Power of the Blood Covenant: Uncover the Secret Strength of God's Eternal Oath

by Malcolm Smith

  It saddened me to think of those who could debate theology but were terrified of having a close interaction with the God they studied. It reminded me of the scientist dissecting a frog to analyze its parts, never having sat by a lily pond at night to be serenaded by a frog choir! Those people are ministers in large churches today, terrified of the Holy Spirit who alone makes this new covenant the reality we see reflected in the pages of the New Testament.

  Without the Spirit, all that we are describing here is beautiful theory but is totally beyond the realm of reality. The love of God is not a theory that theologians debate, but it is communicated to us by the Spirit. The covenant is not the world of theory and study from which the believer must make trips into the “real” world of his own weakness, helpless struggles to be like Jesus and to face the confusions of life in the present darkness.

  The Spirit dynamically connects us with the covenant made in history; He is God with us to make real and vital the incredible promises of the new covenant. He joins us to the life of the ascended Jesus and is the enabling power to live His life day by day. The Holy Spirit inducts us into the world of the new covenant called “heavenly places,” which is now our real world; we live and work in this passing phony world, but we are not of it, for by the Spirit we are living moment by moment in Christ.

  The Dwelling of God

  The new covenant describes a union between God and man so complete as to be paralleled to the glory of God dwelling in the tabernacle and the temple of the old covenant. The bodies of men and women have become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. The Greek word that described the entire temple area is hieron,2 but the word for the inmost shrine of the temple, the dwelling of God’s glory in the midst of His people, called the Holy of Holies, is naon.3 Speaking to the believers in Corinth, Paul describes each one of them as the naos: the Holy of Holies filled with the divine presence.

  But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.

  Or do you not know that your body is the temple (naos) of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

  1 Corinthians 6:17,19,20

  A man or woman could not imagine such a privilege under the old covenant; the glory of God lived in a tent and later a house that they went to; to say that the glory was within them would be beyond comprehension. In all that we do, in all our relationships, we are the bearers of the divine presence. We must never think of ourselves apart from our absolute unity with the Spirit of Christ.

  It is by the presence of the Spirit within us that our relationship to Jesus is made real.

  “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.

  “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.

  Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”

  John 14:16-18,20,23

  Our covenant relationship to God hinges on the Holy Spirit’s being given to dwell within us. Jesus said that the day of the coming of the Spirit would be the day of believers coming to know union. “In that day,” the day of the Spirit’s coming, the believers would know “I am in my Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (verse 20) and again, “We will come to him and make Our home with him” (verse 23). There is not a more intense phrase to describe our union than “You in Me, and I in you.” Your body, mind, and emotions are the home of deity through the presence of the Spirit. Stop and let these words sink in; hold your skin and know the Spirit dwells in every cell of your body.

  The Vine and the Branches

  This intense union that we have with the Triune God is described in John 15:1-8, in the image of a vine and branches. Jesus tells us, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser” (verse 1).

  We are not dealing with a parable in these verses but a parallel between the relationship a vine has to its branches and the relationship we have to Jesus through the Spirit. In verse 5 He says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” He emphatically states that He is the Vine, we are the branches, and everything that is true of the vine’s relationship to the branch is true of His relationship to believers.

  I must emphasize that He reports the Vine/branch relationship as an accomplished fact. This is where we believers now are in our relationship to Him. It is important that we see this, because there are many who would see this most intimate relationship as something the believer moves toward as a future deeper life experience. Prayers are offered asking God to help us arrive at this state. This is not an experience of a few advanced believers but the way we understand our covenant relationship to Him from the first moment of our salvation.

  We do not know or understand this relationship when we are reborn, any more than a newborn baby understands what being a human is; but like the baby, we grow into what is and has been true from the moment of conception. It will take the rest of our lives to begin to fathom the depth of what this means, and we continue to ever grow in the experience of it. But we will never grow in the knowledge and experience of such a relationship until we grasp the truth that we now are in Christ. Even if, through ignorance, we have not yet lived in its power this is our address: in Christ.

  He is saying to the disciples gathered around the table, “This is where you are, and you are to work life out from this basis.” This is not a command to try to become a branch! It is not an appeal to our willpower; He is letting us in on the mystery of our relationship to God in the new covenant.

  Abiding in Christ

  It is a necessity that we learn the meaning of the words of Jesus “Abide in Me.” Various translations try to capture the meaning of the phrase, translating it as “dwell in,” “live in,” “remain in,” and “remain united to.” When used of persons, the phrase describes one person persevering in remaining in union with another, to be one with the other in heart, mind, and will. It describes a very real union of fellowship and communication between two or more persons.

  In understanding the phrase, it is of supreme significance to note that Jesus describes His intimate relationship with the Father as a mutual indwelling, a union, with this phrase. Abiding is translated here as “dwells.”

  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me...

  John 14:10,11 NASB

  We have seen above that He has already said that at the day of the Spirit’s being given, they “will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (John 14:20). Now He uses the phrase again to describe the relationship He has with each believer.

  This little phrase is at the heart of the new covenant, describing the incredible union that exists; Christ is in the believer, the believer is in Christ, and Christ is in the Father as the Father is in Him. Colossians 3:3 sums it up: For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

  This phrase is the key to the entire Vine/branch relationship; this is how the believer receives and draws his or her life from the life of Jesus.

  “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

  “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”

  John 15:4,5,7

  In his first epistle, John describes a believer as one who is abiding in Christ, in God: />
  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

  1 John 4:15,16

  The Christian life is the continual act of remaining in Him, dwelling in Him, being aware of Him as our life, and persevering in this relationship. It is choosing to be present to Him who is committed to be present to us.

