Spirit and Covenant

The promise of the Spirit is vital to the redemption of humanity and the covenant of God with His people, the Church of Jesus Christ.

The New Testament links the “Promise of the Spirit” to the “Blessings of Abraham,” the promise that God would 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 made to Abraham, and Peter connects this gift to “the blessings” for the nations in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost.

[Waterfall - Photo by Derek Sutton (Toronto) on Unsplash]

The Gift of the Spirit received by the 120 disciples on that day, and later by 3,000 converts in Jerusalem, was the outworking of what God had promised Abraham centuries earlier.

• “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).

• “By myself have I sworn, declares Yahweh, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, that in blessing, I will bless you, and in multiplying, I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand on the seashore; and your seed will possess the gate of his enemies; and in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed; because you obeyed my voice” - (Genesis 22:16-18).

Unfortunately, Israel failed to keep the requirements of the Law given at Mount Sinai. Though the nation swore to perform “all the words which Yahweh has spoken,” history attests to its failure to fulfill its obligations.

The Israelites could not meet the covenant’s requirements since they did not yet possess the Spirit. Without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, they could not fulfill “the righteous requirements of the Law” - (Exodus 24:1-8, Numbers 11:1-15).

Nevertheless, the Mosaic legislation anticipated Israel’s failure and the need for something beyond the written Law or Torah. After predicting the dispersal of the people of Israel, God promised that after the Israelites truly repented, He would restore the nation, but in new and unexpected ways:

• “And it will come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations, whither Yahweh your God has driven you, and you return to Yahweh your God and obey his voice according to all that I command you this day, you and your children with all your heart and with all thy soul, then Yahweh your God will turn your captivity, and have compassion upon you. <…> and Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed to love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” - (Deuteronomy 30:1-6).

The themes of renewal and circumcision of the heart were taken up by the prophet Jeremiah centuries later. The day was coming when God would “make a new covenant with the house of Israel,” but not a covenant according to the one He made with the nation’s forefathers at Sinai – (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

God would provide a new covenant in which He would write His laws in the hearts of His people. This circumcision of the heart foreseen by Moses became reality in this new covenant.

• “But now he has obtained a ministry the more excellent, by so much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been legislated on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second. <…> In that he says, A new covenant, he has made the former one old. But that which is becoming old and aging is near to vanishing away” – (Hebrews 8:6-13).

The New Testament applies this promise to the covenant inaugurated by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Likewise, the Prophet Ezekiel employed the same theme, but he added the essential element of the Spirit that would renew God’s People and inscribe His laws on their hearts:

• (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.”

SPIRIT AND COVENANT

The Book of Ezekiel combines the promises of the New Covenant, the Gift of the Spirit, and the circumcised heart. Centuries later, Paul applied these same promises to the congregation of believers residing in the city of Corinth:

• (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.”

The prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel pointed to the centrality of the Spirit in the coming covenant. With the Resurrection and the Ascension of Jesus, the long-awaited New Covenant, including the Gift of the Spirit, arrived among the people of God:

• “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every man that hangs on a tree. That upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” – (Galatians 3:13-14).

• “This Jesus did God raise up, of whom we all are witnesses. Being, therefore, exalted by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this, which you see and hear” – (Galatians 2:32-33).

The connection of the Spirit to the Abrahamic Covenant and the promised “New Covenant” illustrates the continuity of what God is doing today in His Church with His ancient redemptive purposes. What began with the Patriarch is now being brought to completion by the Heir and Seed of Abraham, Jesus of Nazareth.

Neither the Church nor the Gift of the Spirit was an unforeseen stage in God’s purposes. The outpouring of the Spirit on His people has been a fundamental part of His plan from the beginning. The Creator of All Things has one covenant, one covenant people, and one way of salvation for all men and nations.

• “There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for you are all one man in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise” – (Galatians 3:28-29).

The Abrahamic Covenant finds its fulfillment in and through Jesus and his people, his assembly of Jewish and Gentile believers. With his Death and Resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit, the wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles has been dismantled - (Ephesians 2:15).

Regardless of race or nationality, the disciples of Jesus Christ are filled with the Holy Spirit, and with their “circumcised hearts,” they now follow the Messiah of Israel wherever he leads, manifesting his light in the world.

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SEE ALSO:

• The Circumcised Heart - (The Gift of the Spirit is for every man who repents, even to those afar off, and in fulfillment of the promise of the Father - Acts 2:37-41)

• The Blessings of Abraham - (The Gift of the Spirit is one of the Covenant promises to bless the nations of the Earth through Abraham and his Seed, Jesus of Nazareth)

• The Promise of the Spirit - (The Gift of the Spirit is one of the blessings of Abraham promised by God for the nations and the children of the Patriarch)

• The Inheritance of Abraham - (Believers are the heirs of Abraham, and the possession of their inheritance is secured by possession of the Gift of the Spirit)