A New Covenant
Luke xxii. 20
If you have lost your way in an unknown country at night, and come upon a railway track, you know that if you follow it far enough in one direction or the other you will arrive at a brilliantly lighted station, in which you can obtain shelter and refreshment. So as you come upon the observance of the Lord’s Supper — which, like a narrow track, threads the ages — you can pass from it backward or forward. If you go back you come inevitably on the night in which Christ was betrayed; if you go forward you are led to the marriage supper of the Lamb, with which the present dispensation will close.
The Lord’s Supper commemorates three distinct facts about our Lord: He died; He lives; He will come. He died, and evidently, in His judgment, His death was the most important item in His career. Forget all else, He seems to say, — My teaching, My example, My mighty works, — but keep ever fresh before your minds and the world the memory of My death. He lives, else how should the apostles have thought of commemorating that which had filled their loving hearts with distress? They only dared to think about His death because they knew that He who died in weakness was living through the power of God. And He will come. This has inspired the church as she has sat down at the table, expecting that at any moment He may glide in, and visibly take His place, and transform anticipation to welcome.
But in addition to these three facts, the Lord’s Supper commemorates the setting up of a distinct covenant between the infinite God and those who are represented in the man Christ Jesus. And while the eating of the bread sets forth the necessity of our daily feeding on Christ, the drinking of the cup has another phase of meaning, and points to our participation in the blessings of the covenant, which is ordered in all things and sure, and which is all our salvation, all our desire. “This,” said He, “is My blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sins.”
I. Some explanatory words
ABOUT THE COVENANT. In the Authorized Version, “covenant” and “testament” are used interchangeably in such passages as Galatians iii. and Hebrews ix., which discuss this sublime theme. This is a matter of regret, as it obscures the deep connection of thought which connects them. It is better to think and speak of the “covenant,” by the provisions of which God has bound Himself. “Covenant” means more even than “agreement,” In the eye of a court of law, the latter may be set aside, but never the former.
A covenant gives a solid basis of peace. A parchment deed may show marks of great age, the writing difficult to decipher, the wording obscure. The child intent on play, the young life yearning for love, may turn from it with languid interest; but if it were missing the fabric of that happy home life might instantly collapse, as a building from which the foundation had been withdrawn. Security of tenure rests absolutely on the covenants, properly drawn out and witnessed, that repose in the darkness and neglect of their deedboxes. So, also, our peace of heart and repose of soul, at the present moment and in all the ages of the future, depend absolutely on that covenant which the Father has entered into with the Son as our representative and Mediator.
Our Lord speaks of a NEW covenant. Let us turn for a moment to the old: “And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice,... All the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do,... and be obedient” (Exod. xxiv. 3, 7). “The words of the Lord, and the judgments” evidently refer to the foregoing chapters and to the whole body of Mosaic legislation so far as it was then revealed. The key-note was the reiterated words, “This do, and ye shall live,” and the response, “We will do.”
With this let us contrast the provisions of the new covenant: “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord; I will put My laws on their heart, and upon their mind also will I write them; and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb. viii. 10, 12; x. 16, 17).
Obviously the introduction of this new covenant involves the disannulling of the old. “In that He saith, A new covenant, He hath made the first old. That which is becoming old and waxeth aged is nigh unto vanishing away.” In point of fact, as the apostle shows in the Epistle to the Galatians, the covenant of Sinai was introduced as a parenthesis into the covenant of grace, which was first revealed in God’s promise to Abraham when he was yet a Gentile, not having undergone the special rite that became the distinctive badge of the Jew. “A covenant,” he says, “confirmed beforehand by God, the law, which came four hundred and thirty years after, doth not disannul, so as to make the promise of none effect” (Gal. iii. 17). If the law was not added till after the covenant of grace had been revealed, it could be set aside when it had fulfilled its temporary purpose; and, in contrast with its disannulling, the ancient covenant of grace would stand forth as new. Its key-note throughout is “I will.” We are no longer concerned with the “we will” of poor human resolution, so soon broken and dissipated, but are encouraged by the eightfold assurance of the “I will” of God.
This covenant is entered into with Christ. “The fathers continued not in My covenant “; such is God’s bitter complaint (Heb. viii. 9). The people’s repeated assurances of obedience were hardly uttered before they were falsified by the incident of the golden calf. It is the universal experience. “I approve the better, I do the worse,” said the cultured heathen. “The good I would, I do not; the evil I would not, I do,” said the Christian apostle.
If, then, the observance of the provisions of the new covenant had been left to the will and power of men, however earnest and devoted, they must have met with the same fate. It is not in man that walketh to maintain his steps in the holy requirements of God’s law. Therefore, in His love and mercy, the Father entered into covenant with Jesus, who stood as sponsor and surety for all who should after believe in His name.
This was foreshadowed in the original promise to Abraham:” Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seedy Not then was it made clear what was involved in this reference to his seed.
