Part 2 - The new covenant
Most Christians live as though the new covenant is simply a different set of criteria that protect us from God’s punishment.
Have faith in Christ so that you won’t go to hell.
Obey God, follow Christ and you will live the abundant life.
How is this any different from the old covenant? If the old covenant was law that existed to protect us from punishment, how is the new covenant any different?
Maybe the new covenant has nothing to do with protecting us from punishment. Maybe it liberates us in an entirely different way.
Hebrews 8 says:
“If there had been nothing wrong with the first covenant, there would have been no need for another. But God found fault and said, ‘The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Isreal and the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors ….. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. …. No longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord’; because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”
That doesn’t sound much like modern day Christianity. All around us we see churches evangelizing their neighbor and saying to them, ‘know the Lord’.
But the new covenant says NO LONGER.
The new covenant is DIFFERENT than the old covenant.
Completely.
It doesn’t protect us from God's "desire" to punish, nor does it produce a false desire from the restrictions itself (as in Part 1 of this post series), it CONNECTS us to desire. And in this process we come to know God.
Not in an academic or legalistic way. But through the heart.
We come to know ourselves, and in doing so we find God.
When the law (the obstacle) is removed, we find that some things we thought we desired go away. We thought we really wanted them but once they are made accessible, we really don’t want them that much after all. When I can eat all the ice cream I want without any fear of negative consequences, I will get tired of it. It won’t seem like a treat anymore and my desire for it may wane. This stripping away of the desire that was manufactured by the prohibition, and simultaneously being naked and unprotected from the desire of the other (ie. Having no old covenant of law to protect you), allows us to finally see with clarity our own desires and the desires of God. No longer are we bad persons who want any number of bad things. Nor is God a god who desires to punish us for this badness.
Try it. Try it for a week – just do the things you want and do nothing out of obligation, law or restriction.
Every time I discuss this subject with someone, the rebuttal is that it’s just not practical to live that way. We have obligations to jobs, to people. And it’s true – we do. But just try it. I’ve tried it and what you find is that you don’t know your own mind. You don’t know your own heart. You THINK you want things you don’t want. You THINK you want to eat nothing but sugar and chocolate. You THINK you want to lay in bed all day binge-watching Netflix. You THINK you want to be selfish, lazy, indulgent, hedonistic. And you think it is discipline that has kept you from it all.
And on one level, it’s true. It IS discipline that has held back the demon.
So - let the demon free.
Too afraid to try it?
Try it.
Try it in one area of your life.
Just to see what happens.
I think you will find that at first, if you pick an area that is meaningful to you, it’s scary. But if you throw yourself into it, next you will find that it’s fun. And then, what happens, after you’ve played it out for a while, is that it’s just not fun anymore. The demon is not really a demon at all. It’s all a façade. Behind the desire you are indulging in is another desire, the desire that says, “hey wait – I don’t really want to live this way after all. I don’t want to spend my life like this.” And behind that is the question:
Then what DO I want?”
And that’s the question we all need to get to.
To discover the true desires of our heart.
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