Video: A Tale of Two Covenants - Part 2

When the apostle Paul saw that the Galatian Christians were adding the law back into their lives, he was so horrified that he wrote them a letter clarifying that the only thing that mattered in the Christian life was "faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6). He then clarified that they would experience life by keeping in step with the Holy Spirit who causes the fruit of Christlikeness to grow in our lives.

In this second message in the series, “A Tale of Two Covenants,” we consider how clearly the Apostles taught the distinction between the laws of the first covenant, and the Spirit-filled, loving faith of the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. This is particularly significant in God’s choice of a thoroughly Jewish, law-abiding Pharisee named Saul, to become the faith-filled, love-abiding Pastor named Paul. If anyone would have thought it was okay to combine the Ten Commandments with the life of faith, this was the man.

Instead, Paul so exalts the gospel of grace, and that the righteous live by faith, in love, by the power of the Spirit, that we arrive at the end of his letter convinced that the law with its commandments is gone. Paul affirmed the same message to the Ephesians when he wrote:

¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility ¹⁵ by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, ¹⁶ and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. (Ephesians 2)

Jesus abolished the law by fulfilling it completely on our behalf, and, in place of this “law of commandments”, he created “in himself one new man in place of the two”. This means that, when both Jewish and Gentile people come to faith in Jesus Christ, they both leave what they were in at the time, whether being Jewish or pagan, and both come into this “one new man” that is “in place of the two”. We can no longer bring what was Jewish into the church. Neither can we bring the cultural traditions or habits of our pagan, Gentile heritages. There is a new man, and this new man (the body of Christ), lives in a new way.

Bottom line is that the righteous live by faith, and this video encourages God’s children to do just that.