Spirit and the Covenant
In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul links the “Promise of the Spirit” to the “Blessing of Abraham,” the covenant promise that God will bless the Gentiles in the Patriarch. It is the same Gift that the Galatians received “through a hearing of faith.” Thus, the Gift of the Spirit is one of the covenant promises made to Abraham. At the conclusion of his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, Peter also linked the Gift to the “blessing” of all the nations promised to Abraham:
- “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).
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Thus, the Gift of the Spirit received by the 120 disciples on the Day of Pentecost was the outworking of what was promised centuries earlier when Yahweh made His covenant with Abraham - (Genesis 12:1-3, 17:7).
However, Israel failed to live up to the covenant’s
requirements. Though the nation swore to keep “all the words which Yahweh
has spoken,” History attests to its failure to fulfill its covenant
obligations.
In fairness, the Israelites lacked the
ability to meet its righteous requirements because they did not possess the Gift
of the Spirit - (Exodus 24:1-8, Numbers 11:1-15).
FAILURE AND SOLUTION
The Mosaic legislation anticipated Israel’s
failure and the need for something more. After predicting the dispersal of the
nation, Yahweh promised that after Israel truly repented, she 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 taken up by the prophet Jeremiah. The day would
come when Yahweh would “make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the
house of Judah,” But NOT a covenant according to the one which He made
with the nation’s forefathers – (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
God would provide the New Covenant, one in which He writes His laws in the hearts of His people. This circumcision of the heart foreseen by Moses is actualized in the “New Covenant” prophesied by Jeremiah.
The New Testament applies this very promise
from Jeremiah to the covenant inaugurated by the death of Jesus. Likewise,
the prophet Ezekiel employed the same theme about the coming New Covenant, but he
added the essential element of the
Spirit - (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.”
NEW COVENANT
Thus, Ezekiel combines the promises
of the New Covenant, the Spirit, and the circumcised heart. Centuries later, Paul
applies these promises to the congregation in 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 in Jeremiah and Ezekiel
point to the centrality of the Spirit in the New Covenant community. With the resurrection
and ascension of Jesus, the long-awaited New Covenant and the Gift of the Spirit
arrived among God’s people.
And especially in Paul’s letters, the connection
of the Gift of the Spirit to the Abrahamic covenant and the “New Covenant”
illustrates the continuity of what God is doing in His church with His covenant,
and with His redemptive purposes for the nation of Israel.
Thus, the church and the receipt of the
Spirit are not unforeseen interim stages or necessary detours in the redemptive
plan of God, but integral parts of His covenant from the very beginning.
The covenant with Abraham finds its
fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth and the new people of God comprised of Jewish
and Gentile believers in Jesus who are filled with the Holy Spirit.
