New Covenant and the Spirit

The Gift of the Spirit is vital to the redemption of humanity and the New Covenant of God with His people. The New Testament connects the “Promise of the Spirit” to the “Blessings of Abraham,” the promise that God will bless the nations through the Great Patriarch. The Spirit is the gift believers receive “through the hearing of faith.” It is one of the promises given to Abraham and finds its fulfillment in the “New Covenant” inaugurated by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.

[Overflowing - Photo by Ben Wilkins on Unsplash]

The Apostle Peter connected the Gift of the Holy Spirit to the promised “blessings” for the nations during his sermon on the Day of Pentecost. The gift received by the 120 disciples on that day, and by 3,000 converts following Peter’s sermon, was in fulfillment of what God promised centuries earlier, the new covenant set into motion by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus:

• “The promise is for you, and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God will call” - (Acts 2:38-39).

• “And in you will all the families of the earth be blessed” – (Genesis 12:3).

• “In your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed my voice” – (Genesis 22:18).

• “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles from faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you will all the nations be blessed. So then, they who are from faith are blessed with believing Abraham” – (Galatians 3:8-9).

Israel failed to keep the covenant. Though the nation had sworn to perform “all the words which Yahweh has spoken,” history attests to her failure to fulfill her covenant obligations. The Israelites could not meet the covenant’s requirements since they did not have the Spirit. Without the Spirit’s empowerment, Israel could never achieve the “righteous requirements of the Law” - (Exodus 24:1-8, Numbers 11:1-15).

The Mosaic legislation anticipated Israel’s failure and the need for something beyond the written Law. After predicting the scattering of the nation as punishment for her sins, God promised that after Israel truly repented, the nation would “return to me and obey my voice with all your heart and soul.” He would gather His people from all nations and “circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed to love Yahweh your God with all your heart” - (Deuteronomy 30:1-6).

The themes of renewal and circumcision of the heart were addressed by the prophet Jeremiah. God would “make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” but not a covenant according to the one He made with the nation’s forefathers at Mount Sinai – (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would provide a New Covenant. By His Spirit, He would write His laws in the hearts of His people. This circumcision of the heart foreseen by Moses came to fruition in the “New Covenant” prophesied by Jeremiah and established by Jesus of Nazareth.

Likewise, the Prophet Ezekiel employed the same theme, but he added the essential element of the Spirit:

• (Ezekiel 36:24-28) – “Therefore will I take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all the lands, and will bring you upon your own soil <…> And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and my spirit will I put within you and will cause that in my statutes you will walk, and my regulations you will observe and do.”

THE COVENANT

The Book of Ezekiel combines the promises of the New Covenant, the Gift of the Spirit, and the circumcised heart. The Apostle Paul applies these promises to the Corinthian congregation, and likewise, the Author of the Letter to the Hebrews to his readers:

• (2 Corinthians 3:1-6) – “You are our letter, inscribed in our hearts, noted and read by all men, manifesting yourselves that you are a letter of Christ, ministered by us, inscribed, not with ink, but with the Spirit of a Living God; not in tablets of stone, but in tablets which are hearts of flesh <…> Not that of our own selves sufficient are we to reckon anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also has made us sufficient to be ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.”

• (Hebrews 8:6-13) – “But now has he obtained a more excellent ministry, by so much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second. For finding fault with them, he said, 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 lead them forth out of the land of Egypt. For they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws into their mind, and on their heart also will I write them. And I will be to them a God, and they will be to me a people <…> For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. In that he says, A new covenant, he has made the first old. But that which is becoming old and aged is nigh unto vanishing away.”

The prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel stress the centrality of the Spirit under the “New Covenant.” With the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, the long-awaited New Covenant has arrived for the people of God, and therefore, the Gift of the Spirit has been bestowed on the Church ever since the initial outpouring in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost.

The connection of the Gift of the Spirit to the Abrahamic Covenant and the “New Covenant” illustrates the continuity of what God is doing today in the Church with His redemptive purposes for the nation of Israel.

Neither the Church, the New Covenant, nor the Gift of the Spirit was an unforeseen interim stage or necessary detour in God’s redemptive plan. They are fundamental parts of His covenant and promises, and they have been so from the beginning when God first declared to Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great; and you will be a blessing” – (Genesis 12:2).

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SEE ALSO:

• The Living Word - (God has spoken clearly and decisively in His Son, the same Word by which God created life and the ages)

• His Superior Covenant - (Jesus inaugurated the superior New Covenant through his Death and Resurrection, rendering the old covenant obsolete – Hebrews 8:6-13)

• The Promise of the Father - (With the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost, the blessing for all nations promised to Abraham has commenced)

• La Nouvelle Alliance et l'Esprit - (La promesse de l'Esprit est vitale pour la rédemption de l'humanité et la Nouvelle Alliance de Dieu avec Son peuple)