New Covenant maturity

Among the several jobs I have had over the years are included about nine years as a policeman and around eleven as a registered nurse. Although these two professions may at first seem outwardly quite different, when we peer beyond the superficial there are a number of marked similarities.

Both disciplines are founded on service and integrity, and a major part of the remit of both professions is to care for the disadvantaged of society, and while a nurse ministers to the sick, the police officer will minister to the victims of crime. Indeed, the principle function of the police is not to arrest wrong-doers at all but to prevent crime in the first place, just as a major part of the nurse’s role is not just to concern themselves with those in ill-health but in preserving the wellbeing of the healthy.

But there is something else that connects nurses and policemen - Their absolutely outrageous sense of humour. It’s probably something to do with the stress of the job and one’s constant exposure to human suffering - which is why it is a characteristic shared by fire-fighters and servicemen. And in common with most professions, the butt of that humour is often the apprentice. In nursing that means the student, while in the police it will be the probationer, and nursing and the police are replete with daft stories of students being told to carry out silly tasks.

A popular one in nursing circles (before everyone knew about it) used to be to send the student on an errand to the store to ask for a ‘long stand’, and I remember when I was a polie officer being handed a note to urgently contact a Mr Lyon straight away, only to discover when I did so that I had been given the phone number of Calderpark Zoo.

Thanks guys!

But the one that still sticks in my mind was the detective constable at Saracen Police Office who asked an impressionable young CID aide to go to the registry and ask for the box of clues.

Well, sine I am now a preacher, very little of any of the foregoing introduction has any relevance whatsoever to what we are going to discuss in this article - except for one thing, which I will get to just shortly.

So why begin with such a story? Because people like a story they can remember, and story-tellers use their art to help their listeners latch onto an idea that they will then remember.

And just what is that idea, in this instance?

The Holy Bible is bit like a box of clues.

Yes, there are many hidden truths in Scripture that we do well to study in depth, but there are some things that are so blatantly obvious that many miss what is hidden in plain sight. And one of them is this…

Our Christian Bible is written in two parts - The Old Testament and The New Testament.

That should give us a clue, but it rarely does. Indeed, many people confuse the Old Testament with the Old Covenant, and likewise, the New Testament with the New Covenant, To do so, is something of an over simplification, because rather a lot of the Old Testament is actually the New Covenant in type, whilst the New Testament era begins under the Old Covenant.

In other words, the way we have used the terms Old and New Testament does not altogether reflect the way that Old and New Covenant are used in the Bible but there is nevertheless a clue in both names inasmuch as the Gospel is indeed founded on the under-taught principle of Covenant.

I say that Covenant is under-taught because the way the Gospel is often presented today would be entirely foreign to the early Church, and almost incomprehensible to Jesus and the apostles.

Today’s Gospel is often little more than a compromise that men have contrived to merchandise God’s Word. And I will be blunt with you - he isn’t best pleased with what we have made of it.

By and large, this has been done by dissecting the Gospel into marketable components to appeal to particular target consumers.

To the self-righteous, is sold as legalism.

To the greedy, it is sold as a prosperity gospel.

To the morally lax and disobedient, it is sold as license.

The list goes on, but the common denominator is this: Nowhere in any of these distorted versions of the Gospel is our relationship with God taught as being based on Covenant.

I used to love investigating complex fraud cases when I was in the police, and there’s an old saying that, ‘No-one ever counterfeited a four pound note’, which means a savvy counterfeiter is not so stupid as to try to pass off an obvious dud.

A good counterfeit will always look as much like the real thing as possible, so don‘t get me wrong by assuming that I decry the teaching of moral standards as legalism, or the Bible’s teaching on prosperity as nonsense. They are not, but they have often been highjacked a re-packaged in among what is a lot of nonsense.

Not at all! The Bible teaches obedience and prosperity just as much as mercy and grace. The difficulty that most modern believers have is in balancing the apparent contradictions that can emerge by failing to understand the whole concept of covenant.

Covenant is not a common word in our modern society, and even among those who do use it, it is often confused with the term contract. But there is a huge difference between the two, as well as certain similarities.

Among the similarities are that both involve agreement and conditions, or stipulated responsibilities.

