The New Covenant is Jewish

by Lonnie Lane

One person in ministry wrote a
rather disturbed email to me about an issue I agree is a serious one, that of
whether or not to preach the Gospel to the Jews. Following is part of a longer
email, but here’s the crux of the issue of concern: “We do see danger and I get
angry when I see people distorting the truth and saying that the Jews are OK
the way they are, because they have another covenant with God which was never
broken. Therefore, we do not need to evangelize them, just love and support
them financially and visit Israel. Some of my dearest friends, apostles even,
are saying this…. To say that there is another way for the Jews or any other
people (to obtain salvation) is a distortion and denial of the very gospel
truth preached by Jesus and the apostles. If Paul and Peter would be among us
today, I wonder if they would shake hands with (any preacher) who forbids
praying in Jesus’ name when rabbis are present. I believe Paul would rebuke him
harshly, more than he did Peter for his hypocrisy with the Greeks.” (See Galatians
2:11-13).

This person went on to quote
something I said in a recent article, which was, “Christians are
misinterpreting the new covenant, assuming that the old is done away with.…The
old is no more, any one who comes, must come through the blood which is the
basis of the new, for Jew or Gentile, that is what I read in the word of God.”

I think I need to do some
clarifying here. Perhaps others of you have had the same concerns. I’m in
complete agreement with this person that there is only one way to salvation –
through the atoning blood of Yeshua. Yeshua Himself said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the
life; no one comes to the Father
but through Me” (John
14:6). Is coming to the Father what He meant as salvation?  We interpret it as such. Our Christian
sense of salvation is not entirely what Israel’s was. They saw salvation as
corporate, as national. The nation was saved from disaster and their enemies.
That is in part why they were looking for Yeshua to be a king who would “save”
them from their enemies, meaning Rome. But Yeshua brought the idea of salvation
to a much more personal level. To Him, salvation was equal to having a personal
relationship with His Father. The only way to that relationship was to have sin
entirely removed, not just forgiven. It meant restoring the person to a
position of being without the sin nature that has separated mankind from God
since the Fall of Adam and Eve.

Torah makes it clear that
transgressions, e.g., sins, not only need to be forgiven (the God part) but
restitution must be made (ordinarily the human part) so that what was lost
through the transgression was restored. When Yeshua paid the price for our sin,
He made the way for both forgiveness and restitution, in that we were not only
forgiven but we were restored to the relationship with God that was lost in the
Fall. That’s why Yeshua said, “I am the
way, and the truth and the life; no
one comes to the Father but
through Me”(John
14:6), knowing His death would accomplish “the way” back to God.

The whole point of the entire
sacrificial system of Israel was a series of “rehearsals” (Moedim) pointing to the blood atonement of Yeshua as the ultimate atonement
for all mankind. But here is the
two-fold difference between the Old Covenant sacrifices and the New. (Pay attention now, this is important,
folks.) The sacrifices of Israel brought forgiveness to Israel, but they did
not restore Israel to intimate fellowship with God such as born again believers
enjoy. Nor did the sacrifices remove the sin nature
from Israel making them new creations. That only happens through Messiah
Yeshua:  “…If anyone is in Messiah,
he is a new creature; the old things passed away, behold, new things have come” (2
Cor. 5:17). It’s the sin nature that
has “passed away.” The “new” is all that comes to us through being restored to
the Father which only happened when Messiah Yeshua
inaugurated the New Covenant with His blood. Yeshua symbolized what was about
to take place when He offered a cup of wine and said, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood” (Luke 22:20, my
emphasis).

Lest we view His words as simply
the prototype of what we call the communion cup without being in touch with His
experience, when Yeshua talked about “this
cup which is poured out” He knew it meant great suffering for Him. That
night, knowing He would be taken to be crucified, He cried out in desperation, “Abba! Father! All things are possible
for You; remove this cup from Me.”
We have no idea how much time or torment took place between that sentence
and the next: “Yet not what I will, but what You will” (Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42). Thank God He was willing to pay
that price to restore us to Abba!!

