Part 1 (1/2)
The Two Covenants.
Murray, Andrew.
INTRODUCTION.
IT is often said that the great aim of the preacher ought to be to translate Scripture truth from its Jewish form into the language and the thought of the nineteenth century, and so to make it intelligible and acceptable to our ordinary Christians. It is to be feared that the experiment will do more harm than good. In the course of the translation the force of the original is lost. The scholar who trusts to translations will never become a master of the language he wants to learn. A race of Christians will be raised up, to whom the language of G.o.d's Word, and with that the G.o.d who spoke it, will be strange. In the Scripture words not a little of Scripture truth will be lost. For the true Christian life nothing is so healthful and invigorating as to have each man come and study for himself the very words in which the Holy Ghost has spoken.
One of the words of Scripture, which is almost going out of fas.h.i.+on, is the word Covenant. There was a time when it was the keynote of the theology and the Christian life of strong and holy men. We know how deep in Scotland it entered into the national life and thought. It made mighty men, to whom G.o.d, and His promise and power were wonderfully real. It will be found still to bring strength and purpose to those who will take the trouble to bring all their life under control of the inspiring a.s.surance that they are living in covenant with a G.o.d who has sworn faithfully to fulfil in them every promise He has given.
This book is a humble attempt to show what exactly the blessings are that G.o.d has covenanted to bestow on us; what the a.s.surance is the Covenant gives that they must, and can, and will be fulfilled; what the hold on G.o.d Himself is which it thus gives us; and what the conditions are for the full and continual experience of its blessings. I feel confident that if I can lead any to listen to what G.o.d has to say to them of His Covenant, and to deal with Him as a Covenant G.o.d, it will bring them strength and joy: Not long ago I received from one of my correspondents a letter with the following pa.s.sage in it:a””I think you will excuse and understand me when I say there is one further note of power I would like so much to have introduced into your next book on Intercession. G.o.d Himself has, I know, been giving me some direct teaching this winter upon the place the New Covenant is to have in intercessory prayer a I know you believe in the Covenant, and the Covenant rights we have on account of it. Have you followed out your views of the Covenant as they bear upon this subject of intercession? Am I wrong in coming to the conclusion that we may come boldly into G.o.d's presence, and not only ask, but claim a Covenant right through Christ Jesus to all the spiritual searching, and cleansing, and knowledge, and power promised in the three great Covenant promises? If you would take the Covenant and speak of it as G.o.d could enable you to speak, I think that would be the quickest way the Lord could take to make His Church wake up to the power He has put into our hands in giving us a Covenant. I would be so glad if you would tell G.o.d's people that they have a Covenant.” Though this letter was not the occasion of the writing of the book, and our Covenant rights have been considered in a far wider aspect than their relation to prayer, I am persuaded that nothing will help us more in our work of intercession, than the entrance for ourselves personally into what it means that we have a Covenant G.o.d.
My one great desire has been to ask Christians whether they are really seeking to find out what exactly G.o.d wants them to be, and is willing to make them. It is only as they wait, ”that the mind of the Lord may be showed them,” that their faith can ever truly see, or accept, or enjoy what G.o.d calls ”His salvation.” As long as we expect G.o.d to do for us what we ask or think, we limit Him. When we believe that as high as the heavens are above the earth, His thoughts are above our thoughts, and wait on Him as G.o.d to do unto us according to His Word, as He means it, we shall be prepared to live the truly supernatural, heavenly life the Holy Spirit can work in usa”the true Christ life.
May G.o.d lead every reader into the secret of His presence, and ”show him His Covenant.”
ANDREW MURRAY.
WELLINGTON, SOUTH AFRICA,.
1st November 1898.
CHAPTER I.
A Covenant G.o.d.
”Know therefore that the Lord thy G.o.d, He is G.o.d, the faithful G.o.d, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments.”-DEUT. vii. 9.
MEN often make covenants. They know the advantages to be derived from them. As an end of enmity or uncertainty, as a statement of services and benefits to be rendered, as a security for their certain performance, as a bond of amity and goodwill, as a ground for perfect confidence and friends.h.i.+p, a covenant has often been of unspeakable value.
