which in itself is "holy, just, and
good"), but because of the sinful inability of those under its charge.
For this reason, it is variously described as a "killing letter," a
"ministry of death," and a "ministry of condemnation"-- its distinct
purpose being to illumine sin so as to make manifest the Israelites'
and, by implication, all men's need for a redeemer.
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In contrast to the Old Covenant,
the New Covenant (by virtue of Christ's perfect obedience to the law,
as well as His bearing of its curse) promises only blessing to all
those who belong to it. This second covenant, the "everlasting
covenant" enacted upon better promises, has thus brought to realization
all that was anticipated in the covenants made with Abraham, Moses, and
David.
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Under
the New Covenant, God's people, having entered the age of fulfillment,
now stand as mature sons. Having been set free from the tutelage and
bondage of the law code written upon tablets of stone, they have
subsequently been placed under the Spirit's management -- having the
new and greater Lawgiver's own law now written upon their
hearts. As a result, though many of the individual
commandments given in the decalogue and the eternal principles upon
which the Mosaic Covenant was founded still apply to those under the
New Covenant, God's people are now totally free from the Old Covenant
as a covenant. The usefulness of the Mosaic commands is not therefore
to be denied, only that these are now understood to come to us through
Christ, the mediator of the New Covenant. In particular, with the
obsolescence of the Old Covenant, the fourth commandment, the seventh
day Sabbath observance, is no longer obligatory---its relevance now
pointing to that rest enjoyed by all those in Christ.
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