Bible Training Center
Section 10.0 – entering the eternal covenant
introduction & articles
introduction
Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “ If you return to the LORD with all your heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your hearts to the LORD and serve Him alone; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” -1 Samuel 7:3
return to the lord with all your heart
There is noting new in the New Covenant. That is to say that everything in the New Covenant is a confirmation of something from the Old Covenant. It has to be that way since the Old Covenant was the Scriptures at the time the books of the New Covenant were written. Therefore, everything written by the writers of the New Covenant had to be consistent with the writings of the Old Covenant. If that were not the case, some of the messages of the New Covenant would have been false teachings being inconsistent with the Scriptures. Even more convincingly, both the Old and New Covenant writings were inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, who cannot and will not contradict Himself.
That being the case, the New Covenant doctrine of repentance must have a corollary in the Old Covenant. To repent is to turn away from your old manner of life to a life directed by Jesus Christ. In the Old Covenant, this same idea is expressed as returning to God to serve Him with all your heart.
9 “Then the LORD your God will prosper you abundantly [with the blessings of the covenant] in all the work of your hand, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your cattle and in the produce of your ground, for the LORD will again rejoice over you for good, just as He rejoiced over your fathers;
10 if you obey the LORD your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the LORD your God [repent] with all your heart and soul. (Deuteronomy 30:9-10)
1 “So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse [of the covenant] which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all
nations where the LORD your God has banished you,
2 and you return to the LORD your God [repent] and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons,
3 then the LORD your God will restore you from captivity [save you], and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. (Deuteronomy 30:1-3)
Let the wicked forsake his way [repent] and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD [repent], and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon [save]. (Isaiah 55:7)
‘Returning to the Lord’ of the Old Covenant became ‘Repentance’ in the New Covenant. However, the idea is the same in either case. God’s way for people to enter His covenant and be saved is to turn from our life of sin and return to Him to receive the blessings of the covenant.
This turning is very much a death, a death of the flesh, the body of our sinful passions and desires, i.e., our sin nature. A blood covenant cannot be made if our sin nature is not put to death. This idea was explained in the book of Hebrews.
16 For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it. [This is a spiritual death.]
17 For a covenant is valid only when men are dead, for it is never in force while the one who made it lives.
18 Therefore even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood. (Hebrews 9:16-18)
Jesus died, and we also must go to the cross and die the covenant-making death. That is repentance.
Section 10.0 - Articles
Being born again is definitely of the utmost importance to everyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ. This should also be of major significance to all of the world as well, but sadly it doesn’t seem to be. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3) If you have followed through the covenant articles posted on The More Sure Word, it is likely you’ve come to see that becoming born again is actually the result of engaging in an activity of extreme importance.
The idea that repentance is the way into covenant with Jesus, and thereby the means of becoming born again, has been mentioned several times in many previous postings on The More Sure Word. Now it is time to dive more deeply into this topic. The New Covenant way to enter the kingdom of heaven, i.e., to become born again, is to enter the covenant Jesus fulfilled. Jesus didn’t come to fulfill a covenant just because He was looking for something to do. There was a reason God sacrificed His only Son to fulfill the covenant. And judging from the price paid, a painful and shameful death on a cross, the reason was colossally important.
Everything in the New Covenant has its foundation in the Old Covenant. The connections between the two are sometimes confusing because different words are often used to describe the same thing. This is the case with repentance. In the Old Covenant, repentance is referred to as returning to God. For example, in the following passage, Moses is instructing the Israelites before they cross the Jordan to enter the Promised Land.
When you repent and enter a blood covenant with Jesus Christ, you are simultaneously breaking one covenant and entering another. You may not be aware of being in a blood covenant, but you are. Everyone is, because we are all born into a blood covenant. Not a covenant with Jesus Christ, but a covenant with Satan. It is a covenant of rebellion and sin. We are in this covenant from before birth. David said, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psalms 51:5)
Something I used to wonder is if I were to start to teach the entire Bible, where would be the place to start? Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. Begin your journey anywhere on the road of Truth, and you will at some point in time find you have once again arrived at the place you started. Truth, like a circle, has no beginning or end. Truth is united and complete. So no matter where you start, the revelation is the same. It is told in many ways, with numerous stories, tons of parables and many metaphors, but all of their revelations are of the same Truth.
In the vast majority of instances, the word ‘heart’ in the Bible is not a reference to the organ that pumps blood through your body. The main meaning for ‘heart’ in either the Old or New Covenants is a reference to your spiritual makeup. It is the part of you that determines who you are. Just as DNA markers define your unique physical attributes, your heart, in a spiritual sense, determines who you are within. Your heart is the totality of who you are … it is essentially you … it is the person you know and love.