Episode 002: Dueling Covenants

What does it mean to be a “New Covenant Christian”? What even is a covenant and does God expect believers to keep the Ten Commandments?

In Episode 2 of Renegade Grace, Jess kicks off the Relearning the Gospel series by unpacking the difference between the Old Covenant (Law) and the New Covenant (Grace). You’ll learn why biblical covenants are more like blood-signed contracts than casual promises, why the Law was an all-or-nothing deal made specifically with Israel, and why trying to cherry-pick commandments is a breach of contract with a deadly price tag.

Then Jess zooms in on the good news: the New Covenant is better, because it’s not secured by your performance; it’s secured by Jesus’ perfection, signed at the cross and sealed by the Spirit. Along the way, she tackles why not everything Jesus said pre-cross functions as direct instruction for post-cross believers, and why reading Scripture through “grace-tinted lenses” changes everything.

Buckle up, buttercup—this episode will reframe how you read the Bible and how you relate to God.

Show Notes:

Link to Jess’s Books: CLICK HERE

Instagram: @renegadepastor

Email: jess@renegadegrace.com

Website: renegadegrace.com 

Verses Referenced in Today’s Episode: 2 Chronicles 15:1–2; James 2:10; Galatians 3:10; Galatians 5:3; Romans 6:23; Hebrews 9:22; Leviticus 16 (conceptually); Jeremiah 31:31–32; Luke 22:20; Matthew 5:17; Matthew 5–7 (conceptually); Hebrews 6:13–20; Hebrews 7:25–28; Hebrews 8:6–13; Hebrews 9:15–18; Hebrews 10:14; Colossians 1:26–27; Ephesians 1:4; Romans 3:20

Listener Reflection Questions:

• What challenged you most about the Law being an all-or-nothing covenant?
• What does it mean to you that the New Covenant is secured by Jesus not you?
• Have you been mixing grace and performance in your faith? What does that look like?
• What might change this week if you fully lived from a New Covenant mindset?
• What’s one belief about God or yourself that you might need to rethink after this episode?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What does it mean when people say they are new covenant Christians? What even is a covenant anyway? Does God expect Christians to keep the Ten Commandments? Is everything Jesus said directed at us? We'll tackle all of these questions and more on today's episode. So buckle up, Buttercup. Welcome back to the Renegade Grace podcast. I'm your Grace Obsessed host, Jess Hayes, and today we are starting our series called Relearning the Gospel. Today's topic is covenants. It's a good starting point for us, foundation point. I thought it'd be a really good idea to start here because it's typically not really one of those topics that we spend time actually talking about and explaining within the church. And I think because of that, we often misunderstand scripture and apply it incorrectly. Not only that, but understanding that we're under a new covenant in Christ is the foundation for the gospel. I mean, that's where it all starts, a new covenant. So understanding that's going to be vital to our understanding of the gospel. So that's where we're starting today. The first thing we need to ask as we start off today is what is a covenant? Sometimes I think we we think about a covenant as a promise or an agreement. And while that's sort of true, that's not really completely true. We don't really have a true equivalent to a biblical covenant in today's modern world. Really, the closest thing we have is kind of like a legal contractual agreement with very specific terms and legally enforced punishment if those terms are broken. And that's sort of similar to a biblical covenant, except for, you know, the blood thing. Oh, right, yeah, blood. It's a small element that in order to seal a covenant, blood had to be shed. And also breaking a covenant meant your blood being shed. So kind of think of this covenant, biblical covenant, as a legal contract signed in blood, with death being the price for breaking it. It's pretty safe to say that making a covenant was a pretty serious and costly deal. And there are multiple covenants that God makes with his people throughout scripture. Lots of lots of different covenants throughout scripture God makes with people, starting with the Adamic covenant he made with Adam, sheds blood to make them clothes, sends them out of the garden, and ending with our current covenant, commonly referred to as the new covenant, which he made with Christ. And so today I'm gonna really focus on what I think are the two most important covenants for the believer today to know and understand. It's the two covenants that are talked most about throughout the New Testament that the apostles teach about. So we're gonna focus on those. And those are called the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Let's start out by talking about the Old Covenant. So the Old Covenant is the Mosaic covenant, most commonly referred to as the law. The covenant of the law is made up of 613 different rules and regulations. And those rules range from don't murder people to very specific instructions on how to appropriately identify the acceptability of a bald spot. And yes, that's a real thing in scripture. In the law, there are 248 blessings. Blessing means if you do this, you'll get good stuff. And there's 365 curses, meaning if you do this, you get punishment. Kind of like that song. What's that song? It takes two to make a thing go right. Yeah, that's not even in my notes. So that's just free for you. Uh it's a two-way covenant because it requires two parties to hold up their end of the deal. The parties involved in this case are God and Israel. Now, did you catch that? Because that's important. The two parties are God and Israel. Not God and humanity, God and Israel. That means, since most of you listening to this right now are not Israelites, you don't get to be included in this covenant. Sorry, Gentiles, this one's not for you. In this case of this covenant, all Israel had to do was keep 613 very specific laws perfectly. And if they did, then God would bless them. Which, you know, is easy. Super easy, right? Right. Well, if by easy you mean absolutely impossible, then sure, definitely, totally easy. It was not easy. It was not easy. So let's look at a passage from the old covenant that kind of shows how this covenant worked. We're gonna look at 2 Chronicles chapter 15, verses 1 and 2. They say this if you indeed obey the Lord your God and are careful to observe all his commandments, I'm giving you today. The Lord your God will elevate you above all the nations on the earth. All these blessings will come to you in abundance if you obey the Lord your God. So you can see there's an if then here. If you obey, God will bless you. If you obey, God will elevate you. If, if, if, then then then. Two-way covenant. This covenant's not easy. In fact, it's ridiculously hard. So hard that it's impossible. It's impossible because it's dependent on human effort and ability, which is woefully lacking. It's also impossible because it's an all-or-nothing covenant. What does that mean? It means that while living under the law, you're required to keep all of it, every jot and tittle, as scripture says, which basically means that you have to dot every I, cross every T, and if you miss one dot on one I, you're guilty of breaking 613 commands. How do we know that this is how it works with the law? Well, it tells us in scripture. James tells us, James chapter 2, verse 10, he says, the one who obeys the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. That's James. Paul also talks about this in Galatians. Galatians chapter 3, he says, All who rely on doing the works of the law are under a curse, because it's written, cursed is anyone who does not keep everything written in the book of the law. That's chapter three. A couple chapters later, he says, again, I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he's obligated to obey the whole law. So why is that important? Well, it means that we can't slice and dice the law and pick out our favorite commands to keep. We can't decide, you know, we're gonna live obligated and measured by the Ten Commandments. We want those. We want the Ten Commandments, right? We keep the gotta have them in schools here in Texas, you know, it's