In His infinite condescension to our human weakness and need, there is no possible way in which men pledge their faithfulness, that G.o.d has not sought to make use of, to give us perfect confidence in Him, and the full a.s.surance of all that He, in His infinite riches and power as G.o.d, has promised to do to us. It is with this view He has consented to bind Himself by covenant, as if He could not be trusted. Blessed is the man who truly knows G.o.d as his Covenant G.o.d; who knows what the Covenant promises him; what unwavering confidence of expectation it secures, that all its terms will be fulfilled to him; what a claim and hold it gives him on the Covenant-keeping G.o.d Himself. To many a man, who has never thought much of the Covenant, a true and living faith in it would mean the transformation of his whole life. The full knowledge of what G.o.d wants to do for him; the a.s.surance that it will be done by an Almighty Power; the being drawn to G.o.d Himself in personal surrender, and dependence, and waiting to have it done; all this would make the Covenant the very gate of heaven. May the Holy Spirit give us some vision of its glory.
When G.o.d created man in His image and likeness, it was that he might have a life as like His own as it was possible for a creature to live.
This was to be by G.o.d Himself living and working all in man. For this man was to yield himself in loving dependence to the wonderful glory of being the recipient, the bearer, the manifestation of a Divine life.
The one secret of man's happiness was to be a trustful surrender of his whole being to the willing and the working of G.o.d. When sin entered, this relation to G.o.d was destroyed; when man had disobeyed, he feared G.o.d and fled from Him. He no longer knew, or loved, or trusted G.o.d.
Man could not save himself from the power of sin. If his redemption was to be effected, G.o.d must do it all. And if G.o.d was to do it in harmony with the law of man's nature, man must be brought to desire it, to yield his willing consent, and entrust himself to G.o.d. All that G.o.d wanted man to do was, to believe in Him. What a man believes, moves and rules his whole being, enters into him, and becomes part of his very life. Salvation could only be by faith: G.o.d restoring the life man had lost; man in faith yielding himself to G.o.d's work and will. The first great work of G.o.d with man was to get him to believe. This work cost G.o.d more care and time and patience than we can easily conceive. All the dealings with individual men, and with the people of Israel, had just this one object, to teach men to trust Him. Where He found faith He could do anything. Nothing dishonoured and grieved Him so much as unbelief. Unbelief was the root of disobedience and every sin; it made it impossible for G.o.d to do His work. The one thing G.o.d sought to waken in men by promise and threatening, by mercy and judgment, was faith.
Of the many devices of which G.o.d's patient and condescending grace made use to stir up and strengthen faith, one of the chief wasa”the Covenant. In more than one way G.o.d sought to effect this by His Covenant. First of all, His Covenant was always a revelation of His purposes, holding out, in definite promise, what G.o.d was willing to work in those with whom the Covenant was made. It was a Divine pattern of the work G.o.d intended to do in their behalf, that they might know what to desire and expect, that their faith might nourish itself with the very things, though as yet unseen, which G.o.d was working out. Then, the Covenant was meant to be a security and guarantee, as simple and plain and humanlike as the Divine glory could make it, that the very things which G.o.d had promised would indeed be brought to pa.s.s and wrought out in those with whom He had entered into covenant. Amid all delay and disappointment, and apparent failure of the Divine promises, the Covenant was to be the anchor of the soul, pledging the Divine veracity and faithfulness and unchangeableness for the certain performance of what had been promised. And so the Covenant was, above all, to give man a hold upon G.o.d, as the Covenant-keeping G.o.d, to link him to G.o.d Himself in expectation and hope, to bring him to make G.o.d Himself alone the portion and the strength of his soul.
Oh that we knew how G.o.d longs that we should trust Him, and how surely His every promise must be fulfilled to those who do so! Oh that we knew how it is owing to nothing but our unbelief that we cannot enter into the possession of G.o.d's promises, and that G.o.d cannota”yes, cannota”do His mighty works in us, and for us, and through us! Oh that we knew how one of the surest remedies for our unbeliefa”the divinely chosen cure for ita”is the Covenant into which G.o.d has entered with us! The whole dispensation of the Spirit, the whole economy of grace in Christ Jesus, the whole of our spiritual life, the whole of the health and growth and strength of the Church, has been laid down and provided for, and secured in the New Covenant. No wonder that, where that Covenant, with its wonderful promises, is so little thought of, its plea for an abounding and unhesitating confidence in G.o.d so little understood, its claim upon the faithfulness of the Omnipotent G.o.d so little tested; no wonder that Christian life should miss the joy and the strength, the holiness and the heavenliness which G.o.d meant and so clearly promised that it should have.
