The Benefits & Blessings of Being a Participant of the New Covenant Part I

Several years ago now, I wrote an article entitled, “The Benefits & Blessings of Being a Participant of the New Covenant” and I did so because it was obvious to me that many of God’s children preferred to live as if they were still bound by the Old Covenant—attempting to keep the Law; celebrating the various Jewish holidays; and making various sacrifices (not animal, of course)—in an effort to please God and, thereby, to be accepted by Him. Sadly, this propensity has only worsened over the years.

One would think that the message of the New Covenant—the covenant of grace—would be so attractive to God’s people that they would respond to it with exuberance; however, that is, simply, not the case. For reasons beyond anything I can comprehend, most Christians are far more attracted to the Law and to its requirements than they are to the New Covenant and the benefits and blessings it brings. Go figure!

So, for the next several weeks, I am going to be reminding you of these incredible benefits and blessings. I can only pray that the Holy Spirit will use them to stir your heart and cause you to desire to become a bona fide member of the International Association of Those Who Enjoy the Benefits and Blessings of the New Covenant! With that, let us get started-

Meeting the Requirements of the Ten Commandments
Need No Longer Be A Concern for You!

I will bet that this will cause a stir but wait before you jump into the fray because there is, actually, good reason for this: God did for you what the Law could not do for you! “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:3-4; emphasis, mine). In other words as a bona fide member of the New Covenant, you can cease striving to meet the requirements of the Ten Commandments because Jesus satisfied the Law’s requirement for you, namely, that sin be punished by death.

Wow! This brings the often forgotten (yet very Biblical) concept of “rest” to center stage. The writer of Hebrews makes it clear that there is a Sabbath rest for the people of God (see Hebrews 4:9) but, tragically, few ever experience it because they are so busy trying to accomplish what God has already perfected. Somehow, we just cannot get it through our thick religious skin that when Jesus said, “It is finished,” He really meant it. There is nothing left for us to do because the work He finished was a perfect-in-every-way work!

Dear ones, we simply cannot improve on “perfect,” try as we might. Agreed! We live in a world of “imperfect,” a world that needs to be “perfected” or at least improved upon. This, however, is NOT the case when it comes to the Kingdom of God and to those of us who live therein. We have been made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus—fully and completed accepted in Him! There is only one way that any of us could have qualified for such a high calling and that way is this: Jesus did for us what we could have never done for ourselves—He gave His life in exchange for our lives!

Have you ever stopped to think about the message you are sending when you attempt to improve upon what He has deemed perfect and complete? If you should, I think you would reconsider your position and immediately cease striving and begin to rest in Him.