So to say that Israel has their
own covenant with God apart from the New Covenant is to leave the Jewish people
out of precious communion with the Father that only born again believers can
experience. It may forgive individual sins, for that is what the Old Covenant
sacrifices forgave, but it still leaves them in the sin nature that would mean
eternal separation from God. Individual sins may no longer be counted against
them through the sacrifices, but only sinlessness can be in, let alone remain,
God’s presence and that is only accomplished by the atonement of Yeshua. I
think we can all agree, with that information, that to say that Israel does not
need the New Covenant is to be unaware or misinformed of a number of facts,
including what was just explained.

Now, on the other hand, for those who think Israel
has a covenant with God which was never broken, God Himself said that He gave
Israel the New Covenant because they broke the old one: “Behold, days are
coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant
which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I
was a husband to them,” declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:31, 32;
my emphases.)

God did give a covenant to Abraham, with promises to him and
to his descendents: “Now when Abram was
ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am
God Almighty; Walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My covenant
between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.” Abram fell on
his face, and God talked with him, saying, “As for Me, behold, My covenant
is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer
shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have
made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly
fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. I
will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you
throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and
to your descendants after you. I will give to you and to your descendants after
you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting
possession; and I will be their God. God said further to Abraham, “Now as
for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you
throughout their generations” (Genesis 17:1-9). 

But notice, all these promises are earth-bound. They have to do with things
throughout generations and the land and nations. But they do not have to do
with eternal things. They do not have any mention of sin, except to say, “Walk before me and be blameless.” The
word blameless (perfect, KJV) in Hebrew is “tamiym”
which means: Entirely (figuratively or morally), without blemish, complete,
full, sincerely, sound, without spot, undefiled, upright, whole. It indicates
constantly. In other words, as you go through your life, do so with the constant
sense of being fully and entirely aware that you are walking before God,
keeping yourself undefiled and upright, wholly God’s. We see this in Abraham’s
life with the exception of when he had a lapse of faith and feared for his life
over the issue of Sarah being wanted by a king. No other people group on the
planet walked before God in this way, or at all, except Israel. My brother and
his family call their daily family devotional time Tamiym Time. Might be worth considering those standard during our
devotional times for our own lives.

The covenant God made with Abraham wasn’t a conditional covenant. Lord knows
that if it was, Israel would not be in the Land today, nor would any Jews have
survived the onslaughts intended to destroy them over the centuries again and
again. That the Jews survive is a testimony to God’s unbreakable covenant with
them:

Thus says the
LORD, Who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and
the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; The
LORD of hosts is His name: If this fixed order departs from before Me,”
declares the LORD, then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a
nation before Me forever. Thus
says the LORD, “If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations
of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of
Israel for all that they have done,” declares the LORD (Jeremiah
31:35-37).

As long as the sun is shining, and the moon and stars watch over the nights,
as long as there are waves on the sea, the Jewish people will remain a people.
They cannot be destroyed by either man’s or satan’s attempts, despite
intentions to do so. So when Israel’s neighbors declare they will drive Israel
off the map so they are no more, it may get messy for a while, but despite
their boasting, the Jews will survive, though the nations who come against her
may not.

So as for the above statement that, “The Jews are OK the way they are, because
they have another covenant with God which was never broken” it is true
there is this covenant cannot be broken because God alone will keep it, but it
is not a covenant which will bring to Israel all that being born again will.
That requires the New Covenant, though it does not invalidate or override God’s
covenant with Abraham and his physical descendents. However, here’s where the
misinterpretation come in. Those who subscribe to a “dispensationalist”
doctrine see Israel’s covenant as having to do with the Land, while the New
Covenant has to do with Christians and heaven. They see the Jews as inheriting
the land on the earth, while New Covenant believers’ inheritance is
spiritual. I suspect this
doctrine is where the thinking that the Jews have “another covenant” that
doesn’t require that the Gospel be preached to them comes from.

