As ministers of the Gospel of Christ, we should be preaching what God has done for us through Christ Jesus - what He accomplished for us by his pouring out His blood on the cross. We must preach the New Covenant that Christ wrought through his death. However, many well-meaning pastors, teachers, and movements in the Body of Christ today are unwittingly preaching the Old Covenant, while missing the essence of the New Covenant. They emphasize man's will or choice as the faculty that must ultimately bring them to Christ. Certainly it is true that man's choice is involved in the process, but is most certainly not the bottom-line determiner. It is very important and right to call sinners to repentance and to call people to make a choice, but it is something much different to insist that there is something inside of man that must make the “final call”. To do this is to miss the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Sometimes I wonder if people forget that there is a difference.

The difference is that under the Old Covenant, God issued specific commands and requirements that man must live up to - commandments that required a change of heart and true repentance. Here was the dilemma - man couldn't change his own heart and could never fulfill God's requirements. The beautiful message of the New Covenant is that God accomplished for us in Christ what we could never have accomplished on our own, namely a change of heart. One major purpose of the law was to convince the world that they could never meet God's requirements - literally that they couldn't fulfill God's commands! The Old Covenant wasn't just some outdated system that just didn't seem to work as God intended. It was the very perfect design of God to reveal to us our sinfulness and utter inability apart from Him, much like when we witness to an unbeliever, we first tell them of God's holiness and His law's before trying to convince them of the need for a savior. The law wasn't sent as an opportunity for salvation, but to convince the world of its depravity and hopelessness apart from Christ:

8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.

So then, would God actually issue commands & requirements to us that we could not possibly fulfill? To say “no” to that question would demonstrate a deficient understanding of the Old Testament of Scripture and the purpose of the law. See, the very nature of the law required us to be holy and without blemish inwardly - this was impossible and God knew it. It was as impossible (and still is) for men to change their hearts as a leopard its spots (Jeremiah 13:23). Christians should all agree on this or else change the words of the popular worship song to “Change My Heart, O Me.” Paul said it plainly:

This passage is referring to those who are not in Christ, which is clearly evident in verses 1-4 & 9-17 of the same chapter. Natural man, or sinful man (which was all of us at one time), CANNOT submit to God's law. He CANNOT please God. Not “would not” or “might not”, but “cannot”! “Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one!” - Job 14:4. Of course, a person can restrain himself from an outward sin for various reasons, but he cannot submit his heart to God's law. Only God himself is Lord over men's hearts.

Until we grasp these truths and see the utter hopelessness of man's true condition, we will miss so much of the beauty and joy of the New Covenant in Christ's blood! They won't understand what John Newton truly meant by “Amazing Grace” when he penned the famous hymn. So then, what did Newton mean? So what is this “beauty” that today we are missing in our view of the New Covenant in Christ's blood? John Newton certainly saw and believed this “beauty” and it can be clearly seen if we pause to meditate on the words of his hymn.

It is this: that the New Covenant is not merely an opportunity provided by the blood of Christ, but that the blood of Christ actually reaches down and pulls us out of our sinful state! The blood of Christ actually creates in us a heart that chooses him and repents unto salvation. In our state of death in transgression, we could never choose to become alive:

So the New Covenant is that man in his hopeless state is like Lazarus - dead - but just as Christ awoke Lazarus from the dead, so Christ has spoken “Let there be light!” to our hearts and awoken us from the dead. The Old Covenant called for us to have faith, but the New Covenant is that Christ has put inside of us the faith to repent and believe in Him! His sacrifice was that powerful - not merely an opportunity. You might find these things offensive or hard to believe, but if you are a true believer, there must be something way down inside screaming, “Yes! Yes! That's what happened to me!”

38 They will be my people, and I will be their God. 39 I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. 40 I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. 41 I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.

What is it that keeps us from choosing what's right and keeps our will from making holy decisions? Is it not our “double-mindedness” as James put it? But God said “I will give them singleness of heart and action, SO THAT they will always fear me…” That literally means that He will cause our wills, or hearts, to choose Him! What else can it possibly mean? A person would rack their brains for all eternity trying to figure out what it means if not that. God says, “I will inspire them to fear me, SO THAT they will never turn away from me.” This is the “everlasting covenant” he is speaking of - read God's very words just a chapter earlier:

31 "The time is coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. 33 "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

So God literally defines the New Covenant as putting his law in our minds and writing in our hearts! Can you see why if a person doesn't see this, they seem to be missing the fullness of what Christ did for us on the cross? This is so intertwined in the New Covenant, that nearly anywhere a prophet prophesies of this Covenant, they express this. Listen to Moses and Ezekiel prophesy of the New Covenant:

Moses knew that man could not just simply “choose” to love God. God must circumcise our hearts - raise us from the dead - in order for us to love Him and live. We all have hearts of stone - cold and hard - the source of rejecting Christ. But if God were to reach in and remove our hearts of stone and give us new hearts that love Him, then He'd literally be giving us the source of repentance and good “choices”. To insist that before He will do this, we must first be “willing” is to put the cart before the horse. We cannot “choose” to have a heart of flesh, because it's our very hearts of stone that make us unwilling in the first place! This willingness simply cannot originate in us. It is the gift of God - NOT FROM YOURSELVES - so that no one can boast. This is the reason Paul was inspired to say that salvation “does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.” (Romans 9:16).

