Jesus the Messiah

The Covenant of Grace

Up until now we have seen God and people entering into covenants with each other, but in this case we read about someone being given “as a covenant” (NKJV), or “to be a covenant” (NIV), or “for a covenant” (KJV).

To the prophet Isaiah, who wrote these words some 500 years before Jesus was born, it must have been a cause of some heart-searching. “Have I heard correctly from God? Did God actually say that? If He did, then what did He mean by it?”

It would have been especially difficult when he had to account for those words to the priests and scribes who first read them.

But Isaiah was no stranger to God saying things to him that didn’t make much sense at the time, but became crystal clear to later generations after Jesus was crucified, entombed, and then rose from the dead three days later.

(For example, if you were to have read Isaiah chapter 53 before you had heard anything about Jesus of Nazareth, or about His crucifixion by the Romans, would you have understood what the prophet was talking about? You’ll find an instance of someone with that very problem if you read Acts 8:26-35.)

In chapters 42 and 49, Isaiah was predicting that there would be a new covenant – one which was unlike any other that had gone before, and yet which was a fulfilment of each one of them.

The prophet Jeremiah also spoke about this new covenant that was to come:

Jeremiah identifies four elements of this new covenant. They are:

• I will be their God, and they shall be My people
• they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest
• I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more
• I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts

What Jeremiah did not see, but which God revealed to Isaiah, was that this new covenant was not only “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah”, but with all of the people of the world, whom the people of Israel knew as “the gentiles”:

We can see from this that the four elements of this new covenant are applicable to every human being, and not just to the descendants of Jacob. This means that from the moment that this covenant came into force, anyone and everyone could say:

• The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is my God, and I am His child – I belong to God.

• However small and insignificant I may be in the eyes of the world, I can know Almighty God and have a personal relationship with Him.

• I can have my sins forgiven, and be righteous and holy in the sight of God.

• I can have His law written in my mind and on my heart, so that I can walk in His will “in righteousness and holiness all the days of my life” (Luke 1:75).

This New Covenant is known as the Covenant of Grace, because God, in His mercy, is reaching out graciously to all men, women, and children, no matter what their background, no matter who they are or where they have come from or what they have done, and opening His arms and His heart to everyone who wants to come in and be a part of His family.

However, like most of the covenants that we have seen, in order for this to happen there must be blood shed, and someone has to pay a price.

Christ Crucified

Of all the things that the Lord Jesus did while he walked upon the earth, the two that are most important are:

1. He allowed Himself to be put to death by being crucified
2. On the third day, He rose again from the dead

Crucifixion was a particularly cruel form of execution, which was usually reserved for criminals and rebels. It was normally preceded by a severe flogging, which often proved to be fatal. Both the flogging and the crucifixion itself produced copious bleeding, so that loss of blood was probably the main cause of death in most cases.

As we have already seen, in ancient times covenants were ratified, or confirmed, by the shedding of the blood of an animal, or animals.

This New Covenant was different from all of the others in that it was ratified by the shedding of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.

The Covenant of the Law, made between God and the Israelites at Mount Sinai, was ratified by the blood of calves and goats:

However, when Jesus, during what is known as “the last supper”, celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples for the final time, He spoke to them of this New Covenant to be ratified in His own blood:

This covenant also differs from all other covenants in that it will never be repealed. It is an eternal, or everlasting, covenant made between God and every man, woman, and child who chooses to enter into that covenant with Him:

We enter into this New Covenant not by being physically sprinkled with the blood of Christ, as Moses sprinkled the Israelites, but by a simple act of faith whereby we accept that the blood of Jesus Christ was shed for us personally and that we are now spiritually “washed in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14).

(By the way, when you read Hebrews 13:20-21, can you see another powerful achievement of the blood of Jesus as it affected Him personally?)

The Substitutionary, Atoning Death of Christ

Establishing the New Covenant was not the only reason that Jesus had to be crucified and shed His blood for us. We sometimes refer to “the substitutionary, atoning death of Christ”. What does this mean?

