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The Seventh-day
Adventist Church doesn’t really teach their members
what the Old Covenant was, or about the New
Covenant that Jesus Christ gave us. They
tell people to keep some of the laws from
the Old Covenant just like the Judaizers did
in Paul’s day (Rom. 2-8; Gal. 2-6; Eph. 1-2;
Col. 2; Heb. 4-10; James 2).
The
Ten Commandments are the Old Covenant
(Exodus 34:27-28).
The Ten Commandments
were the first, or old covenant! The tablets of the Ten
Commandments are part of the abolished first
covenant:
Hebrews 8:13 says, “In
speaking of a new covenant, he makes the
first one obsolete. And what is becoming
obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish
away.”
Hebrews 9:1, 4 says, “Now even
the first covenant had regulations for
worship and an earthly place of holiness. .
. having the golden altar of incense and the
ark of the covenant covered on all sides
with gold, in which was a golden urn holding
the manna, and Aaron’s staff that budded,
and the tablets of the covenant.”
Exodus 34:27-28 says, “And the LORD said to
Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance
with these words I have made a covenant with
you and with Israel.” So he was there with
the LORD forty days and forty nights. He
neither ate bread nor drank water. And he
wrote on the tablets the words of the
covenant, the Ten Commandments.”
Deuteronomy 4:13 says, “And he declared to
you his covenant, which he commanded you to
perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and
he wrote them on two tablets of stone.”
Deuteronomy 5:2-3 says, “The LORD our
God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not
with our fathers did the LORD make this
covenant, but with us, who are all of us
here alive today.”
According
to the New Covenant:
• The Old Covenant
was abolished (Heb. 8:13; cf. Rom. 7:4-7; Col. 2:14; Eph. 2:15).
• The law
is weak, useless and makes nothing perfect
(Heb. 7:18-19; cf. Heb. 10:1, 4).
• God has found fault
with it and created a better covenant,
enacted on better promises (Heb. 8:7-8; 10:9).
• It is obsolete, growing old and ready to
vanish away (Heb. 8:13; 9:15; 10:9).
• It is only a
shadow of good things to come and will never
make someone perfect (Heb. 8:5; 10:1; cf.
Col. 2:16-17).
Jesus gave us a new covenant to
live by! The New Covenant is superior to the
Old Covenant in every way!
Hebrews 7:22 says, “This makes Jesus the
guarantor of a better covenant.”
Hebrews 8:6-7 says, “But as it is, Christ
has obtained a ministry that is as much more
excellent than the old as the covenant he
mediates is better, since it is enacted on
better promises. For if that first covenant
had been faultless, there would have been no
occasion to look for a second.”
Hebrews 12:24 says, “and to Jesus, the
mediator of a new covenant, and to the
sprinkled blood that speaks a better word
than the blood of Abel.”
Hebrews 13:20 says, “Now may the God of peace who
brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus,
the great shepherd of the sheep, by the
blood of the eternal covenant.”
The Ten Commandments are
obsolete because of the New Covenant!
Christians are told to live under the New
Covenant law of Christ; not the Ten
Commandments.
It is a New Covenant!
Are you a New Covenant believer?
Christians live under the New Covenant, not
the Old Covenant Ten Commandments.
God has had different laws under each covenant. That is just how it is.
Each covenant has its own laws.
Each covenant is a new legal contract. A
contract has to have all of its requirements
spelled out in the contract. We are never
told to keep the Law of Moses in the New
Covenant. Just the opposite!
The
Ten Commandments are the Old Covenant that has
been made obsolete! That is exactly what the
New Covenant says.
The only
laws Christians are required to keep are the
laws as expressed in the New Covenant. Not
some admixture of laws from the Old and the
New Covenants.
The
Old and New Covenant are not the same.
• The Ten Commandments are the Old
Covenant (Exod. 34:27-28; Deut. 4:13).
• The Old
Covenant was abolished (Heb. 8:13).
•
The Ten Commandments as a legal contract are
abolished!
• The New Covenant has its own
legal code (Gal. 6:2; 1 Cor. 9:19-23).
• You cannot live under
two competing covenants at one time.
The New Covenant is the last
Will and Testament of Jesus Christ!
Hebrews 9:15-17 says, “Therefore he is the
mediator of a new covenant, so that those
who are called may receive the promised
eternal inheritance, since a death has
occurred that redeems them from the
transgressions committed under the first
covenant. For where a will is involved, the
death of the one who made it must be
established. For a will takes effect only at
death, since it is not in force as long as
the one who made it is alive.”
