The New Covenant is A New Thing
New covenant theology is a Jesus-centered theological position similar to but distinct from covenant theology and dispensationalism. The primary differentiation between new covenant theology and other Christologies is that of the view of the Old Testament laws’ validity, and Scriptural Canon. New Covenant Theology does not view the New Covenant as a newer version of the Old Covenant, and it’s not a renewal of or extension of the Old Covenant. Neither is the new covenant, a new era or age of law. New Covenant Theology says that the New Covenant is a genuinely new thing, different, distinct, and unique from any of the prior covenants that God entered into with humanity.
Covenant Theology vs New Covenant Theology
The classic covenant theological view of the mosaic law is that it has three parts. The civil, ceremonial, and moral new covenant theology agrees with this assertion. New Covenant Theology agrees with the declaration of there being a three-part mosaic law.
Where the classic covenant view holds that Jesus fulfilled the civil and ceremonial portions of the law and that the moral portion of the law continues to today. New covenant theology holds that the Mosaic Law while having three parts, is inseparable and invulnerable. Therefore, New Covenant Theology’s position is that Jesus fulfilled the entirety of the Mosaic law, all three parts. There are several consequences of this view that we need to expound upon. The Old Covenant, also known as the Old Testament, and the law found within it, was conditional and works-based. God, the Father, established the Old Covenant. The New Covenant is unconditional, faith-based and established by Jesus, the Son.
The two covenants are independent of one another. One can maintain the old covenant today if one wishes to do so, and one may keep the new covenant today if one wants to do so. What does not work is maintaining both, and we’ll get into why.
Who is part of the Covenant?
God’s people under the old covenant are born into the covenant; it’s their ethnicity. There is a provision for being grafted into the people of Israel by being converted. However, by and large, it is a birth-based system, and the lineage went through the mother. And it continues that way to today as far as the ethnicity of the Jewish people goes.
We are all in!
The position of New Covenant Theology is that God’s people, under the New Covenant, are brought in by faith. Effectively a choice in which we humans get to participate. You decide to take on Jesus as your King. Jesus is always your savior. Jesus is always the King, but you get to choose whether you follow him or not. If you want to follow Him, you must have faith that he is God and that he lived, died, and resurrected for our sins. Then you are following him you do so by faith, the grace that follows with that faith means that we are His people. The sign in the Old Covenant of being part of God’s people, if you were male, was circumcision. The New Covenant does not reference male nor female, rather, all humans can be part of God’s people by way of faith.
Baptism is not the new circumcision
Under the old covenant, a male would be circumcised at eight days of age, indicating that they were part of the covenant. However, because the new covenant requires entry by faith, we as adults make that choice. We as mentally mature decision-making beings can make that decision, to have that faith, and to follow Jesus. Because of that differential, our children are not placed into the covenant by us. We individually get to choose whether we become part of the New Covenant or not. That is a huge difference in who is in and who is out of the covenant. In essence, all can enter into the covenant; all can enter in and be part of God’s family through Jesus by being adopted in as His sibling. All of us can do that because we all can have that faith. We all can make that decision or not, and so we could all not be our choice.
In this way, we get to participate in the New Covenant, and that is a significant difference between the old covenant and this new covenant. The people of Israel were the covenant body in the old covenant. In the New Covenant, each individual is making that choice to be entered into the Covenant. The first action, physical act, after making that decision is to be baptized. Baptism and circumcision are two different things, though, because of who is deciding to enter the covenant relationship. With a child, under the old covenant, the parents, or an “accident of birth” made that decision.
Now it is up to us. We get to follow God consciously, or not; To be in line with Jesus or not. That’s our choice. So baptism and circumcision, so baptism is not the new circumcision. Baptism is a new thing, not merely a washing, or ceremonial ritual. It is something intrinsically different.
God’s Law
God’s law is characterized as many things within Christianity generally. It has been thought of and taught as the Mosaic Law, all of the first five books of the protestant Bible, the Noahtic law, the law of Noah, the Ten Commandments, the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, and even as the New Covenant, or the New Testament.
Within a Christology context, what is God’s law? New Covenant Theology views God’s law as that which Christ gave us as commandments. Jesus gave us three commandments; the first, love God with all your heart, mind, and strength, the second; love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said in a Judaich context that upon these to hang all the Law and the Prophets. That is what Christ said of the first two; the third he gave was this; love one another as I have loved you.
That’s it; That’s God’s law; Everything is summarized in those three commandments. Love the one who created, sustains, and heals you. Love everything that is God, who is Love, and love your neighbor, the other. When asked who our neighbors are, Jesus said in a parable that our neighbor was the Samaritan. Our neighbor is that person who is so utterly other that they are scorned by society, they won’t be touched, looked at, walked with on the same side of the street. Those are the people that we are to Love. Those are our neighbors that we need to love because they are image-bearers of God. We are all human beings made in the image of God. We have a body as Christ did. We have a soul that the Holy Spirit speaks to, and that was breathed into our nostrils to provide us with life that transcends death. We have a mind that Father God gave us with the ability to rationalize, to think, to learn, to produce works of art and music, to worship Them, to praise Them, to Love Them.
The soul provides the desire, the emotion; the mind offers the framework for understanding; the living body houses both in this world. God gave each human these three things, and it is these that make us the image of the Triune God, the three in one God. We each have an aspect of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit within us. Every one of us bears the image of God.
The fingerprint of God’s law is that we love one another, that we love the other because they’re going to look different. They’re going to have different bodies. They obviously have different souls. Each one is unique, and we each have a different mind. Many of us are of like mind, groups of people who think similarly. We have groups of people who look similar, and we naturally gravitate toward those who look, think, and act as we do. And what God is saying is watch out for that. Be careful that you don’t denigrate others. Don’t disparage people that don’t look like you, act like you, or think like you. Don’t treat them as less than human because that means that you are treating them as less than the image-bearer of God that they are.
For those who are followers of Jesus, we are to love one another, the way that Christ loved us. How did Jesus show His love for us? Jesus lived for us and died for us. He lived for us so that we would understand how we are to live. Jesus died and resurrected for us so that we can overcome death and be with God in Heaven.
So that’s the law of God; Love God who created you, love others and love one another as Christ loved us.
Here is the short version
New Covenant theology is a Christ-centered theological understanding of the agreement between God and us, his people, that through our faith in Jesus Christ and taking on Christ as our King and Savior, we can overcome death and our spirits live on in Heaven.
What’s the Point?
Through this process of following Jesus, we mature. In scripture, it’s sometimes called perfecting or being made perfect. In today’s language, the word perfect means mature. And that is what we’re doing. The technical term is sanctification. The New Covenant allows us to follow Jesus and his teachings to be sanctified, maturing, so that we can help bring the kingdom of God here on earth today through ourselves and our actions. We get to participate in God’s work here on earth. That is the promise of the New Covenant.
