Promises, Blessings, Conditions and Curses for the elect in the New Covenant! There is a lot of talk and controversy over those things in the ‘Christian world’ and I get frustrated, truly, when I read about them. I read a couple of weeks ago a statement that said that WE, the elect, are under blessing for obedience and WE, the elect are under curses for disobedience. Where is the New Covenant in this statement? Are we still under the Covenant at Mt. Sinai where these conditions were in place, where God’s favor was stated as being dependent on man’s (especially Israel) faithfulness or lack of it? We are no longer under the curse of the law, isn’t that what Christ Jesus came for, so that we might be delivered from that curse, that we might have HIS perfect obedience in keeping the law imputed to us? Didn’t that perfect obedience satisfy our Righteous and Holy God on our behalf?

I believe that the New Covenant in Christ’s blood is exactly that……NEW!

“For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are symbolic. For these are the TWO covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage (curses/law?), which is Hagar- for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children-but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written:
Rejoice, O barren,
You who do not bear!
Break forth and shout,
You who are not in labor,
For the desolate has many more children,
Than she who has a husband”
Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now….

NEVERTHELESS what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall NOT be heir with the son of the freewoman” So then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman but of the free” (Galatians 4:22-31)

“But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, He says:

“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a NEW covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—‘not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. ‘None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying “Know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more”

In that he says, “A NEW covenant”, He has made the FIRST obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. (Hebrews 8:6-13)

The New Covenant has no conditions for it is a promissory covenant that the Lord Himself fulfills, just as all the promissory covenants are. The promise was never annulled by the Sinai covenant; its purpose was as a tutor to bring us to Christ. But now faith has come and we are no longer under a tutor, for if we are Christ’s we are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise. I don’t read YOU MUST, I read HE WILL. The most glorious and amazing truth is that HE DOES! He writes faith, the chief law upon the hearts of His children, He keeps His promise to His people, He never fails. He is merciful to our unrighteousness and remembers our sin no more. To think that His promise of Christ is based on a condition that someone can fulfill (faith) is the doctrine of Arminanism. The notion that man is capable of entering the New Covenant by the condition of faith makes it man’s work not God's work of Grace!

May we stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and may we not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Amen?