The Daily Word of Righteousness

The True Nature of the New Covenant, #5

And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. (Luke 11:2)

The new covenant is the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the doing of God's will in the earth as it is done in Heaven. The Kingdom of God is oriented toward the earth, not toward residence in Heaven.

The Kingdom comes from Heaven and is of the Life and Nature of Heaven, but its eternal destination is the earth. There will be a new earth in which righteousness dwells. All the people in it will be righteous. This is the final result of the new covenant.

The new covenant is the writing of God's laws in our mind and heart. Christ is the Word of God, the Law of God. The Word of God became flesh and then was crucified. Now the Word, the Law, the Covenant of God comes to us in the form of the body and blood of Christ.

It is His body and blood that are the new covenant. They are the Life and Nature of God entering us.

Our responsibility as sons of God is to be led by the Spirit of God. The Spirit forms Christ, the Law, the Word, the Kingdom, the will of God in us. Christ is formed in us and dwells in us. This is the Kingdom of God, the new covenant. It is the transformation of what we are in personality and behavior. There is a new creation in which all things are of God.

Both John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth announced the soon coming of the Kingdom of God. Jesus spoke many parables of the Kingdom. The most important of these may be the parable of the sower. The seed is the Word of God. It is planted in us. Some people bring forth thirty, some sixty, and some a hundredfold. This is the nature of the new covenant.

The new covenant is Christ in us. Christ is being formed in us. We are becoming new creations. Old things are passing away. All things are becoming new and all things are of God.

Such transformation requires that we lay down our life in the world, take up our cross, and follow Christ. If we do not take up our cross we cannot enter the new covenant of transformation. We cannot be changed from the lawlessness of Satan to obedience to God. We cannot be made in God's image or enter the Kingdom of God apart from cross-carrying obedience to Jesus.

Our old nature always refuses to conform to God's will in Christ. God gives us a personal cross to carry so our old nature will be slain and the new Divine nature will be formed in us. The giving of a new nature to us is the new covenant.

The current concept of salvation seeks to save, to preserve what we are. It plans to do this by using the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of the personality and behavior of our old nature. It attempts to bring fallen man into Paradise where he will not suffer any loss but gain everlasting joy. This is not the new covenant of the Lord Jesus.

To be continued.