NEW COVENANT COMMANDMENTS

“And this is his commandment: We must believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us. Those who obey God’s commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he with them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us.
1 John 3:23-24 NLT

Just imagine if we, as God’s children, were still obligated to obey all 613 commandments required in the Old Covenant! Why did God make life so complicated for His people? 

When the Israelites left Egypt, they were like an unruly mob of undisciplined toddlers. They had lived in Egypt, under the influence of Egyptian paganism, for many generations. They had no strong spiritual leaders to guide them. They lived by their wits and mostly followed the way of life of their Egyptian overlords. A few still followed the faith of their ancestors, like Moses’ parents, for example, but the majority were lost in the wilderness of their own sinful natures.

So, God had to start at the beginning with them, treating them as parents would treat their very young ones. They had to learn who God was and how to honour and respect Him. They had to learn what offended Him and what to do about it. They had to learn to respect one another and to live together in harmony.

Just as parents guide little children with rules that protect them, so God set up a covenant with His people with rules which taught them what to in every situation. Tedious and detailed as they were, these rules were imperative to keep His unruly people in check and to protect them from their own self-destructive ways.

History reveals that God’s instructions did nothing to control His people. In fact, the opposite happened. They became more rebellious as the generations passed. Of course, this was part of God’s plan, to show them how impossible it was to be righteous in His sight by obeying laws.

God intended this process of learning and failing to prepare them to receive His marvellous solution. Through the Apostle John, He distilled His rules down to two simple instructions: believe in Jesus and love one another. By this time, Jesus had died on the cross and risen again. He had ascended to the Father and poured out the Holy Spirit on the church.

“Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed. Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith.”
Galatians 3:23-24 NLT

The New Covenant which God established with Jesus through His obedience to death, brings us into union with Jesus through our belief in Him so that we share in everything He is and does in this covenant with the Father.

So, John says, Jesus fulfilled the entire Old Covenant with all its standards and instructions. God restored the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit to every believer to be Jesus’ personal representative in us. Now we no longer need rules, regulations, and rituals to live in obedience to the Father. We have a personal guide and the power to obey God’s will living inside us.

The entire package of salvation is given to us through faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Command number one in the New Covenant is, therefore, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (and everything He accomplished is yours).

The fruit of that faith is a changed life.

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT

Command number two is to love one another. Where this was once impossible in the Old Covenant which provided no power to obey, now we have God’s nature given to us and the Holy Spirit in us who provides the power to obey.

“And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”
Romans 5:5 NLT

God made our participation in the New Covenant simple and attainable if we keep in mind these two requirements. Let’s not complicate what He simplified by adding extras not written in His Word.

Our continued fellowship with God and one another is the fruit of our obedience to these two commands.