new covenant/old covenant – one biased mess

My wife shared the following article with me today. We found it full of very insightful questions... and enjoy Chad's conversational writing style.

new covenant/old covenant - one biased mess by chad hill of UnbiasedFaith.com

Partial Extract:

so when this new covenant comes - it will be different in that his people will have the law written on their hearts - there will be no need to teach everyone about God because all will know him and their sins will be remembered no more. has this happend yet is the question you need to ask yourself. the writer of hebrews was still using the future tense to describe the old going away. is the law written on your heart? do we still have need of teachers to teach us about the LORD? do all men know God from the least to the greatest? maybe we got a new law sometime after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. a new law based on love that has no requirements? but what about all the times God uses the term forever - eternal decree - perpetual ordinace to describe these burdensome rules regarding the sabbath - dietary restrictions - sexaul laws - and many others. how could God tell them forever and then change it? a question for another page.

one other interesting bias we have with this passage. who is God making the new covenant with? the scriptures say judah and israel. where are the gentiles mentioned? seemingly the new covenant is with judah and israel only? just a thought for another day. if you are biased toward the new covenant christianity has handed down to us then you just can bypass the above an assume all is well. i leave you with a side thought. many preachers also use the prophet ezekiel to back the new covenant/new heart/new spirit logic. they use sound bytes to back up their unimpeachable doctrine. ezekiel 11 is one example.

Thankful to find I'm not the only one reluctant to believe we could possibly be under a "new covenant" YET. Chad doesn't speak of the future covenant in the context of a marriage covenant (which by the way... hasn't been renewed yet), but he gives other very insightful reasons as to why it couldn't be in operation already.

Enjoy!