Spirit and Covenant

The promise of the Spirit is vital to the redemption of humanity and the Covenant of God with His people, the Assembly of Jesus Christ.

The New Testament connects the “Promise of the Spirit” to the “Blessings of Abraham,” the promise that God would bless the nations through the Great Patriarch. The Spirit is the gift believers receive “through the hearing of faith.” It is part of the covenant promises given to Abraham, and Peter connected this gift to the “blessings” for the nations during his sermon on the Day of Pentecost.

[Photo by Derek Sutton on Unsplash]

The Gift of the Spirit received by the 120 disciples on that day, and by 3,000 converts following Peter’s sermon, was in fulfillment of what God promised Abraham centuries earlier.

• “The promise is for you, and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” - (Acts 2:38-39).

• (Genesis 12:1-3) - “And Yahweh said to Abram… So shall be blessed in you all the clans of the earth” – (Also, Genesis 17:7).

Unfortunately, Israel failed to keep the covenant. Though the nation had sworn to perform “all the words which Yahweh has spoken,” history attests to its failure to fulfill its obligations.

The Israelites could not meet the covenant’s requirements since they did not yet possess the Spirit. Without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, they would never fulfill the “righteous requirements of the Law” of Moses - (Exodus 24:1-8, Numbers 11:1-15).

Nevertheless, the Mosaic legislation anticipated Israel’s downfall and the need for something beyond written Law or Torah. After predicting the dispersal of the nation as punishment for its sins, God promised that after Israel truly repented, the nation would “return to me and obey my voice with all your heart and soul.”

On that glorious day, He would gather the people from all nations and “circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed to love Yahweh your God with all your heart” - (Deuteronomy 30:1-6).

The themes of renewal and circumcision of the heart were addressed by the prophet Jeremiah. The day would come when God would “make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” but not a covenant according to the one He made with the nation’s forefathers – (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would provide a New Covenant in which He would write His laws in the hearts of His people. This circumcision of the heart foreseen by Moses has come to fruition in the “New Covenant” prophesied by Jeremiah and inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth.

The New Testament applies this promise to the covenant founded by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Likewise, the Prophet Ezekiel employed the same theme, but he added the essential element of the Spirit - (compare Hebrews 8:6-12):

• (Ezekiel 36:24-28) – “Therefore will I take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all the lands, and will bring you upon your own soil… And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and my spirit will I put within you and will cause that in my statutes you shall walk, and my regulations you shall observe and do.”

THE COVENANT

Thus, Ezekiel combined the promises of the New Covenant, the Gift of the Spirit, and the circumcised heart. Centuries later, Paul would apply these promises to the congregation in the city of Corinth:

• (2 Corinthians 3:1-6) – “You are our letter, inscribed in our hearts, noted and read by all men, manifesting yourselves that you are a letter of Christ, ministered by us, inscribed, not with ink, but with the Spirit of a Living God; not in tablets of stone, but in tablets which are hearts of flesh… Not that of our own selves sufficient are we to reckon anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also has made us sufficient to be ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.”

The prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel pointed to the centrality of the Spirit. With the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, the long-awaited New Covenant with the Gift of the Spirit arrived for the people of God.

The connection of the Gift of the Spirit to the Abrahamic Covenant and the “New Covenant” described in Jeremiah illustrates the continuity of what God is doing today in His Church, and with His redemptive purposes for the nation of Israel.

Neither the Church nor the receipt of the Spirit was an unforeseen interim stage or necessary detour in God’s redemptive plan. They are fundamental parts of His covenant and have been so from the beginning.

The covenant with Abraham finds its fulfillment in Jesus and his people composed of Jewish and Gentile followers of Christ, his “Assembly.” With his Death and Resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost, “no longer can there be Jew or Gentile.” Both Jewish and Gentile believers become the “heirs” and “seed” of Abraham.

Regardless of race or nationality, the disciples of Christ are filled with the Holy Spirit, and with their “circumcised hearts,” they follow the Messiah of Israel wherever he leads as “one new man” - (Galatians 3:26-29, Ephesians 2:15).

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SEE ALSO:

• The Promise of the Father - (With the outpouring of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, the blessings for all nations promised to Abraham commenced)

• The Age of the Spirit - (The Gift of the Spirit is part of the New Covenant, and the first fruits of the New Creation and the gathering of the nations)

• Promise and Spirit - (The Gift of the Spirit is one of God’s covenant promises and his ways of blessing all Nations in Abraham’s Seed)

• A Promessa do Pai - (Com o derramamento do Espírito no dia de Pentecostes, começaram as bênçãos para todas as nações prometidas a Abraão)