Preface
Grace, Faith & Life
The Biblical New Covenant Preface
This site is “A Personal Statement of Christian Faith and Practice”. It is intended to explain several of my views on understanding the meaning of Scripture relative to a personal, New Covenant relationship with Christ rather than the denominational theology and practice of an organized religion which we call Christianity. To learn and understand the correct application of Christianity to your life, is why you need to be responsible to hear the word from many and search the scriptures for yourself. Acts 17:11; 1John 4:1
There are four different approaches used to describe the New Covenant on this site. All contain pop-up scripture references. In addition to this, there are several other topical essays in The Blog.
- Sound Bytes (1997) – About doctrine & Life.
- The Life Study Series (1996) – A lot about Body – Soul – Spirit.
- The New Covenant Series (2008) – About how to live it.
- 11 Points in the Preface – About the “essence” of it.
Many agree that an organized institutional church body is not the same thing as the Body of Christ which is called the Church. The organized church model has many faces based on denominational theology. Usually the model is to motivate members to service – in their church, expectations of “fulfilling the great commission” and evangelism for church membership and to teach members how to live a life that would be exemplary for Jesus Christ. Not many teach a New Covenant way. Robert Farrar Capon writes about the many styles of church and their shortcomings in his book “The Astonished Heart“.
The New Covenant which Jesus foretold and which was not understood by the Apostles until after pentecost, is about a new way of connecting and living with God. As believers, we now have God’s Spirit in us, always reminding us that He is there and will teach us His Truths through His Word and our experiences. (Rom 8:16; 1Cor 2:14; Heb 4:12) This is the “new and living way” and “walk in newness of life” In Hebrews. (Heb 10:19; Rom 6:4; 7:6; 2Cor 3:6)We do not try to clean-up our life by doing good things or not doing bad things. Our life and the desires of our heart are changed as we allow God’s word to teach us His Truth, our conscience does not have a role in this, but our attitude does.
The scriptures which I have referenced are not intended to be proof texts. They are simply “theme” texts which are part of a bigger context which you can study. Some people prefer to study and teach scripture verse-by-verse through a book. Their argument is that people hear all of God’s word and not scriptures selected to support a particular view. My response is that people who teach verse-by-verse always expound and comment on selected verses in order to highlight/prove their view. So what is the difference? We should always try to understand the meaning of scripture passages and not just what it says, to do this, we must search through the scriptures by topic or teaching. John 5:39 Col 1:9 2:2
Most leaders and teachers have a denominational bias which affirms the entire Bible as a “rule book” by which to live. (2 Tim 3:16) If you agree with the New Covenant perspective of the Bible, The Bible is not a “rule book” it is a narrative about God’s plan of redemption and establishes the New Covenant way for a Christian to live their life in a relationship with God and others based on love. (John 13:35 Rom 5:5 13:8 1 John 4:7) All scripture should be taught relative to its relationship to the New Covenant. What follows are some of what I see as the distinctive characteristics of the New Covenant. (Heb 8:10)
[1] The New Covenant and the New Testament are not the same thing. Mat 26:28 2Cor 3:6 Heb 8:13
[2] In the Old Testament, God’s relationship with Israel was mostly physical and through preaching of Prophets, (Heb 1:1,2) in the New Covenant God relates to us spiritually. That is why we must be “born-again”. (John 3:7) When we repent of our unbelief, we are “born-again” by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This is called a new life. It is a new way of relating to God.
[3] Many of Jesus’s teachings and commentary in the New Testament Gospels are about the Old Testament and directed toward the Jews and Jewish leaders under the law, and are not intended for New Covenant Believers. The Old Testament was based on law. Living by the law does not change the heart. Mat 23:27 The New covenant “promise” is to change the desire of our heart to be based on God’s love instead of law. As we study scripture, and apply it to our circumstances in life and relationships with other people, we experience the “fruit of the Spirit”.
[4] It is not enough to define the New Covenant as a distinction between law and grace. God’s Grace has always been active, even in the Old Testament. Grace is simply the activity of God’s love. God is always active in His creation. The Life given to believers by the New Covenant, however, is an altogether new way of living with God.
[5] Jesus took away the sins of the world, so repentance of sins is not an issue in salvation, we repent of our unbelief, and we are saved by His life in us. Rom 5:10 Mark 3:28 Rom 3:25 Heb 8:12 1John 2:2
[6] When we repent of unbelief we are born-again, spiritually, which means we are His child and we can now communicate with God – in us – and He with us, spiritually, in scripture. 1Cor 2:13 Acts 26:18 John 6:63 1 Cor 2:10-14
[7] When we are born-again, we walk in a new way, motivated by love, not by works of obedience. Eph 2:1 Rom 8:11 Obedience can be an expression of love, but obedience cannot be the motivation for love.
[8] God does not deal with us according to what we call sins. That issue is gone forever by the finished work of Christ. But, what about 1 John 1:9? The first chapter is about Gnostic nonbelievers 1 John 1:3. The second chapter is then about believers 1 John 2:12
[9] In the New covenant, God deals with us as His child. Joint heirs with Jesus and being conformed into his image by the work of the Holy Spirit, through scripture, teaching us truth regarding “law” and “grace”. We need the Holy Spirit to teach us the meaning of love. We do not need the Holy Spirit to teach us how to live according to law, we can learn that on our own. Nor does the Holy Spirit empower us to be obedient to fulfill the law. We get no power. The power is in the message of the Gospel to change the minds of nonbelievers (Gal 3:29 4:4-5 Tit 3:7 Eph 3:6 Rom 8:29 2Cor 3:18), and for Truth revealed by the Holy Spirit to renew the mind of the believer.
[10] The New Covenant is based on loving relationships with God and with others. There is no performance expectations. There is nothing we can do for God. When we really come to understand and accept this, we are set free. Being conformed into the image of Christ is not about what we do, but about the attitude of our heart when we think and act. Jesus’ attitude was always based on responding to what God the Father has done in Him. That is the same image that we can have. That is our faith. 1Pet 3:18
[11] Fear and guilt have no place in the New Covenant believer’s life, nor should it have any place in moving people to repentance. 2Tim 1:7 1 John 4:18 Rom 8:1 15
Copyright © 2010 Daniel Ray Boliek www.gflstudy.org
CodeScan code for this site.
