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Law Matters: The Law and the Scriptures (6).
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people…to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” Luke 1.68, 72-75
Zechariah, foreseeing in the birth of John the Baptist the work of Christ’s redemption, reached back to the earliest days of God’s Covenant and brought forward the promises (to Abraham), the commandments (through Moses), and the Kingdom (from David) into the New Covenant which Christ would inaugurate.
The Old Covenant, God had foretold, would give way to a New Covenant, in which the Spirit of God worked from the inside-out to bring the promises and commandments of God to lived reality in His Kingdom people (Jer. 31.31-34; Ezek. 36.26, 27; Is. 9.6, 7).
Thus the New Covenant should not be understood as replacing the Old Covenant but as bringing it to fulfillment. The promises remain (Rom. 4; 2 Pet. 1.4). The commandments continue (Rom. 7.12). And the Kingdom has come and is coming (Matt. 12.22-29; 6.10, 33). The New Covenant came not to do away with the Old but to bring the Old to fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The New Covenant makes no sense without the Old, and the Old has no staying power apart from the New. They are two aspects of God’s one overarching Covenant of Promise (Eph. 2.12) and must always be kept together.
We are the people of God’s Covenant, and in that Covenant His Law and promises come to fulfillment in Jesus Christ (Matt. 5.17-19; 2 Cor. 1.20), and we, His chosen people (1 Pet. 2.9, 10), realize all our fulfillment in Him (Col. 2.9, 10).
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