a law, put them up in schools. Gotta have the Ten Commandments, but we're gonna throw out the food laws, right? Because we we really like bacon. All right. We like bacon here in Texas. So we want bacon. We're gonna keep keep bacon, but we're gonna, you know, we're gonna throw out, you know, the food laws, but we're gonna we're gonna keep the Ten Commandments, right? Can't do that. It's all or nothing. The modern church has tried to divide up the law. We've done a lot of, you know, doctrinal gymnastics to try to do this, and we've called it things like ceremonial law versus moral law. And we do this as an excuse to be able to put cheese on our burgers, but still grip tightly to the thou shalt not for our morality. And I'm sorry, but that's just not how it works. That's not how covenants work, that's not how the law works. I mean, you see multiple scriptures here that say it's all or nothing. So you can't do that. You can't chop it up. That's not how it works. That would be a breach of the contract. Oh, also, by the way, any kind of breach in contracts, they come with some pretty hefty fines when it comes to covenants, namely death. A verse that all good church kids know by heart. Romans 6 23, part of the Romans Road. We learned in Sunday school. The wages of sin is death. Hmm. The wages, the payoff cost. The wages of sin is death. Not broken fellowship, not a slap on the wrist, not God being super mad at you. Death. Because the cost is death, the only currency is blood. The book of Leviticus talks extensively about this. It details out the very specific blood payments for all different types of lawbreaking, from big to small, any offense was involved in getting forgiven and paying for the sin. This ultimately comes to a head on the Day of Atonement, where the covering for all sins for the entire year, for the whole nation of Israel, is bought by the high priest using the blood of a spotless lamb. Hebrews 9 also talks about this. It says something like, without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness. I think that's verse 22. Okay, so Old Covenant, in summary, it's all or nothing. Breaking it requires blood to get back in good standing, pay for your breaking. It depends on humans, specifically Israel, to keep up their end of the bargain. As you can imagine, Israel did not, in fact, keep up their end of the bargain. The Old Testament scriptures tell story after story after story of how bad us humans are at keeping up our end of the bargain. God, on the other hand, remains incredibly steadfastly committed to his side of things. So committed, in fact, that even when Israel repeatedly earns oppression, curse, and exile for themselves, he continually rescues and blesses and brings them home, even though he doesn't have to. God's commitment climaxes in Jesus, who slipped into human skin, representing humanity in perfection, so that he could keep up our end of the bargain for us and die as the perfect sacrifice to bring us close. That brings us to the good news. A new covenant that we're under now, called grace that we have thanks to Jesus. And this covenant is different and it's better. And we do call this the new covenant, but really its origin point's pretty old. It's so old, in fact, that the prophet Jeremiah told the people of Israel, centuries before Jesus ever came, that a new covenant was coming and that this covenant was going to be different than the previous one. You can see that in Jeremiah chapter 31, uh, starting in verse 31. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It's not going to be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. In fact, Hebrews tells us that not only is this covenant different, but it's actually better than the one before. Hebrews 8.6 says, But now Jesus has obtained a more excellent ministry, to the extent that he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which is enacted on better promises. So Jesus pulls all of this together. He fulfills this old prophecy, this Jeremiah prophecy, and brings in the reality of a new, more superior ministry enacted on better promises. He says this blatantly at the Last Supper to his disciples. He says, This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. If you keep reading that Hebrews 8 passage, that Hebrews 8 6 passage, you'll find that the benefits of this new covenant include God writing goodness on our hearts and forgetting all of our sins, which is pretty awesome, especially when you think about the old covenant being about remembering and accounting for your sins. Doesn't it sound like a much better deal to have this new covenant than that old obsessive sin remembering goodness through self-effort way? I think so. Okay, so I talked about the old covenant and how it's a two-way covenant between Israel and God, and it required both parties to keep up their end of the bargain. And this new covenant's different, right? Experientially for us, it's a one-way covenant, meaning we get all the benefits and none of the work. We're not a party in the covenant, we're a beneficiary of the covenant. But you could still argue that this is a new, this new covenant is still a two-way covenant. It's just that the parties are different. So this time, the two parties involved are God and Jesus. And we can read about that in Hebrews chapter six, and verses 13 through 20. I'm not going to read that, but basically it says that God makes a covenant with himself so that it can't be broken. And this means that our security in covenant relationship with God is based on how well Jesus holds up his end of the bargain. Jesus. So we need to ask the question, how good of a job does Jesus do at holding up his end of the bargain? Well, let's take a look at some scripture. Hebrews chapter seven, starting in verse 25, says he's able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. For it's indeed fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. So he doesn't have to do it like the old way. To offer sacrifices first for their own sins and then the sins of the people. Why? Because he did this in offering himself once for all. For the law appoints as high priests men subject to weakness, but the word of solemn affirmation that came after the law appoints a son made perfect forever. A few chapters later, in chapter 10, verse 14, which is one of my very favorite verses in all of Scripture, for by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are made holy. One offering forever to make us holy. So I'd say based on the book of Hebrews, he's pretty good at keeping up his end of things. I mean, he's also like the Son of God, so I'm sure that helps with the whole doing it perfectly thing. But at the end