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

by Malcolm Smith

  She related what happened when the phone rang that first day. The first thing she noticed was that there was not the usual tension caused by fear that she was going to fall again. There was, instead, the rest that He indeed was in her and this was His conversation; she could afford to rest and enjoy how He would handle it. As the conversation got under way, she realized that she really had a choice; she was not being swept along by the sound in her friend’s voice as she prepared to divulge the latest tidbit. She was not a robot; she was choosing, yet she realized the power to choose was His gift. With the phone to her ear, she realized that she did not want to get involved in what her friend had to say and that she did not have to. Then came the words that normally would have swept all her resolves and dedications away: “You will never guess what Jane’s husband did at work the other day!” There was a quiet sense of the Holy Spirit within Christine as she said, “No, Susan, I have not heard anything, and I would prefer not to. The Holy Spirit has been convicting me about the way I have been talking about people. I will pray for Jane’s husband, but I do not need to know, for the Lord knows what he did.” Taken aback, her friend said, “Oh!” and rapidly brought the conversation to an end.

  At the next meeting at the church, her clique was looking at her strangely as she walked towards them to join them. Obviously Susan had passed along the phone conversation. Christine had prayed about this first meeting with her gossip buddies and had been urged by the Spirit to take the offensive. She began, “I just have to share what the Holy Spirit has done in my life in the last few days...” and went on to tell them of the work of the Spirit in her life in the last hours. That was the end of temptation from that direction. Some of the women later called her and told her they had been going through the same conviction and thanked her for saying what she had said.

  In the next days, she was convicted that this was not merely about not gossiping but about taking the initiative of loving people. She read the text that had started it all— Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers (Ephesians 4:29)—and the passage I had shared with her:

  But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.

  Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

  Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

  Colossians 3:8,12-14

  She realized that the Spirit did not want her merely to stop gossiping but to commence an entirely new life in the way she looked at others and what she did with their problems that she may hear about. It was not merely stopping one activity but starting a new one. She prayed and asked the Holy Spirit to lead her. She realized that in some way her tongue had affected every family in the membership of the church. She took the church directory and began to pray through it, bringing each family in the church before the Lord. She realized that she had spent hours of every week either in active gossiping or finding out the details of the weaknesses and failings of others. She set aside the time now to pray and make the weaknesses she heard of the grist for her prayers. The Spirit of God within her has turned around her besetting sin to become her ministry that blesses the church.

  Chapter 16: The People of the Spirit

  The new covenant is anticipated throughout the Old Testament, and to some extent it is the subject of all the Prophets. Although there are many descriptions of what that covenant would be like, there is one phrase that is used again and again: “I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

  But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

  Jeremiah 31:33

  Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.

  Jeremiah 24:7

  Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them; indeed I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

  Ezekiel 37:26,27

  He is “our God,” and this is reflected in the Psalms when the psalmist cries out, O God, thou art my God (Psalm 63:1 KJV). Only a people in covenant with Him can say that He is uniquely their God. A person outside of the covenant may well call on God, but would not dare to lay any claim upon Him.

  We have seen that one of the major differences between a contract and a covenant is in what is being exchanged. A contract is the exchange and passing of property, possessions; a covenant is the exchange of persons. The contract says, “This is now yours,” while the covenant says, “I am now yours.” So God does not merely promise His impersonal blessing; His blessing is the gift of Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit.

  The New Covenant Temple

  We cannot think of the new covenant effective in the earth apart from the Holy Spirit. The indwelling Spirit characterizes the new covenant, as Ezekiel prophesied:

  “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezekiel 36:27).

  The indwelling Spirit communicates to believers all the blessings of the covenant that have been purchased by the Lord Jesus. Apart from Him, the blessings would be beautiful but unobtainable ideas.

  We have seen that the Holy Spirit takes up His abode in every believer, and his or her body becomes His dwelling place. But that is only the beginning. The Holy Spirit does not only dwell in each man and woman as an individual; He dwells in the body of believers in every locality, forming that body into the temple of the new covenant in that locality.

  The temple of the old covenant was in Jerusalem, in the land of Israel; it was the place where God chose to make His name and presence known. The people of the covenant lived in that land and yearly went to worship their covenant God in Jerusalem, celebrating Him and the covenant He had given them. But in the new covenant, there is no land or place where the covenant God dwells in the midst of His people. He dwells in His church and specifically the body of believers—His people—in any given locality. It is in His people that His presence is uniquely made manifest.

  We have seen that the Greek word naos, meaning “the Holy of Holies,” is used to describe the body of every believer. (1 Corinthians 6:15.) However, although we dealt with that aspect first, the primary use of the word is to describe the gathered company of God’s people. The believers in any town or city constitute His people, and they are the dwelling of God, the place where the glory of God dwells in that locality.

  In whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple (naos) in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

  Ephesians 2:21,22

  Listen to the covenant language Paul uses to describe the believers in Corinth:

  For you are the temple (naos) of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

  2 Corinthians 6:16

  Do you not know that you are the temple (naos) of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple (naos) of God, God will destroy him. For the temple (naos) of God is holy, which temple (naos) you are.