This comes from a further misunderstanding that
somehow the New Covenant is a “church thing” and doesn’t recognize that it was
God’s covenant to Israel first, way before any non-Hebrew people were included.
To see it ‘dispensationally’ is to see from man’s perspective, not God’s. God
set apart a people unto Himself. Mostly it included Israel but was always open
to Gentiles who wished to live with Israel and who would abide by His ways. The
New Covenant threw open the doors to any Gentiles who wished to receive God’s
offering of forgiveness through Yeshua’s atonement AND live in such a way as to
abide by His ways – to live according to a tamiym
walk before Him without having to live with or under Israel’s covering. But
always, Old Covenant or New, God required holiness and righteousness from His
people, be they Jews or Gentiles. In this sense, the essence of the Old
Covenant maintains in the New and has not changed. To make the covenant with
the Jews primarily about Land and not relationship with God is to miss the
whole point of God’s heart toward them altogether.

The New Covenant, which God made with Israel (to
make the point yet again), is this: “But
this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,”
declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I
will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people…. for I will forgive their iniquity, and
their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:32, 34). The first Jewish
disciples knew they were living in the fulfillment of this covenantal promise.
History records that the Gentiles soon saw themselves as the custodians of this
New Covenant. Gentiles have preached it to Gentiles for millennia. However, God is moving again among the
Jewish people to bring them once again into a New Covenant relationship with
Himself, ever since the Jews have been back in the Land He promised to them.
Yes, the covenant promise of the Land is being fulfilled (despite opposition),
but Jews still need salvation to be restored to fellowship with God that only
the New Covenant and a born again experience with Yeshua can bring about. So
yes, we do need to preach the Gospel to the Jewish people. We do need to pray
that “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26).

As a Jewish woman who was active in synagogue, who counted my rabbi as a
close friend with whom I had many talks about our Judaism, I can tell you
unequivocally that no matter how aware I was of being one of the chosen people,
or that somehow God’s promises to Abraham were mine, no matter how Zionistic I
was knowing that the Land of Israel was ours, no matter how many times I
recited the prayers or remembered how we were saved by God out of Egypt, or
went to Israel, or never ate pork or shrimp, I had no personal relationship
with God. None whatsoever. I could say prayers from the prayer book, or
occasionally ask God for something, but I had no real adoration for Him, no
sense of gratefulness to Him, no sense of His nearness nor was I aware of His
protection or covering. He was in heaven, I was down here. How could He even
understand my weak human plight?

It was not until I met Yeshua, until He introduced Himself to me (I would
have no idea of how to find Him had He not reached out to me), not until I was
born again did I have any relationship with my God. The difference was the
difference between existing and LIFE, between murky shadows and brilliant
sunlight…. I could go on and give examples but they are wholly inadequate.
Suffice it to say, I and every Jewish believer will tell you, Israel needs to
have the Gospel preached to them. Only those who “call on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). Only
through Yeshua can we know our God personally and intimately. And to know Him is
to love Him. We might love Him by afar, but Yeshua gives us His Spirit and
enables us to draw near to God who is Spirit.

But how will Israel know if they are not presented with the message of their
own New Covenant? How can they believe if they are not told? As Paul said, “How then will they call on Him in whom they
have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And
how will they hear without a preacher?(Romans 10:14). He wasn’t
talking about sending missionaries to a mission field far away. He was talking
about the Jews, the ones who live near you, to the ones you know or meet.
Please. Hear God’s heart in this. Share the Gospel with your Jewish neighbors
in a way they can hear it. Tell them how grateful you are to have come to know
their Messiah. Tell them the New Covenant is theirs. Tell them what it means to
you to have come to know the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob so personally
through Yeshua. Sow those seeds of faith. Water them with prayer. “Speak kindly to Jerusalem”(Isaiah 40:2),
no matter what the world says about and to them. You are not of the world. You
are of God, and He loves the Jewish people. He’s counted as one of them!

Reprint of this article is permitted as long as you use the following; Use by permission by Messianic Vision, www.sidroth.org, 2010.

Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible Copyright ©1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif.  All rights reserved. Used by permission.