of the day, what does this mean? It means that we can depend on him. We can depend on him to keep up his, to keep his new covenant because he kept all his old ones. He's proven it to us through his history with us, told through the old testament that he never breaks his covenants. The old testifies to the new. This is why the book of Hebrews calls the old a shadow, and Christ is the reality. Think about it this way: it's the difference between a sonogram and holding the baby. So when you're pregnant, you got a little baby in your tummy, we go to the doctor and you get a beautiful little sonogram picture, right? And if you're a first-time parent, you're like super excited about it, and you show everyone, you put it as the background on your phone, right? It's beautiful and it's wonderful, and it's a beautiful picture of your child. Then you have the baby, and you have the baby in your arms, and you physically have them with you. Would you set your baby down and then go over to the sonogram picture and ooh and awe over the sonogram picture and ignore your living, breathing child in its crib? No, that's silly. Of course not. You have the baby. Why are you gonna like sit there and look at the sonogram all day when you have the actual baby in your arms? This is how it is with the old covenant and the new covenant. The old covenant was great and beautiful for what it was, but it's just a picture. It's just a shadow. We have the baby now. Jesus is the baby. Literally, literally, Jesus is the baby in our arms. It's the real he's the reality. The new covenant is the reality. The old covenant was just a sonogram. We can step out of the shadow lands into the reality of new covenant and enjoy it, celebrate it, be overjoyed by it, ooh and awe over the baby in our arms. In fact, this new covenant has been God's secret plan all along. Listen to what Colossians 1 says in verse 26 and 27. This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God's people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you, Gentiles, too. And this is the secret, okay? This is the secret. Pay attention. Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory. Christ in you. This has been the plan all along. And this makes the origin of our new covenant even older, as Ephesians 1 4 tells us, for he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him in love. This has always been the plan. Always been the plan that Christ would live in us, and that would give us the assurance, the certainty of sharing his glory. The old way did not have any certainty. You were always unsure of your standing. You were always unsure if you had made too much of a mistake that he might, you know, punish you or cast you out or some way be mad at you. But now we have an assurance, and that assurance is Christ in us. Christ in us. Man, that's the good stuff. All right, so we gotta kind of address this elephant in the room. All right. So if Jesus has been God's secret plan for us all along, then we really need to determine when this new Jesus covenant really starts for us. So in order to do that, I think we need to go over to Hebrews chapter nine because it gives us some really good insight on how to determine when this new covenant starts. So Hebrews chapter nine, starting in verse 15, says this Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the internal inheritance he has promised, since he died to set him free from the violations committed under the first covenant. That's the law. For where there is a will, covenant, the death of the one who made it must be proven. For a will takes effect only at death, since it carries no force while the one who made it is alive. So even the first covenant, the law, was inaugurated with blood. Okay, so what is the author of Hebrews saying here? He's saying that it is Jesus' death that starts our new covenant, not his birth. Why? Why? Think about that. Ask that question. Why is it his death that starts his new covenant? Well, remember, we talked about with the old covenant. We got to remember what we talked about with that, that the cost of sin is death, and covenant currency is blood. Why is this important? Because if we don't know this, then we'll fall victim to misinterpretation and misapplication, and frankly, just missing the point altogether. Jesus, okay, pay attention here. Jesus walked this earth as a fully Jewish man. In fact, Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, and Jewish rabbis teach what? The law. That's like their main job. Jesus does this too. In fact, he does a big old sermon about it. Maybe you've heard of it, the Sermon on the Mount. And in that sermon, he teaches the law. He teaches it multiple other times too, but that's a great exposition of him teaching the law. Except when he teaches it, he teaches it at its true height, revealing that really, in order to keep the law, it will require not just behavior, but also intention from the heart. Okay, he says things like, when you get angry, it's as bad as murder. If you look with lust, it's as bad as adultery, right? And he culminates this, it culminates, it builds to a culmination in a requirement from him to quote, be perfect like God. If we don't know that Jesus' death is what secures and begins our new covenant, then we will incorrectly apply this scripture. So we'll either do two things. We will either say, oh, he's just being dramatic for, you know, dramatic effect. He was exaggerating for dramatic effect, he's not being literal, or we will make this something for us to live up to. So be perfect like God. Remember from my first episode, I tell this story from Bible class as a teenager, and that's exactly how my Bible teacher taught it. That the expectation is for us to be perfect like God, we should try our best, and God will help us with the rest. That's why Jesus came. No, no, that's incorrect. That's incorrect. Jesus is saying the standard is be perfect like God. You can't do it. That's why I'm here. That is that is the Sermon on the Mount in one sentence. The standard is perfection. You can't, I'm here. That's it. That's it. You know, he could save himself lots of words. Just say, just say in one sentence like that. So it's important for us to know that not everything Jesus says is directed at us as post cross believers who have the Holy Spirit living in us. That's another thing. They didn't have the Holy Spirit yet. We have the Holy Spirit in us producing fruit in us, that makes us different. In this case, in the case of the Sermon on the Mount, and many times throughout the Gospels, he is teaching Jews, obligated to an old covenant contract, that God's requirements are high and impossible. He is pointing them