Christ, our Substitute

The Bible makes it clear that each and every one of us is, in the eyes of God, a sinner who deserves to be punished, and that the punishment for sin involves death.

We see this right in the very beginning when God forbade Adam and Eve, on pain of death, to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but they ate it anyway (Genesis 2:9,16,17; 3:1-24). This event is normally referred to as ‘the Fall’.

Here are some more scriptures that make this point:

On the cross, Jesus Christ became a substitute for you and me. He died in our place so that we should not have to die, but that we might enjoy eternal life in the presence of God our Father:

Allow me to invite you to pause for a few moments and, in the light of those scriptures, think about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, being willing to die in your place, so that you did not have to die, but might gain eternal life.

How does that make you feel? How would you express those feelings toward Him?

Christ, our Atonement

The word ‘atonement’ literally means ‘at-one-ment’. To make atonement means to enable two parties who have been separated to come together and to be at one with each other again.

Our sins have separated us from God, so that the relationship has broken down and we are estranged from Him (Isaiah 59:2). In order for there to be a reconciliation, someone has to do something to deal with the issues that have caused the breakdown in the relationship. God has taken the initiative in this.

Under the Old Covenant, the Covenant of Law which God made with Israel through Moses, if anyone sinned they could bring their sacrifice to the temple, confess their sin over it, the priest would kill the animal and burn it on the altar, and God would forgive the person (Leviticus 4:22-31).

Under the New Covenant, the Covenant of Grace, Jesus Christ presented Himself to be sacrificed and shed His blood for the sins of all people, men, women, and children, Jew and gentile, so that any of us can come to God at any time and, on the basis of Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, confess our sins and receive immediate forgiveness from God.

While the sin remains unconfessed, it remains unforgiven, and the relationship remains broken.

Once the sin is confessed and forgiven, the sin is atoned for, the relationship is restored, and we are reconciled to God and able to come into His presence again, as the following scriptures tell us:

The Day of Atonement and the Crucifixion

Leviticus chapter 16 explains what was to happen once a year, on the tenth day of the seventh month, to make atonement for the sins that the people of Israel had committed during the past twelve months.

(If you are not familiar with it, you may find it helpful to turn to Leviticus chapter 16 in your own Bible and read it now before continuing.)

The two goats that were used in this ceremony represent the two functions of atonement and substitution.

• The goat that was killed was used to make atonement before God for the people’s sins. Some of its blood was taken into the Most Holy Place in the tabernacle, or temple, and sprinkled before the Ark of the Covenant, which represented the very presence of God, and some was applied to the horns of the Altar of Incense, which represented prayer:

  ¹⁰And Aaron shall make atonement upon [the] horns [of the Altar of Incense] once a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonement; once a year he shall make atonement upon it throughout your generations. It is most holy to the Lord. Exodus 30:10 (NKJV - notation added)

• The goat over whose head the people’s sins were confessed and which was taken away and released into the wilderness was used as a substitute for the people, as it was their sins that had caused the breakdown in the relationship with God. Even today we use the term ‘scapegoat’ to refer to someone who is forced to take the blame for other people’s errors.

The book of Hebrews gives us an excellent summary of how what Jesus accomplished on Calvary fulfils what the Levitical priests undertook ceremonially every year in Israel:

It's not difficult to see in this passage how the sacrifice of Christ corresponds to what was done to those two goats on the Day of Atonement.

Christ Risen

The crucifixion and death of Christ Jesus is only the first half of the story. The second half is equally vital for our salvation – His resurrection on the third day.

Paul has much to say about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and throughout the book of Romans. For example:

It's one thing to have sins forgiven. This was possible under the Covenant of the Law. But it’s another thing entirely to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). This was made possible only by Christ’s defeat of death through His resurrection.

By rising again from the dead, Jesus made the way for you and me to follow Him into eternal life in the presence of His Father God.

Listen to what Jesus Himself says about this:

And here’s a passage that we’ve already seen from the book of Hebrews: