Sunday, February 12, 2012

Understanding the covenants changes everything!

I used to believe a certain way, and it made perfect sense to me. Yes, I had to ignore certain passages to make that fit, and there were lots of confusing parts of the Bible - particularly Paul's writing. I prefered the OT to the NT. I thought that doctrine could only be fully understood by pastors or theologians, so while I didn't completely understand why we had certain beliefs, I "knew" they must be right because the pastor, the evangelists, and my parents said so. They were all much smarter than me so they must be right. Just about everyone I knew believed that way, and I did, too. How could so-and-so possibly be wrong? He was such a good Christian so he must be right doctrinally.

Then one day I was introduced to the covenants in the Bible and my life has never been the same. I couldn't believe I had never read about or heard about the covenants before. They are everywhere in the Bible and they tie everything together. The covenants explain why parts of the Bible seem to say one thing and other parts of the Bible seem to teach the opposite (for example, some parts of the Bible stress the importance of the Sabbath while other parts tell us that the Sabbath was simply a shadow of what was to come. Some parts of the Bible stress the importance of the 10 Commandments while others tell us they were the ministrations of death and that we aren't under law). Once I understood the covenants, I no longer had to pick and choose which passages to keep to support my view and which to ignore.

The very Bible itself is divided into the Old Testament (OT) and New Testament (NT). When I learned those words were used interchangeably with old and new covenants (2 Cor. 3:14, Matt. 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, 1 Cor. 11:25, 2 Cor. 3:6, Heb. 9:15 are a few examples of the useage of "testament" - covenant is found all over!) that blew my mind. It was so obvious! The Old Testament tells us about the old covenant. The New Testament reveals the new covenant. The Bible speaks of the old & new covenants all over!

I will freely admit - when I found out that the 10 Commandments were the words of the old covenant, that made me very uncomfortable. I had always held the 10 Commandments up as the ultimate moral standard of living - in fact I thought they were God's eternal, all-encompassing moral law that applied to heaven and earth forever! But the Bible is clear that the 10 Commandments were the very words of the old covenant. It took awhile to let that sink in. Even saying it out loud sounded like blasphemy, but there is no doubt that the Bible calls them the words of the old covenant and never once calls them what I thought they were - God's all-encompassing, eternal moral law.

I got my Strong's Bible concordance out and marked every passage in the Bible where it talked about the covenants, the 10 Commandments, the law, and the Sabbath. Then I read it straight out of the Bible - many, many times. It was so clear, and yet I had a hard time wrapping my mind around it because it was so different from what I had always believed.

It was hard changing my belief system. I had no idea that a simple study of the covenants would change the way I viewed the whole Bible. I had no idea it would give a completely new meaning to texts that I thought said one thing, but really weren't saying that at all!

If you haven't done a study on the covenants yet I would highly recommend it. It is a little intimidating - it's a huge subject! But it will change the way you read the Bible! It did for me! I'll post a study that I wrote myself on the covenants to get you started. But don't take my word for it - check it out for yourself!

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