Jul 11
15
The Old Covenant – Don Fortner
Once Christ came, the old covenant was antiquated, out of date, and made old, made old by God’s design and purpose. Therefore, it vanished away. Why it is so difficult for people to see this I cannot imagine. Why religious people insist upon trying to mix law and grace is, to me, unfathomable. Why multitudes try to mix the old covenant ceremonies with new covenant ordinances, or old legal precepts with spiritual worship, is baffling.
Perhaps you are thinking, “How do people try to mix the old and the new?” – Those who imagine that by sprinkling a little water on a baby’s head (in a perversion of Christ’s ordinance of baptism), they bring their child into a covenant relationship with God, are not only guilty of perverting God’s ordinance but also of trying to maintain the Jewish law of circumcision. – Those who try to enforce sabbatical laws and mix them with the worship of God try to mix law and grace. – Those who would make believers live by the rule of the Mosaic law try to mix law and grace.
The Scriptures are crystal clear in declaring that the old Mosaic covenant is totally fulfilled and brought to its conclusive end by the gospel. In this gospel age, it is emphatically, the old covenant. “We are not children of the bondwoman (the law), but of the free (the gospel).Standfast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hat made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. 4:31-5:1).