Exodus (2)
Message Seven
The Covenanting God and His Covenants (2) The Contents of the New Covenant
Scripture Reading: Isa. 42:6; 49:8; Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12
I. Based on the fact that Jeremiah prophesies concerning the new covenant, the book of Jeremiah may be considered an Old Testament book that is also a New Testament book— 2:13; 17:9; 13:23; 23:5-6; 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12.
II. Christ Himself is the new covenant, the new testament, given to us by God—Isa. 42:6; 49:8:
A. God's salvation, God's blessings, and all of God's riches have been covenanted to us, and this covenant is Christ:
1. The reality of all the hundreds of bequests in the New Testament is Christ—Gen. 22:18a; Gal. 3:14; 1 Cor. 1:30; 15:45b; Eph. 1:3.
2. Christ is the reality of the new testament, the reality of all that God is and of all that God has given to us; therefore, Christ is the new testament.
B. The way to receive and enjoy Christ as the covenant to us is to exercise our spirit, to live according to our spirit, and to remain in our spirit, with which is the very Christ, by calling on Christ our Lord's name—Isa. 42:5-6; Zech. 12:1; Rom. 8:4b; Rev. 1:10a; 2 Tim. 4:22; Isa. 12:3-4.
III. The contents of the new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12) include the following four blessings as God's bequests to us:
A. "I will impart My laws into their mind, and on their hearts I will inscribe them"—v. 10:
1. Every life has a law and even is a law—Prov. 30:19a.
2. God's life is the highest life, and the law of this life is the highest law—Isa. 40:30-31.
3. The Triune God has been processed through incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to become the law of the Spirit of life installed in our spirit—Rom. 8:3, 11, 34, 16.
4. There are three different laws in the three different parts of our being:
a. The law of sin and of death derives from Satan, who as sin resides in our flesh—7:18, 23.
b. The law of good in our mind, that is, in our soul, derives from our natural human life—v. 23.
c. The law of the Spirit of life derives from the Triune God installed in our spirit—8:2, 16:
1) The divine birth has transferred us into a new realm, the realm of the divine life with its law, a realm in which there is no sin, world, or flesh.
2) In this realm all victories are unconscious and effortless because the law of the Spirit of life is upholding us, not our own will.
5. The law of life, the law of the Spirit of life, is the processed Triune God as the life-giving Spirit dwelling in our spirit— vv. 2-3, 11, 34.
6. The law of life is the spontaneous power of life; it is the natural characteristic and the innate, automatic function of life.
7. The function of the law of life is:
a. To make us God in life, nature, and expression but not in the Godhead, shaping us into the image of the firstborn Son of God so that we may become His corporate expression—vv. 2, 29.
b. To constitute us the members of the Body of Christ with all kinds of functions—Eph. 4:11-12, 16.
8. We enjoy the dispensing of life into our being for the accomplishment of God's economy by the working of the law of the Spirit of life— Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10; Rom. 8:10, 6, 11.
9. We need to cooperate with the installed and operating law of the Spirit of life by "switching on" this law—1 Thes. 5:16-18; Luke 8:15.
10. God's economy is to dispense Himself into our being by and as the law of the Spirit of life so that our being might be constituted with His being to be one constitution with His being.
11. The law of the divine life "sonizes" us for the building up of the Body of Christ:
a. When the law of life, which is in our spirit, spreads into our inward parts—our mind, emotion, and will—it becomes several laws— Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10; cf. 2 Cor. 3:3:
1) This spreading is the imparting, and the imparting is the inscribing.
2) By the working, the spreading, of the law of life within us, God makes us the same as He is in life, nature, and expression.
3) We are conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God by the working of the law of life.
b. The firstborn Son is the prototype, the standard model, for the mass reproduction of the many sons of God, who are His many brothers, to constitute His Body for God's corporate expression—Rom. 8:29:
1) God's way to mass reproduce this prototype is to work His living prototype, the firstborn Son, into our entire being.
2) If we cooperate with and open up to this wonderful prototype, He will spread outward from our spirit into our soul.
3) The indwelling prototype, the firstborn Son of God, automatically works in us as the law of life to conform us to His image, to "sonize" us.
4) In His recovery the Lord is working desperately among us to make every one of us the same as the firstborn Son.
5) The Body of Christ as the new man is the corporate reproduction of the standard model, the firstborn Son of God.
B. "I will be God to them, and they will be a people to Me"—Heb. 8:10:
1. For God to be our God means that He is our inheritance, and for us to be God's people means that we are God's inheritance—Eph. 1:11, 14, 18; 3:21.
2. In the new covenant we have the privilege of having God as our God and of being His people—the enabling of life for us to participate in the enjoyment of God in fellowship with Him so that He can be known by us, apprehended by us, and lived by us—1 John 1:3, 7.
C. "They shall by no means each teach his fellow citizen and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all will know Me from the little one to the great one among them"—Heb. 8:11:
1. The function of life enables us to know God in the inward way of life.
2. We can know God subjectively from within by the sense of life, which is the feeling, the consciousness, of the divine life within us—Rom. 8:6; Eph. 4:18-20; Phil. 3:10a:
a. The sense of life involves both the feeling of death and the feeling of life and peace—Rom. 8:6; Isa. 26:3.
b. The sense of life makes us know whether we are living in the natural life or in the divine life and whether we are living in the flesh or in the spirit.
c. We should live according to the sense of life in the principle of life, not according to the principle of right and wrong, the principle of death.
3. To know God is to live God; through the spontaneous, automatic function of the divine life within us, we have the capacity to know God, to live God, and even to be one with God in His life and nature so that we may be His corporate expression.
D. "I will be propitious to their unrighteousnesses, and their sins I shall by no means remember anymore"—Heb. 8:12:
1. Christ made propitiation for our sins to appease God's righteousness, to reconcile us by satisfying the demands of God's righteousness—2:17.
2. The precious and all-efficacious blood of Christ resolves all our problems so that we can remain constantly in fellow- ship with God to continually enjoy His organic salvation— 1 John 1:7-9; 2:1-2:
a. Before God, the redeeming blood of the Lord has cleansed us once for all eternally (Heb. 9:12, 14), and the efficacy of that cleansing need not be repeated.
b. However, in our conscience we need the instant application of the constant cleansing of the Lord's precious blood again and again whenever our conscience is enlightened by the divine light in our fellowship with God.
3. Once God forgives us, He erases our sins from His memory and remembers them no longer:
a. Forgiveness of sins means the removal of the charges of sin against us before God that we may be delivered from the penalty of God's righteousness— John 3:18; 5:24.
b. When God forgives us of our sins, He causes the sins that we have committed to depart from us—Psa. 103:12; Lev. 16:7-10, 15-22.
4. God's forgiveness of our sins results in our fearing Him and loving Him in our restored fellowship with Him—Psa. 130:4; Luke 7:47.
IV. The new covenant will ultimately issue in the New Jerusalem, the embodiment of God's new covenant to express God in a corporate way to the uttermost for eternity—Gal. 4:26-28, 31.