"I give thee for a covenant of the people."--ISA. xlii. 6, xlix. 8.
"The Lord shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in."--MAL. iii. 1.
" Jesus was made Surety of a better covenant."--HEB. vii. 22.
"The Mediator of the Better Covenant, established upon better promises . . . The Mediator of the New Covenant. . . Ye are come to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant." --HEB. viii. 6, ix. 15, xii. 24.
WE have here four titles given to our Lord
Jesus in connection with the New Covenant.
He is Himself called a Covenant. The
union between God and man, which the Covenant
aims at, was wrought out in Him personally; in
Him the reconciliation between the human and
Divine was perfectly effected; in Him His people
find the Covenant with all its blessings; He is
all that God has to give, and is the assurance that
it is given. . . He is called the Messenger of the
Covenant, because He came to establish and to
proclaim it. . . He is the Surety of the Covenant,
not only because He paid our debt, but as
He is Surety to us for God, that God will fulfil His
part; and Surety for us with God, that we will
fulfil our part. . . And He is Mediator of the
Covenant, because as the Covenant was established
in His atoning blood, is administered and applied
by Him, is entered upon alone by faith in Him,
so it is experimentally known only through the
power of His resurrection life, and His never-ceasing
intercession. All these names point to the one
truth, that in the New Covenant Christ is all in all.
The subject is so large that it would be impossible
to enter upon all the various aspects of
this precious truth. Christ's work in atonement
and intercession, in His bestowal of pardon and
the Holy Spirit, in His daily communication of
grace and strength, are truths which lie at the
very foundation of the faith of Christians. We
need not speak of them here. What specially
needs to be made clear to many is how, by faith
in Christ as the Mediator of the New Covenant,
we actually have access to and enter into the
enjoyment of all its promised blessings. We have
already seen, in studying the New Covenant, how
all these blessings culminate in the one thing--
that the heart of man is to be put right, as the
only possible way of his living in the favour of
God, and God's love finding its satisfaction in him.
That he is to receive a heart to fear God, to love
God with all his strength, to obey God, and to keep
all His statutes. All that Christ did and does
has this for its aim; all the higher blessings of
peace and fellowship flow from this. In this God's
saving power and love find the highest proof of
their triumph over sin. Nothing so reveals the
grace of God, the power of Jesus Christ, the reality
of salvation, the blessedness of the New Covenant,
as the heart of a believer, where sin once
abounded, with grace now abounding more exceedingly
within it.
I do not know how I can better set forth the
glory of our Blessed Lord Jesus as He accomplishes
this, the real object of His redeeming work, and
as He takes entire possession of the heart He has
bought and won and cleansed as a dwelling for
His Father, than by pointing out the place He
takes, and the work He does, in the case of a soul
who is being led out of the Old Covenant bondage
with its failure, into the real experience of the
promise and power of the New Covenant.(1) In
thus studying the work of the Mediator in an
individual, we may get a truer conception of the
real glory and greatness of the work He actually
accomplishes, than when we only think of the
work He has done for all. It is in the application
of the redemption here in the life of earth,
where sin abounded, that its power is seen. Let
us see how the entrance into the New Covenant
blessing is attained.
The first step towards it, in one who has been truly converted and assured of his acceptance with God, is the sense of sin. He sees that the New Covenant promises are not made true in his experience. There is not only indwelling sin, but he finds that he gives way to temper, and self-will, and worldliness, and other known transgressions of God's law. The obedience to which God calls and will fit him, the life of abiding in Christ's love which is
(1) For a practical illustration in the life of Canon Battersby, see Note D.
his privilege, the power for a holy walk,
well-pleasing to God,--in all this his conscience
condemns him. It is in this conviction of
sin that any thought or desire of the full New
Covenant blessing must have its rise. Where the
thought that obedience is an impossibility, and that
nothing but a life of failure and self-condemnation
is to be looked for, has wrought a secret despair
of deliverance, or contentment with our present
state, it is vain to speak of God's promise or
power. The heart does not respond: it knows well
enough, it is sure, the liberty spoken of is a
dream. But where the dissatisfaction with our
state has wrought a longing for something better,
the heart is open to receive the message.
The New Covenant is meant to be the deliverance from the power of sin; a keen longing for this is the indispensable preparation for entering fully into the Covenant.