In the
New Testament, only the book of Hebrews makes
the covenants a central theological theme. The
emphasis is on Jesus, the perfect High
Priest, providing a new, better, and superior
covenant (Heb. 7:22; 8:6). Jesus
represented the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s
new covenant promise (Heb. 8:8, 10; 10:16).
Jesus was the perfect covenant
Mediator (Heb. 9:15), providing an
eternal inheritance in a way the old
covenant could not (compare with Heb. 12:24).
Jesus’ death on the cross
satisfied the requirement that all covenants
be established by blood, just
as the first covenant was (Heb. 9:18, 20; Exod. 24:8).
Christ’s blood established an everlasting
covenant (Heb. 13:20). If Israel suffered
for breaking the Sinai covenant (Heb. 8:9-10),
how much more should they expect
to suffer if they have counted the blood of
the new covenant an unholy thing (Heb. 10:29).
You cannot have two wills in effect
at the same time.
Jesus was
fully aware that the Old Covenant was
binding while he lived. Jesus lived and died
under the Law of Moses. Thus, he said, Do
not think that I came to abolish the Law or
the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but
to fulfill. (Matt. 5:17) This accounts for
Jesus keeping the Sabbath day and the other
parts of the Law of Moses such as observing
the Passover and the other feasts (Matt. 26:17-26).
Paul
used marriage as a type to illustrate the
keeping of the covenants.
Paul used
the marriage between a man and woman in Romans 7 to
illustrate the binding nature of one
covenant at a time.
Romans 7:1-3
says, “Or do you not know, brothers—for I am
speaking to those who know the law—that the
law is binding on a person only as long as
he lives? For a married woman is bound by
law to her husband while he lives, but if
her husband dies she is released from the
law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be
called an adulteress if she lives with
another man while her husband is alive. But
if her husband dies, she is free from that
law, and if she marries another man she is
not an adulteress.
The next
few verses
make the application plain for us.
Romans 7:4-6 says, “Likewise, my brothers,
you also have died to the law through the
body of Christ, so that you may belong to
another, to him who has been raised from the
dead, in order that we may bear fruit for
God. For while we were living in the flesh,
our sinful passions, aroused by the law,
were at work in our members to bear fruit
for death. But now we are released from the
law, having died to that which held us
captive, so that we serve in the new way of
the Spirit and not in the old way of the
written code.
Romans 7:6 plainly
says that we don’t live by the written code.
Which law are Christ-followers to
die too? Which law is the written
code?
Romans 7:7 says, “What
then shall we say? That the law is sin? By
no means! Yet if it had not been for the
law, I would not have known sin. For I would
not have known what it is to covet if the
law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
Where does the Bible say “you shall not
covet”? Paul was quoting from the Ten Commandments
in Exodus 20:17 and Deuteronomy 5:21.
Paul knew that we cannot be
under two conflicting covenants, or laws at
the same time. A woman cannot be married to
two men at the same time without being
guilty of physical adultery. To be married
to two men at the same time is adultery and
to try live under two competing covenants at the same time is to be guilty
of spiritual adultery. One is just as bad as
the other!
Christians are told to
live by the New Covenant, not the Old Covenant!
The Old Covenant was made up of the 613 laws
that included the Ten Commandments.
By Christ’s
death and resurrection, he cancelled, the
record of debt that stood against us with
its legal demands. This he set aside,
nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:14).
This is how Paul could say that Jesus
abolished the Law of commandments and
regulations.
Ephesians 2:15,
“by
abolishing in his flesh the law with its
commandments and regulations. His purpose
was to create in himself one new man out of
the two, thus making peace.” (NIV)
By
His death and resurrection, he established
the New Covenant that all Christians live
under today! Jews and Gentiles live together
under the new and better
covenant!
Hebrews 10:9-10 says,
“then he added, “Behold, I have come to do
your will.” He does away with the first in
order to establish the second. And by that
will we have been sanctified through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all.”
New does not mean the same as
the old! The Holy Days of Judaism and the
entire ceremonial system have never applied
to Christ’s followers!
We are under the New
Covenant that Christ gave us with its own
legal code. The law of Christ.
The New Covenant has its own legal code! The
Law of the Old Covenant is NOT the law
Christians are told to live by..
The moral aspects of the Ten Commandments
are forever true and are repeated in the New
Covenant and they should be observed; but the
Sabbath command was and is ceremonial by its
nature. It was given as a sign between God
and Israel alone and it is not required
under
the New Covenant.
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