Spirit

New Covenant and the Spirit

/ David R Maas / Leave a comment

The promise of the Spirit is vital to the redemption of humanity and the New Covenant of God with His people.

The New Testament connects the “Promise of the Spirit” to the “Blessings of Abraham,” the promise that God would bless the nations through the Great Patriarch. The Spirit is the gift believers receive “through the hearing of faith.” It is part of the covenant promises given to Abraham that find their fulfillment in the “New Covenant” established by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.

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Full of the Spirit

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After his baptism, the Spirit “drove Jesus into the wilderness… for forty days and nights.” Like Moses, the Messiah of Israel was alone in the Judean desert confronted by the Devil. His only guide was the Word of God. Like Israel, he was “tested.” Unlike that nation, he overcame every temptation and emerged victorious, for he was “full of the Holy Spirit.”

Moses did not eat during his time on Sinai. Jesus also “fasted” the entire time he was in the Wilderness – “Then was Jesus led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the Devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights” – (Matthew 4:1-2).

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He Baptizes in Spirit

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John the Baptist prepared the way for the Messiah, the herald of the Good News of the Kingdom of God. 

All four gospel accounts apply the passage from the Book of Isaiah to John the Baptist, the messenger who called men to repent in preparation for the Messiah’s arrival. The passage identifies John as the forerunner expected before the “Day of Yahweh” to summon the faithful – “The voice of one crying, in the wilderness, prepare the way of the LORD” – (Isaiah 40:3-5).

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The Promise of the Father

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With the outpouring of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, the blessings for all nations promised to Abraham commenced.

The Apostle Paul calls the Gift of the Spirit the “Promise of the Father” which he links to the Abrahamic covenant. The promises to Abraham and “his Seed” find their fulfillment in the New Covenant inaugurated by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. No longer are Gentile believers “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise.” By his shed blood, Christ has dismantled the “middle wall of partition” that once separated Jews and Gentiles.

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Earnest of the Inheritance

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Believers are the heirs of Abraham. The future possession of that inheritance is guaranteed by the Gift of the Spirit.

Israel’s possession of Canaan was an earlier stage in God’s redemptive plan, which always envisioned something larger than Israel or a small plot of land in the Middle East. With the arrival of the Messiah and the outpouring of the Spirit, the covenant promises began to find their fulfillment in the true “Seed of Abraham,” and consequently, in his “brethren” and “coheirs.”

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