Let us listen to the words in which G.o.d's Word calls us to know, and wors.h.i.+p, and trust our Covenant-keeping G.o.da”it may be we shall find what we have been looking for: the deeper, the full experience of all G.o.d's grace can do in us. In our text Moses says: ”Know therefore that the Lord thy G.o.d, He is G.o.d, the faithful G.o.d, which keepeth covenant with them that love Him.” Hear what G.o.d says in Isaiah: ”The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall My covenant of peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” More sure than any mountain is the fulfilment of every Covenant promise. Of the New Covenant, in Jeremiah, G.o.d speaks: ”I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me.” The Covenant secures alike that G.o.d will not turn from us, nor we depart from Him: He undertakes both for Himself and us.
Let us ask very earnestly whether the lack in our Christian life, and specially in our faith, is not owing to the neglect of the Covenant. We have not wors.h.i.+pped nor trusted the Covenant-keeping G.o.d. Our soul has not done what G.o.d called us toa””to take hold of His Covenant,” ”to remember the Covenant”; is it wonder that our faith has failed and come short of the blessing? G.o.d could not fulfil His promises in us. If we will begin to examine into the terms of the Covenant, as the t.i.tle-deeds of our inheritance, and the riches we are to possess even here on earth; if we will think of the certainty of their fulfilment, more sure than the foundations of the everlasting mountains; if we will turn to the G.o.d who has engaged to do all for us, who keepeth covenant for ever, our life will become different from what it has been; it can, and will be, all that G.o.d would make it.
The great lack of our religion isa”we need more of G.o.d. We accept salvation as His gift, and we do not know that the only object of salvation, its chief blessing, is to fit us for, and bring us back to, that close intercourse with G.o.d for which we were created, and in which our glory in eternity will be found. All that G.o.d has ever done for His people in making a covenant was always to bring them to Himself as their chief, their only good, to teach them to trust in Him, to delight in Him, to be one with Him. It cannot be otherwise. If G.o.d indeed be nothing but a very fountain of goodness and glory, of beauty and blessedness, the more we can have of His presence, the more we conform to His will, the more we are engaged in His service, the more we have Him ruling and working all in us, the more truly happy shall we be. If G.o.d indeed be thereby Owner and Author of life and strength, of holiness and happiness, and can alone give and work it in us, the more we trust Him, and depend and wait on Him, the stronger and the holier and the happier we shall be. And that only is a true and good religious life, which brings us every day nearer to this G.o.d, which makes us give up everything to have more of Him. No obedience can be too strict, no dependence too absolute, no submission too complete, no confidence too implicit, to a soul that is learning to count G.o.d Himself its chief good, its exceeding joy.
In entering into covenant with us, G.o.d's one object is to draw us to Himself, to render us entirely dependent upon Himself, and so to bring us into the right position and disposition in which He can fill us with Himself, His love, and His blessedness. Let us undertake our study of the New Covenant, in which, if we are believers, G.o.d is at this moment living and walking with us, with the honest purpose and surrender, at any price, to know what G.o.d wishes to be to us, to do in us, and to have us be and do to Him. The New Covenant may become to us one of the windows of heaven through which we see into the face, into the very heart, of G.o.d.
Chapter II.
The Two Covenants: Their Relation.
”It is written, that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondmaid, and one by the freewoman. Howbeit, the one by the bondmaid is born after the flesh; but the son by the freewoman is born through promise. Which things contain an allegory: for these women are two covenants.” -GAL.
iv. 22-24.
THERE are two covenants, one called the Old, the other the New. G.o.d speaks of this very distinctly in Jeremiah, where He says: ”The days come, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not after the covenant I made with their fathers” (Jer. x.x.xi.). This is quoted in Hebrews, with the addition: ”In that He saith a new covenant, He hath made the first old.” Our Lord spoke Himself of the New Covenant in His blood. In His dealings with His people, in His working out His great redemption, it has pleased G.o.d that there should be two covenants.
It has pleased Him, not as an arbitrary appointment, but for good and wise reasons, which made it indispensably necessary that it should be so, and no otherwise. The clearer our insight into the reasons, and the Divine reasonableness, of there thus being two covenants, and into their relation to each other, the more full and true can be our own personal apprehension of what the New Covenant is meant to be to us.
They indicate two stages in G.o.d's dealing with man; two ways of serving G.o.d, a lower or elementary one of preparation and promise, a higher or more advanced one of fulfilment and possession. As that in which the true excellency of the second consists is opened up to us, we can spiritually enter into what G.o.d has prepared for us. Let us try and understand why there should have been two, neither less nor more.
