The Two Covenants: Their Relation
Galatians 4:22-24
22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman.
23 His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born through the promise.
24 These things serve as illustrations, for the women represent two covenants….
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It has pleased God that there should be two covenants
- not as an arbitrary appointment
- but for good and wise reasons
- these reasons made it indispensably necessary that it should be so, and no otherwise
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The two Covenants indicate two stages in God’s dealing with man; two ways of serving God
- a lower, elementary one of preparation and promise
- a higher, more advanced one of fulfillment and possession
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Let us try and understand why there should have been two, neither less nor more
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In all intercourse between God and man, there are two parties
- each of them must have the opportunity to prove what their part is in the Covenant
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In the Old Covenant
- man had the opportunity to prove what he could do, with the aid of all the means of grace God could bestow.
- This Covenant ended in man proving his own unfaithfulness and failure.
- was dependent on man’s obedience, one which he could, and did, break
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In the New Covenant
- God is to prove what He can do with man, as unfaithful and feeble as he is, when HE is allowed and trusted to do ALL the work.
- was one which God has engaged shall never be broken; He Himself keeps it and ensures our keeping it: so He makes it an EVERLASTING Covenant.
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Because God created man to be in His image and likeness
- man has to have the power of
- free will
- self-determination
- man has to have the power of
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God’s intention before man fell
- God was ever to take the initiative and be to man the source of life
- Man was ever to be the recipient, and yet at the same time the disposer of the life God bestowed.
- dispose definition
- to give a tendency to: incline
- to put in place, set in readiness: arrange
- bestow
- dispose definition
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Once man sinned
- God entered into a covenant of salvation
- each side of the relationship still had to be maintained
- God was ever to be the first
- man the second
- yet man, as made in God’s image, was ever, as second,
- to have full time and opportunity to appropriate or reject what God gave (free will)
- to prove how far he could help himself, and indeed be self-made
- his absolutely dependence upon God was not to be forced upon him
- it must be his deliberate and voluntary choice
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The reason why there were two covenants
- in the first, man’s desires and efforts might be fully awakened, and time given for him to make full proof of what his human nature, with the aid of outward instruction and miracles and means of grace could accomplish.
- when his utter impotence, hopeless captivity under the power of sin had been discovered, there came the New Covenant, in which God was to reveal how man’s true liberty from sin and self and the creature, his true nobility and Godlikeness, was to be found in the most entire and absolute dependence, in God’s being and doing ALL within him.
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There was no other way possible to God than this in dealing with a being whom He had endowed with the Godlike power of a will.
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The two covenants represent two stages of God’s education of man of man’s seeking after God. The progress and transition from the one to the other is not merely chronological or historical; it is organic and spiritual.
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Under the Old Covenant there were men in whom, by anticipation, the powers of the coming redemption worked mightily.
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In the New Covenant there are men in whom the spirit of the Old still makes itself manifest.
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The New Testament proves how possible it is within the New Covenant still be held fast in the bondage of the Old.
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Only through faith in the promise and the mighty quickening power of God can we be made truly and fully free, and stand in the freedom with which Christ has made us free.
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These two Covenants are the Divine revelation of two systems of religious worship, each with its spirit or life-principle ruling every man who professes to be a Christian.
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The one great cause of the feebleness of so many Christians is that the Old Covenant spirit of bondage still has the mastery.
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**Nothing but a spiritual insight, with a whole-hearted acceptance, and a living experience, of all the New Covenant engages that God will work in us can possibly fit us for walking as God would have us do.
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This is typified by the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place with the veil separating them.
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Holy Place
- priests might always enter to draw near to God
- they might NOT come too near; the veil kept them at a distance; to enter meant death
- once a year he could enter as a promise of the time when the veil should be taken away and the full access to dwell in God’s presence be given to His people.
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In Christ’s death
- the veil was rent
- His blood gives us boldness and power to enter into the Holiest of all and live there day by day in the immediate presence of God.
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It is by the Holy Spirit
- who issued forth from that Holiest of all, where Christ entered
- to bring its life to us
- and make us one with it
- that we can have the power to live and walk always with the consciousness of God’s presence in us
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Not only among the Galatians, but everywhere throughout the Church, there are to be found two classes of Christians
- some are content with the mingled life, half flesh and half spirit, half self-effort and half grace
- others are not content with this, but are seeking with their whole heart to know to the full what the deliverance from sin and what the abiding full power for a walk in God’s presence is, which the New Covenant has brought and can give.