Are We to Keep Both Covenants?

The New Covenant is often called the New Testament, and is rightly compared to the last will and
testament of one departing from this life. “For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the
death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all
while the testator liveth” (Hebrews 9:16–17). The Mosaic Law was thus in force only until the death of
Christ. During all His lifetime on earth, Jesus lived as a Jew, but being full of the Spirit of God, He taught,
exemplified, and instituted New Testament doctrine. When a will is made and duly authorized, it is not
in force until the death of the maker. If he makes a new will, however, and dies, it is the latter will that is
binding, and the first then has no legal force at all. Thus, when God in Christ brought a new will and
sealed it with His own blood, it became binding, and the first then became of no legal status in His sight,
despite the fact that it was “holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12). To try to keep both is to recognize
neither the passing of the Old Law nor the legal force of the New.

Romans is quite strong in its wording. It compares a person who would be under two covenants to a
woman who has two living husbands, declaring such to be an adulteress, she being married to another
man. “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye
should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead” (Romans 7:4). Being under two
covenants would constitute adultery in the spiritual sense.

Some maintain that this refers to keeping the Ceremonial Law, not the Moral Law. The Scriptures make
no such artificial division, the moral concepts of the Old Law being superseded by those of the New, just
as the ceremonies are also done away. We are to be “dead” to the Law. (Romans 7:1–4). But what law?
The Ceremonial Law only? Notice the context: the discourse is continuous, and verse 7 identifies this
Law with the Ten Commandments: “I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except
the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”

Again, in 2 Corinthians 3 where the glory of the Old Covenant is described as being “done away,” what
portion of the Law is being referred to? Is it not that which was “written and graven in stones,”
associated with the glory emanating from the countenance of Moses on Mount Sinai? This again is
unmistakably the Ten Commandments, indicating that the entire Old Covenant is included in that which
is superseded by the New.

Most important is the fact that this New Will of God is associated with the experience of regeneration.
Without it, even the Old Covenant, which was on a lower spiritual plane, was not kept. It was “a yoke…
which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear” (Acts 15:10). But the blood of Christ cleanses the
conscience, which the Law could not do (Hebrews 9:13, 14). Our entire viewpoint is altered: the mind is
renewed (Titus 3:5) as we are transformed by the Spirit of Christ. In this sense, the New Law is “written
in our hearts,” and we are empowered to keep the everlasting covenant to the glory of Christ our
Saviour.

The tragedy of Christendom (including Fundamentalism) is that two thousand years after the birth of
Christ, it still does not realize that the Covenant of Christ is complete and perfect without the Old Law,
which has passed away. Its haziness on the two covenants is responsible for much of the glaring
inconsistency that robs us of the power and testimony of the New Covenant. In any real crisis, the carnal
and the worldly will thumb back to the Old Testament to justify their position on carnal warfare, divorce
and remarriage, worldly adornment and attire, and conformity to the world in general. This is the
challenge that we meet today. May we have a true church—a New Testament body of believers.