  Faith is being present in one’s spirit, one’s inmost self, to God, who is love, knowing that He is the final truth and that He has spoken, as 2 John 2 tells us, because of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever. In that presence, we say the amen to His will and word of truth. It is the result of our abiding in Him that we obey and live His life in our behavior.

  He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.

  1 John 2:6

  Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

  1 John 3:24

  Joined to Him

  The relationship of Christ the Vine and us believers, the branches, abiding in Him describes the extent of the unity with Christ that we enjoy. It does away forever with the notion that He is “up there” or “over there” or that we come to a meeting of the church in order to find Him. We live joined to Him as the source of our life.

  The branches of the vine cannot function without being vitally united to the flow of vine sap that makes the vine a living vine. The life of the vine is the energy, the life source, that produces the fruit that is to be found on the branches. The branches produce the fruit, but they do so from the sap that is surging through them and it is natural for vine life to produce grapes; the branches do not labor at an impossible task of producing a fruit foreign to the nature of the vine.

  The living of the love of God in our behaviors is not the ultimate marathon act of our willpower attempting to be like Jesus. Let us accept the fact that the life that the new covenant portrays is impossible for the unaided human to accomplish. It can only take place by Jesus Himself living in us by His Spirit; He becomes the source and the ability to live the life of divine love that is the command of the new covenant. When this is understood, the Christian life is not a labor to produce a lifestyle that is foreign and awkward to us. When the center and source of our life is the fountain of love Himself, a lifestyle of divine love is not foreign and awkward but natural.

  The mark of dead religion is to be found in the dedication of the devotee to keep vows with a view to pleasing God. The Pharisees in the days of Jesus spoke of this as “taking the yoke of the law.” As oxen were yoked together to pull the plow, so they saw themselves as yoked to the law, observing its every command and attempting by sheer willpower to keep it perfectly. This produced utter spiritual weariness to the point of exhaustion, a burnout of the spirit. To these intense and weary people and those who followed them, Jesus issued the invitation,

  “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

  Matthew 11:28-30

  He called them to abandon the yoke of dead commands and rules that gave no aid in keeping them and come to Him who promised to be the life within them that would fulfill all the rules that God had ever demanded. Christianity is not a list of rules that is superior to the Ten Commandments. He was not offering the latest and best update of the way of the law; He was not operating in the realm of law, but in the realm of life.

  He came to bring the new covenant. The word used in the Greek language for “new” is not the word used to describe the latest model in a series, as one would describe a new car. In that sense, “new” would mean the latest and improved edition of a long line of models. “New,” as it is used in the new covenant, has the meaning of new in kind. Using the illustration of the new car, this would mean a new form of transport! The new covenant was not an updated rehash of religion-by-law but introduced new concepts that had never entered into the heart of humankind. This was something never conceived in the wildest dreams of prophets—not a list of rules but being joined to the life of perfect love Himself.

  We cannot think of a grape-producing branch apart from the vine life flowing through it. They may be discussed separately by botanists in study and research, but in reality there is no such thing. Quite correctly grapes are called the fruit of the vine, never the fruit of the branch! Even so, a believer can never think of oneself apart from the Spirit of Christ living the life of Jesus within and through them.

  The grapes are the life of the vine now translated into a form that can be eaten and enjoyed by all. So the ultimate goal of the believer’s union is that the life of Christ may be released through his or her humanity to the blessing of the world.

  “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”

  John 15:4,5

  Maybe even more wonderful is that Christ is joined to and known by the branches. By definition, when we speak of a vine, we include the branches—we do not call a vine without branches a vine, but a stump! Vine life is expressed through the branches; the sap or life of the vine must have branches through which to express and produce the grapes. Apart from the branches, there would be no way of seeing the vine or identifying the nature of its life. We can never think of ourselves apart from our being joined to Christ; but even more amazingly, we cannot think of Jesus except as He is joined to His body, the church, through whom He lives and works on the earth today.

  One Plus One Equals One

  This is how Paul explained his own life:

  I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

  Galatians 2:20

  Paul never spoke of his trying to be like Jesus, but of Christ Himself living in and through him.

  He based his teaching concerning the Christ-like lifestyle of the believers in Philippi on this reality:

  Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

  Philippians 2:12,13

  They had to work out, or literally bring to harvest, their salvation and do so with great awe and seriousness, but they could only accomplish this because God the Spirit was the One within authoring both the will and the actions.

  Praying for the Galatians to come to maturity, Paul described his goal in prayer as Christ being formed in them: My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you (Galatians 4:19).

  If Christ was formed in them, He was not merely beside them to comfort and advise them, nor ahead of them to be followed, a guide showing them where to put their feet; He was not in a distant heaven awaiting a long-distance call! It means that He was in them, one with their true and inmost selves.

  Paul understood that his preaching was the living Christ ministering through him: For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not accomplished through me, in word and deed, to make the Gentiles obedient (Romans 15:18). His ministry was not doing something for God, but Christ ministering in and through him.

  Paul was jailed by the Roman authorities for his faith, and from the jail cell he wrote to the Philippians. He explained in an intensely personal passage his feelings as he sat in jail and awaited the verdict, which could mean freedom or the death sentence. He asked for their prayers and then wrote:

  F
or I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

  Philippians 1:19-21

  For him to be in the jail was for Christ to be there experiencing it in him, to the extent that onlookers would see Him in Paul’s behavior and words.