It might have seemed to refer only to Isaac and his posterity. But centuries after the Holy Ghost adds the explanation, and the apostle says, “which is Christ” (Gal. iii. 16). In other words, Christ is the true heir of the promises of God’s covenant with Abraham, not for Himself alone, but as the representative of all those who are one with Him in His mystical body. “As the body is one, and hath many members, ... so also is Christ.” That is, Christ stands for all the members of His body; and when He is said to be the seed of Abraham, with whom the promises are made, it is intended that all who believe in Him should see themselves included (i Cor. xii. 12).
The fulfilment of the covenant does not, therefore, depend on what we may do or not do, because Jesus, as our representative, has done all that needed to be done, and, as our surety, has undertaken that the ordinance of the law should be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.
This covenant has been solemnly ratified. For the ratification of the first Moses took the blood of the calves and the goats, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded to you-ward” (Heb. ix. 19). For the ratification of the second Jesus shed His own blood. Until death supervenes a deed of covenant has no special force: “A testament is of force where there hath been death: for doth it ever avail while he that made it liveth?” (verse 17, R.V.). Therefore the new covenant, having been established by the most solemn sanctions, is of everlasting validity. You remember the phrase of the Holy Spirit — “the blood of the everlasting covenant.” It dates from eternity, and will last to eternity. God hath sworn by Himself, and He cannot change. Earth and heaven may pass away, but through the dissolution of worlds the word of God, by which
He hath bound Himself, must endure. We, therefore, who have fled for refuge to this sure and steadfast hope, may have strong encouragement (Heb. vi. 1 7-20). II. The contents of the covenant. It is not possible for wife, child, or relative to open the will, and for the first time scan its provisions, without a keen intensity of emotion. Nor should it be otherwise as we consider what our God has provided for us in Christ.
( 1 ) The obedience of love, “I will put My laws into their heart.” We shall no longer obey because we must, but because we choose; we shall delight to do His will; ours the conformity of friend to friend, when love fuses heart to heart, rather than the servility of the slave, who knoweth not what his master doeth.
(2) The supply of all need. “I will be to them a God “; i.e., that in His all-sufficiency we should have everything that we need for life and godliness, so as to be complete in Him.
(3) Direct knowledge. “All shall know Me.” The interposition of the human teacher shall be needless, because the soul shall have direct access to the divine.
(4) Entire forgiveness. “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” We too seldom realize what perfect and complete forgiveness appertains to the believer in Jesus. If such a one should approach God with a recapitulation and confession of the sins of bygone days, pleading piteously for mercy, for mercy and absolution, it is as though God should say, “My child, I do not know what you refer to; I find no record against you in the book of My remembrance. I have blotted as a cloud your transgressions, and as a thick cloud your sins; they are gone as a wreath of smoke into the air, as a stone into the ocean deep.”
What is there that we can require for this life or the next which is not contained in these four clauses? I know not which to choose, each is so requisite to entire blessedness, and at different periods of our experience we need now one and now the other; but if there is one star that shines more brilliantly than the rest, it is that blessed assurance that God will be a God to us — all that we might expect of God, and more; all that the nature which He has given requires; all that is requisite to be the complement (i.e., the completement) of our almost infinite need.
“I must have all things, and abound, While God is God to me.”
III. The sign and seal of the covenant. “The cup of the new covenant in My blood.”
The significance of the cup is due to our realizing sense that it is placed in the hand of the Lord Himself and that we take it from Him. The table at which He reclined has been elongated down the centuries, and He as really passes the cup to the communicant as when He handed it to the beloved disciple leaning on His breast. Ask the Holy Spirit to make Jesus real whensoever thou partakest of the Holy Supper, withdrawing every other presence, that His may rise, in all its sweetness and majesty, before thy spirit’s vision.
Whenever, therefore, the cup is passed to us, it is as though Jesus said, “All the provision of the new covenant is for thee; as this cup, which thou seest now, comes to thee, so the blessings of which it is the sign and pledge, but which thou canst not see, are within thy reach.” The rainbow was the outward sign of the promise spoken at the assuaging of the deluge; the Passover was the token that God had redeemed His people for His peculiar possession; and the cup is the appointed sign and memorial of all that is meant by the new covenant, with its fourfold provision. With what new and blessed meaning is the cup invested! Every time it touches my hand Jesus shall say, “In Me this covenant is for thee.”
Each time, also, that we partake of the cup, if we are full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, we in effect prefer our claim to all that the covenant offers. We sip the wine where the lips of Jesus have touched the cup before us, and we avow our desire for fellowship with Him in the fullness of God. May we humbly and reverently realize that all is ours, and then appropriate all those benefits of His passion that He has won.
Thank Him as you avail yourselves of them. Words can never tell how much is due to Him. But do not dishonor Him by pleading that He should do what is covenanted, as though He were unwilling or reluctant, or had to begin to meet your need. All has been done, all has been borne and suffered, all has been acquired, and all is now provided and secured; draw near with comfort and joy, and avail yourselves by faith of all your blessed inheritance; live in your home, possess your possessions, dismiss the brooding of anxious care — all things are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.