Apart from the Old Testament, Christians have no foundation on which to build, no prophecies of the future, no types and shadows to help us understand the abstractions of the spiritual Kingdom of God. Apart from the New Testament, the Jews are left with forms which cannot fully meet the needs of people, such as the blood of animals as an atonement for sin (today they do not even have this), and also with unfulfilled prophecies concerning Christ and the Kingdom of God.

Christians have Christ and the blood atonement. The Jews have neither.

The Jews have a book, the Old Testament as we term it, filled with forms and symbols. But apart from Christ they do not have the spiritual fulfillments of these numerous types and shadows. They have no Lamb of God to deliver them from Satan, the Pharaoh of this world. But according to the Prophets the Jews will have Christ in the time to come. God has not forgotten His people!

Whether the Jews or Christians like the idea or not, they constitute one revelation, one covenant of God with man.

The Holocaust cuts deeply into the sensibilities of the true Christian because the Jews are God's chosen people. May it one day be true that Calvary will cut deeply into the sensibilities of the true Jew—the Jew who is circumcised in heart and not just in the flesh.

The reason we Christians do not understand new-covenant grace is because we are defining grace apart from the statements of the Old Testament. Until we see our salvation as the fulfillment of the words of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and other Jewish Prophets we will continue to heap error upon error and myth upon myth as we keep accommodating the Christian Gospel to the philosophical currents and human desires of our time. We are not anchored in the Prophets!

New-covenant Grace—the Divine Response to Jeremiah

The Prophet Jeremiah gave his pronouncements during a very difficult period. The Israelites had made the Lord so angry with their wicked practices He was ready to destroy Jerusalem and hand over His people to the Babylonians.

During this time Jeremiah had the unpopular task of informing the inhabitants of Jerusalem that they already were defeated. God was commanding them to turn themselves over to the Babylonians and that He would take care of them in Babylon.

At the same time the Lord, looking ahead to Christ and the Divine salvation, promised the Jews that He would provide a new covenant for them and return them to the land of Israel.

Of course the Israelites had no way of understanding the depth and breadth of the new covenant—that it would involve the crucifixion of their adamic nature and the birth and development of Christ in their inward man, climaxing with the resurrecting of their physical body and the clothing of it with a body from Heaven that is free from the chains of sin and death.

It is well for all of us, Jews and Gentiles alike, to keep in mind that the fulfillment of any of God's promises always is far, far beyond any marvelous wonder we could conceive.

To be continued.