LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
New Covenant Privileges
The Epistle to the Hebrews abounds in arguments to demonstrate the superiority of the New Covenant over the Old. It is the grace of God that has surpassed all the limits of the blessings received by the old believers, and by those who were under the law. It is the benignity of God that has been poured out abundantly towards the men and women of this dispensation, in this last time.
These privileges go back a long way. Hebrews says that we are more blessed than angels, for God did not help them, but us; that he did not subject the world to come to them, but to us. We are more blessed than the Israelites, because we are not associated with Moses, the giver of the law, but with Christ, the apostle and high priest of good things to come, the author and finisher of faith. We are more blessed than Israel, because they did not enter into the rest of the Promised Land, but we did – our Promised Land is Christ.
We are more blessed than Israel in this too: our high priest is superior to those the Jews had – though he was "in all things like his brethren." This priest intercedes for us forever, because death cannot take away his ministry; he was constituted with an oath, not by the law of descent, but because of his indestructible life.
In the New Covenant we are associated with heavenly, eternal things, of which the law had only the shadows and figures. In the New Covenant the laws are not written on stone tablets, but in the minds and hearts of believers, and no one needs another to teach them who God is, or what he is like, because everyone knows him – not just some privileged few. This pact has better promises, because it is based on grace and faith, and not on the works of the flesh.
We are also privileged in that our sins have not only been covered, but erased forever. The blood of animals could only remove impurities from the flesh, but the blood of Christ has cleansed our consciences of dead works. That is why the law could not make perfect those who approached God; instead, Christ made us perfect forever with a single offering.
The ancient believers saw the promised things from afar, greeted and confessed them, but did not touch them. They did not receive what was promised, because everything was reserved for us.
We have not approached Mount Sinai, which inspired terror, but Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the company of many thousands of angels, to unite ourselves with the firstborn enrolled in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of the just made perfect; but above all we have come to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks better than Abel's.
Hebrews seduces us by showing us, in so many precious ways, how God has favored us; how much he loved us and how much he prepared for us from eternal times, in Christ. Truly, there is a Man seated at the right hand of God, and all of us who are in him are favored with the abundant grace of the New Covenant.