KEEPING GOD'S COVENANT

Keeping God's Covenant in the Church


There is, according to the Scriptures, the
closest possible relationship between the truth of
the covenant and the doctrine of the church. Or,
to put it more concretely and practically, there is
the closest possible relationship between God’s
establishment and maintenance of His covenant
with His elect and His establishment and
preservation of the church in the midst of the
world. And there is the closest relationship
between our responsibility to be keepers of God’s
covenant and our responsibilities to the church of
our Lord Jesus Christ. So close is that
relationship that I am convinced that we do not
exaggerate if we say that the covenant of grace
that God establishes with His people in Christ
could never come to realization in history without
the church. God establishes and maintains His
covenant through the church of Christ,
particularly as that church comes to manifestation
in the midst of the world in the church institute.
God chose to Himself a church in Christ. When
Paul begins his epistle to the Ephesians, he calls
the church to join with him in a doxology of
praise to Him who has chosen us in Christ from
before the foundation of the world ( Eph. 1:4 ).
Christ and the church are so much one that it is
impossible to speak of Christ without speaking at
the same time of the church. There is no Christ
apart from the church. There is no church apart
from Christ. They are one, together the elect of
God.
When the Scriptures emphasize that the church
is one in Christ, that is covenantal language. We
are His body, Scripture tells us. We are joined to
Him by a true faith. He is our Head. We are
nothing apart from Him. All our life comes from
Him. We are His and He is ours.
The unity of Christ and His people in the
church is also the realization of God’s covenant
with His people.
This identity of the covenant and the church
was prefigured already in the old dispensation.
The nation of Israel in the old dispensation was
the church, as Stephen in his speech before the
Sanhedrin calls it: “the church in the
wilderness” ( Acts 7:38 ). The very centre of the
life of that church of the old dispensation was
the temple. In that temple God dwelt in the midst
of His people. Israel constituted the church
because the temple had been established there;
that is, because God had taken up His abode in
Zion and called His people to dwell with Him in
the temple. God and His people dwelling together
was the heart and centre of all of Israel’s life as
the church.
In God’s marvelous ways of working, the
temple in the old dispensation was a picture, a
figure, and a type of God’s covenant relationship
with His people in which He dwells with them and
calls them into fellowship with Himself. But
because the temple was a figure of the covenant,
the temple itself was not and could not be the
perfection of the covenant. It was only a figure
because God dwelt in the Most Holy Place, in the
innermost sanctuary, and the nation of Israel
could not enter the temple beyond the outer court.
That meant that, from one point of view, God and
His people dwelt together in covenant fellowship
because they dwelt together under one roof. They
lived together in the same house.
But at the same time, because it was figurative
and because the fulfillment had not yet come in
Jesus Christ, God and His people could not come
very close together. It was almost as if a young
man married a young woman and, though they
were united in marriage, and though now that they
lived together in one house under the same roof
in the fellowship of marriage, nevertheless, the
wife lived in the one end of the house and the
husband lived in the other end of the house. They
could not come together. The distance of the
intervening rooms separated them from each
other.
That was the way it was in the old dispensation.
God was in the pillar of cloud that filled the Most
Holy Place (the same pillar of cloud, by the way,
that had led Israel through the wilderness for
forty years, and the same cloud that took our Lord
Jesus Christ to heaven at the time of His
ascension). That symbol of God’s presence was in
the Most Holy Place. Israel was in the outer
court. Between God and His people a heavy veil,
the altar of incense, the table of shewbread, the
candlestick, the whole Levitical priesthood and,
above all, the altar of burnt offering separated
the two. The blood of atonement had not yet been
shed. It was prefigured in the sacrifices, but
Israel could not come near to God, as near as it is
possible to come, until atonement had actually
been made.
That was the typical covenant fellowship in
which God dwelt with His church. The church, the
existence of the church, depended upon that
temple. When the temple was destroyed, that was
the end of Israel as a church to all intents and
purposes, and the nation was scattered among the
heathen.

The Church of Jesus Christ is a physical place of covenant we have in him and keeping the principle of his commands as given to his church, is keeping his covenant, which most are to always study His holy words, living in his example, holiness, righteousness and generous life and many other Christian like life.

                     


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