When some read Luke 22:20 (theme verse at top), and think of the New Covenant in Christ's blood, they think simply of atonement for sins. But they miss much of the meat of what's behind Christ's words there. You can read Ezekiel 36:33, “… On the day I cleanse you from all your sins…” and take that to just mean that He will just atone for your sins. But if you read verses 25-29, you will see what God means when he says “cleanse” here:

25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you.

So in verse 33, when God says he will cleanse us of our sins, he is referring to this whole process of removing our very sinfulness, so that we can even choose him. This work was accomplished by Christ's death and resurrection, along with the legal atonement for our sins. On the cross, Christ literally purchased our faith, so that we are born again not simply because we had faith in Him, but because He died to put inside of us the faith to believe!! This is the power of the Gospel of Christ!! This is what “moves us to follow his decrees”. Does God have the right to “move” our wills to make the right choices? He certainly does and I'm eternally grateful, because without that, I would never have been saved. This should significantly determine the meaning in our minds of Christ's words in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…” and Luke's words in Acts 3:14, “The Lord opened [Lydia's] heart to respond to Paul's message.” Peter said in 1 Peter 1:21, “Through him you believe in God.” In other words, only by the power of Jesus does someone come to believe in God. And should His power come on someone to believe, their heart will come to life and obey the word of Christ, just as the corpse of Lazarus obeyed and came to life at the very command of Christ.

Philippians 2:12 is an often quoted verse it seems, but rarely is the rest of the sentence (verse 13) quoted with it. Why is that? I believe its because we're comfortable with verse 12, but verse 13 is a paradigm shift for us. We don't know what to make of it, so we just sort of let it sit. Stopping at Verse 12 is to stop at the Old Covenant, but we miss the New Covenant in Verse 13 - the covenant in which God promised to fulfill in us what He has required of us. Verse 12 seems to give us control, puts us in the driver's seat - right where our sinful hearts have always wanted us. But verse 13 changes the whole meaning - it puts God back in complete control!!! It puts all of our efforts and choices underneath God's sovereign plan. It forces our hearts to submit and let go of control. Now that is painful:

Now instead of puffing us up with the subtle pride of “I must work out my salvation, I must do it”, we are laid low and we tremble with reverent fear and awe at a God who not only shaped the earth, but shapes our hearts. We feel the gravity of the call to take our salvation seriously and examine ourselves and beat our bodies into submission all because we realize that our Creator is doing exactly that - creating us.

So then, when ministers and leaders today emphasize man's “free-will” as the means of his coming to Christ, unwittingly, they are still preaching the Old Covenant and when they should be inspiring hope into the hearts of people, they are providing foundation for hopelessness. If a man is led to believe that he must pull from within his own resources or his “free-will”, it will bind his heart in darkness and despair. It seems to be right and usually bears immediate beautiful fruit and response, but in the end that fruit will dry up and wither, as it is not grounded in Truth. But when a man's hopes are fully in God and God's power to save, then he is receiving the foundation of hope and joy. The famous preacher George Whitefield's words about “free-will” are appropriate:

“For that I am sure has a natural tendency to keep the soul in darkness forever, because the creature is thereby taught that his being kept in a state of salvation is owing to his own free will. And what a sandy foundation is that for a poor creature to build his hopes of perseverance upon?” (George Whitefield in a letter to John Wesley)

“Some begin to say grace, but they do not out with the word: they stutter into `free-will'. This will never do. This is not according to the teaching of Holy Scripture, nor is it in accordance with fact. If there is any man here who thinks he has been saved as the result of his own will, let him throw his cap up, and magnify himself forever - “Glory be to my own good disposition!”… Hadst thou, O God, left me to my own free will, I would have continued to despise thy love, and to reject thy mercy.” (Charles Spurgeon, “The Royal Prerogative” Sermon delivered Feb 15th, 1880).

Do not fail to give your people the beautiful hope found in God's New Covenant through Christ! This is the gospel that has the power to save! If we don't preach this, we fail to preach the true resurrection power of Christ to save sinners and end up preaching a powerless opportunity for men to raise themselves from the dead. As believers, this is our very life and breath. Without it, we are still preaching living under the Old Covenant and miss what Newton called “Amazing Grace”! This is the New Covenant in Christ's blood! To Him be glory and honor!