The reason is to be found in the fact that, in religion, in all intercourse between G.o.d and man, there are two parties, and that each of these must have the opportunity to prove what their part is in the Covenant. In the Old Covenant man had the opportunity given him to prove what He could do, with the aid of all the means of grace G.o.d could bestow. That Covenant ended in man proving his own unfaithfulness and failure. In the New Covenant, G.o.d is to prove what He can do with man, all unfaithful and feeble as he is, when He is allowed and trusted to do all the work. The Old Covenant was one dependent on man's obedience, one which he could break, and did break (Jer. x.x.xi. 32). The New Covenant was one which G.o.d has engaged shall never be broken; He Himself keeps it and ensures our keeping it: so He makes it an Everlasting Covenant.
It will repay us richly to look a little deeper into this. This relation of G.o.d to fallen man in covenant is the same as it was to unfallen man as Creator. And what was that relation? G.o.d proposed to make a man in His own image and likeness. The chief glory of G.o.d is that He has life in Himself; that He is independent of all else, and owes what He is to Himself alone. If the image and likeness of G.o.d was not to be a mere name, and man was really to be like G.o.d in the power to make himself what he was to be, he must needs have the power of free will and self-determination. This was the problem G.o.d had to solve in man's creation in His image. Man was to be a creature made by G.o.d, and yet he was to be, as far as a creature could be, like G.o.d, self-made.
In all G.o.d's treatment of man these two factors were ever to be taken into account. G.o.d was ever to take the initiative, and be to man the source of life. Man was ever to be the recipient, and yet at the same time the disposer of the life G.o.d bestowed.
When man had fallen through sin, and G.o.d entered into a covenant of salvation, these two sides of the relations.h.i.+p had still to be maintained intact. G.o.d was ever to be the first, and man the second.
And yet man, as made in G.o.d's image, was ever, as second, to have full time and opportunity to appropriate or reject what G.o.d gave, to prove how far he could help himself, and indeed be self-made. His absolute dependence upon G.o.d was not to be forced upon him; if it was really to be a thing of moral worth and true blessedness, it must be his deliberate and voluntary choice. And this now is the reason why there was a first and a second covenant, that in the first, man's desires and efforts might be fully awakened, and time given for him to make full proof of what his human nature, with the aid of outward instruction and miracles and means of grace, could accomplish. When his utter impotence, his hopeless captivity under the power of sin had been discovered, there came the New Covenant, in which G.o.d was to reveal how man's true liberty from sin and self and the creature, his true n.o.bility and G.o.dlikeness, was to be found in the most entire and absolute dependence, in G.o.d's being and doing all within him.
In the very nature of things there was no other way possible to G.o.d than this in dealing with a being whom He had endowed with the G.o.dlike power of a will. And all the weight this reason for the Divine procedure has in G.o.d's dealing with His people as a whole, it equally has in dealing with the individual. The two covenants represent two stages of G.o.d's education of man and of man's seeking after G.o.d. The progress and transition from the one to the other is not merely chronological or historical; it is organic and spiritual. In greater or lesser degree it is seen in every member of the body, as well as in the body as a whole. Under the Old Covenant there were men in whom, by antic.i.p.ation, the powers of the coming redemption worked mightily. In the New Covenant there are men in whom the spirit of the Old still makes itself manifest. The New Testament proves, in some of its most important epistles,a”especially those to the Galatians, Romans, and Hebrews,a”how possible it is within the New Covenant still to be held fast in the bondage of the Old.
This is the teaching of the pa.s.sage from which our text is taken. In the home of Abraham, the father of the faithful, Ishmael and Isaac are both founda”the one born of a slave, the other of a free woman; the one after the flesh and the will of man, the other through the promise and the power of G.o.d; the one only for a time, then to be cast out, the other to be heir of all. A picture held up to the Galatians of the life they were leading, as they trusted to the flesh and its religion, making a fair show, and yet proved, by their being led captive to sin, to be, not of the free but of the bond woman. Only through faith in the promise and the mighty quickening power of G.o.d could they, could any of them, be made truly and fully free, and stand in the freedom with which Christ has made us free.
As we proceed to study the two covenants in the light of this and other scriptures, we shall see how they are indeed the Divine revelation of two systems of religious wors.h.i.+p, each with its spirit or life-principle ruling every man who professes to be a Christian. We shall see how the one great cause of the feebleness of so many Christians is just this, that the Old Covenant spirit of bondage still has the mastery. And we shall see that nothing but a spiritual insight, with a wholehearted acceptance, and a living experience, of all the New Covenant engages that G.o.d will work in us, can possibly fit for walking as G.o.d would have us do.