to their need for him and for a new covenant that is coming. Jesus was not anti-Moses, okay? He was not anti-Moses, he was not anti-Judaism, he was Moses upgraded. Moses at final boss level, if you will. You know, Moses advanced. Jesus followed the law and celebrated all the required feasts and festivals. You can actually see that in the gospel. It talks about him celebrating the different feasts and festivals. He taught the law at its greatest height and he revealed grace in tangible form. This is why it is so important to read all scripture through a perspective of grace. If we want to understand it correctly, if you don't do this, okay, you if you don't put on the right lenses, then you will misinterpret scripture and misapply it and misunderstand it. You have to put on your new covenant lenses because this is the reality in which we now live. We live in a new covenant. We have to look at everything through our reality of this new covenant. Blood is what secures the covenant. The new covenant is signed with the cross, sealed with the spirit, and the old is of no benefit to us any longer. Hebrews 8 16. When he speaks of a new covenant, he makes the first what obsolete. And now what is growing obsolete and aging is about to disappear. It is of no good to us. It is aging and about to disappear. It is obsolete. We have a new covenant, a new way of relating to God, and a new way of being. We're born again into new covenant relationship. I want to go back and talk a little bit about what I mean when I say put on your new covenant glasses. So thanks to my genetics, I actually have to wear glasses to see. I'm a little blind. I'm deaf and blind actually. But I do need to wear glasses. And here's the thing about me that everyone should know. I know this is an audio medium, but I just think you should know that I'm a little bit, well, let's just say unique. And I happen to have a personal belief that if I have to wear glasses in order to see, then I might as well make them a fashion statement. You know, I like to match them with my outfits. As a result, I have a large collection of glasses in varying forms of color and boldness and prints and shapes. And I do sometimes match them with my hair color, which changes frequently as well. A personal favorite pair from my collection, which I fondly call my Elton John glasses. They have blue light blocking lenses that are tinted purple. And they're great for long days of computer work, also for making teenagers think I'm cool. So that's a bonus. It's just a bonus, you know, and don't tell them. This is a secret. This is a secret here on the airwaves. So the purple tint on the lenses also make every single color I see while wearing them a little bit more vibrant and makes me a little sad, honestly, when I do finally take them off and realize that my life is not, in fact, always covered in an Instagram filter. Honestly, it's so disappointing. So these lenses enhance the color around me, but they also help cut the harshness of the fluorescent lights and computer monitors that are the unfortunate daily realities of life in corporate America. In essence, they kind of heighten the vibrancy of some things and cut out the harm of other things. So I think as we start our expedition through relearning the gospel, it's super important that we put on our right reading glasses so that we can see it clearly and so that we don't end up being harmed by a distorted view of God or ourselves along the journey. As new covenant believers, we have to read everything through lenses tinted with grace. I think grace is probably a purple tinted lens. That's just my personal opinion. I think without this grace-filtered perspective on scripture, we'll find ourselves cherry-picking, taking verses out of context, or just ignoring some scriptures altogether. Or worse still, we'll cling tightly to old covenant passages as proof of an angry and demanding God who pulls away from people who don't behave well. Grace is the lens through which we can see a God who has always been eager to be close to us. Always seeking to make right the things that we often get wrong, always keeping his promises in spite of our breaking them, and always redeeming our sins before we even have the chance to finish making them. So just like my Elton John glasses, which heighten the vibrancy of some things and cut out the harm of other things. Our grace glasses heighten the vibrancy of faith and joy and freedom and love, joy, peace, patience. It heightens the vibrancy of these as we read them in scripture and it cuts the harms, the harm that we sometimes see in old covenant passages. We have to realize we are in a different covenant relationship than the people of old. And this requires making sure we're wearing the right glasses when we read scripture. All right. We have covered a lot of ground today and talked about some pretty hefty stuff. I think the Apostle Paul might say, no spiritual milk here, just a big old steak dinner. I think we've clearly proven that as believers who live on this side of the cross, we're under a new covenant, and that this covenant is secured by Christ, not by our efforts. But what does that really mean for us in our everyday life, in our relationship with God? How can we apply what we've learned today to how we read scripture? What does that mean for how we understand the gospel? These are all really great questions and ones that we're going to seek to answer as we continue our relearning the gospel series. So be sure to tune in next time. We're going to tackle the topic of forgiveness and the fullness of forgiveness. So be sure to tune in. If you want to keep up with me in between episodes, you can check out my website, which is renegadegrace.com. I post weekly short teachings on various grace topics there. You can subscribe and you'll get an email whenever I post. You can also reach out to me via email anytime. My email is Jess at renegadegrace.com. Or you can follow me on Instagram. I'm at RenegadePastor. I do post some stuff there, and I also just post my life there. So if you want to know more about BM as a person, you can stop me on Instagram. There is a link in the show notes if you're interested in buying any of my books, as well as a list of all the verses that were referenced during today's teaching. So I have three books out there. My most recent one's called The Uncommon Gospel, which is, you know, Grace Theology 101. So if you're interested in that, check out the link. All right, I think I covered all the things. I think that's all I got. Thanks so much for listening to Renegade Grace. Just a reminder Grace did all the work. You just get to live from it. Okay, love you. Bye.