  1 Corinthians 3:16,17

  The coming of the Spirit in the new covenant has removed the vei
l separating sinful men and women from the presence, so that we can behold the glory of the Lord Himself in the face of Jesus Christ. We have entered the Holy of Holies; we live behind the veil in the very presence of God. We not only behold Him but also are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

  But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

  2 Corinthians 3:18

  The temple of the new covenant is “living stones,” the people of God, God dwelling in the midst of us by the Spirit. The cornerstone, by which the whole building holds together, is the Lord Jesus. The people are not only the stones of the temple but also the priests who serve, worshipping in the power of the Spirit.

  Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

  But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

  1 Peter 2:4,5,9

  In the earliest church no one went to church, for it was not understood as a building on Third and Main Street that one could go to. The church was made up of believers who were the living stones or bricks making up the structure of the new covenant temple in their locality, wherein the presence of God was known and made manifest. The church was not primarily a building but people who gathered together and, having worshipped and celebrated their covenant God, became the church scattered throughout the city.

  Joined to the Body of Christ

  The New Testament knows nothing of an isolated believer living in a private relationship to God. Each individual believer is joined to Christ and therefore to His body, the people of God. The covenant is not with us as individuals but with the “people” who are in Christ, with whom the covenant is made. We have an intensely personal relationship with God in Christ, but we do not have an individual relationship; it is a corporate one.

  Becoming a Christian means that one has been found by Him and come to Him personally, but at the same time is plunged into a relationship to the covenant people, the body of Christ. In His parables, Jesus found the individual lost item but always with a view to bringing it back to the corporate expression. The lost sheep was returned to the flock, the lost coin was returned to take its place with the woman’s nine coins; the lost son returned not only to the father but also to the family celebration.

  It is the people of God that are the object of God’s saving activity in Christ. God is not saving an unconnected set of individuals, each with a private, isolated relationship to Him; He is saving a company, a special people. The Scriptures tell us that He ...gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. (Titus 2:14).

  In the Western world we think of ourselves as isolated from our neighbors, islands that live and succeed or fail with little or no reference to anyone else. It follows that salvation is seen as personal and individual, a relationship with God that is in no way connected with anyone else.

  That has given us the Christian alone in front of the television, a member of the electronic church. We must understand that this scenario is unknown in the New Testament. Salvation is intensely personal, and we are drawn to Christ individually, but we are saved to become part of His corporate body. To enter the new covenant is to be joined to Christ and to His people to become the embodiment on the earth of the presence of God.

  Our confusion on this point is multiplied; there are many verses in the New Testament that appear to apply to the individual, but in the Greek they are plural. In our English translation, we no longer have the plural form of “you”; the fact is that “you” is plural, but we no longer use the singular “thou.” The only way we can get the true sense of this and many other verses in the New Testament is to translate them as they would say in New York, “yous,” or in Texas, “y’all”! This means that the verses address and apply primarily to the people of God and then secondarily to individuals within that company. Here is an example:

  Therefore, my beloved(s), as you(s) 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(s) both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

  Philippians 2:12,13

  Obviously this is true of every individual believer, but it is true only in the context of that believer’s relating to the people of God in his or her locality. His working in our lives to bring about His will and good pleasure takes place when we interact with the other people of God, receiving their exhortation, testimonies, prayers, and ministry.

  It is true to say that my life dwells in each individual cell of my body, but that is only true because each in-dwelt cell is in my body! There are many who see themselves as isolated individuals who are doing their best to hold on to their faith until they make it to heaven; to such, being a Christian is all about where we go when we die. In the New Testament, believers are always portrayed as a body of people among whom the Spirit can live and who, in their lives together, will reproduce God’s life and character in their city. Here is another example:

  You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

  1 John 4:4

  How many times have we been exhorted with these words spoken to us as individuals in a private relationship with God? We have been told that the One who lives in us is greater than the one in the world. I am sorry to disappoint you, but that is not the primary meaning of the text. Notice that it is addressed to a plurality of people called “children,” and again the “you” in this verse is plural and addresses the entire body of believers in any locality. The Holy Spirit, the presence of God on the earth, is greater in the body of believers than all the powers of hell and the world put together. Only as it is true of the body of believers can it then be said of each individual member of the body. But if we are true to Scripture, it cannot be said of one isolated individual whose only contact with other believers is as a part of a television congregation.

  To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you(s), the hope of glory.

  Colossians 1:27

  “Christ in you.” We have seen that this is true of every believer: Your body is the dwelling place of God. But the fullest application of this is that the glory of God, the divine presence that dwelt in the Holy of Holies, now dwells in the congregation of His people—both Jews and Gentiles.

  The New Community

  The people of God in the New Testament saw themselves as the people of the end time. By “end time,” I do not refer to the fantastic prophecies involving Israel, Russia, the Rapture, and the Antichrist that are the limit of some theologies of the end. The end is signaled by the resurrection of the dead, the end of the reign of death, the consummation of the kingdom of God, the eternal reign of the Lord Jesus, the passing away of this world system, and our beholding Him face to face. The people of God have already entered into the end.

  Whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.

  1 Peter 1:8,9

  We are partakers of eternal life, which is the life of God Himself, the only life of eternity. We share in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit we are already enjoying the foyer of heaven.

  Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

  1 Corinthians 10:11

  For it is impos
sible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.