What if the Old Covenant was God’s final word to man?
What if the Ten Commandments were the only means available to us to gain entry into heaven, or to earn God’s love and acceptance?
Where would this leave us?
What would our eternal fate be?
How would this affect our lives here and now?
The Old Covenant was God’s word to Israel. Not His first word to Israel, nor was it His last. But it did define Israel’s way of life as a nation from Moses until Jesus. The teachers of the Law believed Israel’s role in the world was to live out the righteous requirements of the Law, and in so doing, become a blessing to all other nations.
Where did this leave them? The same place it leaves anyone who attempts to gain God’s acceptance through obedience to Law – judged, condemned, fearful and dead in sin.
That’s the Old Covenant, a ministry of condemnation and death.
When read correctly, the Law is God’s word about man, the plain, stark truth. It answers these questions: What is the destiny of a people caught in the throes of a lie? What will be their end? According to the Law, the final stop is death, but only if the Old Covenant is God’s final word.
The denouement of this story has a twist. It is revealed on a hill called Calvary, outside the walls of Jerusalem. A man hung there on a cross, suspended between heaven and earth. He was no ordinary man, and the death he died was no ordinary death.
The man whose hands and feet were pierced was the Lord Himself, the unblemished Lamb of God. His death was in place of ours. Live out the full story of the Law and it ends at the foot of this cross. Look up and see God’s final word to man – Jesus.
Death is not God’s end for man, it is Jesus. In Him we have forgiveness of sins, righteousness and a new way of life defined by the New Covenant. That leads to several questions.
What if we truly believed that Jesus was and is God’s final word to man?
Where would this leave us?
How would it affect us here and now?
The New Covenant answers – in Jesus totally forgiven, completely loved and fully alive!
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