Now comes the second step. As the mind is
directed to the literal meaning of the terms of the
New Covenant, in its promises of cleansing from
sin, and a heart filled with God's fear and God's
law, and a power to keep God's commands and
never to depart from Him; as the eye is fixed
on Jesus the Surety of the Covenant, who will
Himself make it all true; and as the voice is
heard of witnesses who can declare how, after
years of bondage, all this has been fulfilled in
them--the longing begins to grow into a hope, and
the inquiry is made, as to what is needed to enter
this blessed life.
Then follows another step. The heart-searching question comes whether we are willing to give up every evil habit, all our own self-will, all that is of the spirit of the world, and surrender ourselves to be wholly and exclusively for Jesus. God cannot take so complete possession of a man, and bless him so wonderfully, and work in him so mightily, unless He has him very completely, yea, wholly for Himself. Happy the man who is ready for any sacrifice.
Now comes the last, the simplest, and yet often
the most difficult step. And here it is we need to
know Jesus as Mediator of the Covenant. As we
hear of the life of holiness, and obedience, and
victory over sin, which the Covenant promises, and
hear that it will be to us according to our faith, so
that if we claim it in faith it will surely be ours,
the heart often fails for fear. I am willing, but
have I the power to make, and what is more, to
maintain this full surrender? Have I the power, the
strong faith, so to grasp and hold this offered blessing,
that it shall indeed be and continue mine?
How such questions perplex the soul until it finds
the answer to them in the one word: Jesus! It is
He who will bestow the power to make the surrender and
to believe. This is as surely and as exclusively His
work, as atonement and intercession are His alone.
As sure as it was His to win and ascend the
throne, it is His to prove His dominion in the individual
soul. It is He, the Living One, who is in
Divine power to work and maintain the life of
communion and victory within us. He is the
Mediator and Surety of the Covenant--He, the
God-man, who has undertaken not only for all that
God requires, but for all that we need too.
When this is seen, the believer learns that here,
just as at conversion, it is all of faith. The one
thing needed now is, with the eye definitely fixed
on some promise of the New Covenant, to turn from
self and anything it could or need do, to let go
self, and fall into the arms of Jesus. He is the
Mediator of the New Covenant: it is His to lead
us into it. In the assurance that Jesus, and every
New Covenant blessing, is already ours in virtue of
our being God's children; with the desire now to
appropriate and enjoy what we have hitherto
allowed to lie unused; in the faith that Jesus now
gives us the needed strength in faith to claim and
accept our heritage as a present possession; the
will dares boldly to do the deed, and to take the
heavenly gift--a life in Christ according to the
better promises. By faith in Jesus you have seen
and received Him as to you, in full truth, the
Mediator of the New Covenant, both in heaven
arid in your heart. He is the Mediator who makes
it true between God and you, as your experience.
The fear has sometimes been expressed that, if we press so urgently the work that Christ through the Spirit does in the heart, we may be drawn off from trusting in what He has done and ever is doing, to what we are experiencing of its working. The answer is simple. It is with the heart alone that Christ can be truly known or honoured. It is in the heart the work of grace is to be done, and the saving power of Christ to be displayed. It is in the heart alone the Holy Spirit has His sphere of work; there He is to work Chri$t's likeness; it is there alone He can glorify Christ. The Spirit can only glorify Christ by revealing His saving power in us.
If we were to speak of what we are to do in
cleansing our heart and keeping it right, the fear
would be well-grounded. But the New Covenant
calls us to the very opposite. What it tells us of
the Atonement, and the Righteousness of God it
has won for us, will be our only glory even amid
the highest holiness of heaven: Christ's work of
holiness here in the heart can only deepen the
consciousness of that Righteousness as our only
plea. The sanctification of the Spirit, as the
fulfilment of the New Covenant promises, is all a
taking of the things of Christ and revealing and
imparting them to us. The deeper our entrance
into and our possession of the New Covenant gift
of a new heart, the fuller will be our knowledge and
our love of Him who is its Mediator; the more we
shall glory in Him alone. The Covenant deals
with the heart, just that Christ may be found
there, may dwell there by faith. As we look at
the heart, not in the light of feeling or experience,
but in the light of the faith of God's Covenant, we
shall learn to think and speak of it as God does,
and begin to know what it is, that there Christ
manifests Himself and there He and the Fatlier
come to make their abode.