To that extent, there are contractual characteristics to any covenant - and especially so in the secular world. But the main difference between a covenant and a contract is this:

A contract is generally a binding agreement based on promises made by two parties to mutually meet the stipulated expectations of the another, with the object of ensuring that each party gets something that he wants.

A covenant - and especially so one made with God - is a binding agreement made between two parties based on their promises to mutually meet certain stipulated expectations, as a result of which both parties are bound together as one.

That’s why God describes the Church’s relationship to Jesus in terms of marriage - because, in God’s eyes, marriage is a covenant and not a contract.

When a couple marry they don’t just enter into a contract, to carry out certain stipulated duties to one another’s mutual satisfaction, but covenant themselves together to live as one until death dissolves their covenant. Such an agreement is sometimes expressed in these terms…

Whatever is mine is yours, and whatever is yours is mine.

You don’t get married to someone in order to get something - you marry to get the someone. And that’s how it is with God.

When we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, we don’t enter into a contract with God, whereby the more we perform the more he rewards us, or the better we perform the more he loves us. We enter into covenant with him, whereby everything he has is now ours and all that we are is his.

There are no prenuptial agreements with God, because divorce is never on his agenda.

Once in Covenant with him, however, God has rights, he has entitlements, and he has a say.

And - in case you hadn’t noticed - so do we!

That’s why God hates divorce and why he loves faith, because in both Greek and Hebrew the words pistis and emunah, that we translate as ‘faith’, can equally mean ‘faithfulness’. So, when we read James’ famous words in James 2:14-20,we might fairly interpret them in this way…

My brothers, what is the gain if anyone says he is faithful, but he does not have works? Is the faithfulness able to save him?

But if a brother or a sister is naked and may be lacking in daily food, and any one of you say to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” but does not give them the things the body needs, what gain is it?

So also faithfulness, if it does not have works, is dead being by itself.

But someone will say, “You have faithfulness, and I have works. Show me your faithfulness apart from your works, and I will show you my faithfulness out of my works.

You believe that God is One. You do well; even the demons believe and shudder.

But are you willing to know, O vain man, that faithfulness apart from works is dead?

That’s why I often use the example of an adulterous husband who sleeps around with other women and has also a mistress, to illustrate the Biblical understanding of faith.

Such a man may be deluded enough to deceive himself that he is somehow still a faithful husband, but nobody else is fooled. So, how much do you suppose God is fooled by those who play fast and loose with him?

Such a husband might even argue, if you point out his infidelity (which means unfaithfulness), by insisting that he ‘believes in his marriage’, or he is convinced that because he wears the ring and has a certificate, his marriage is sound.

That’s much the same as someone playing fast and loose with God whilst insisting that their covenant is still sound, on the basis that he said the ‘sinner’s prayer’ forty years ago.

Well let me just tell you that the sinner’s prayer isn’t in the Bible - but Covenant is!

There are a whole lot of people out there who think they are saved but are not, because they were never taught about covenant with God, never entered into covenant with him, and do not live in anything like a covenant lifestyle.

There are even some who once did enter into covenant with God but have long since walked away from that relationship in what is tantamount to a spiritual divorce.

So, there’s no hope for them, then?

In many cases there may be, because where there’s life hope still remains. We learn this lesson from the Old Testament where God tells the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute called Gomer (Hosea 1:2-3).

They then not only live together but even have a son and a daughter, before one day Gomer walka out on Hosea, to resume her former profession (Hosea 2:2).

There is a tragic inevitability about what follows, as her dissolute lifestyle takes its toll until she ends up being sold as a slave. And some might say, ‘Serve her right’. But what does God tell Hosea to do then? - ‘Go to the market and gloat over the adulteress’s comeuppance’? - Not at all. Instead, God tells Hosea to buy Gomer back (redeem her) and take her again as his wife (Hosea 3:1-2).

The picture of course is of God and his people - but because of, it we know that even when a believer abandons his or her faith and divorces God, there is still a chance for reconciliation. If they will repent, God will show them mercy and will take them back.

But if they choose to remain divorced, so to speak, God will not force them to return against their will.

Having said that, Gomer’s example should not be carelessly as if every believer who falls into any sin whatsoever has walked away from their salvation. Evey one of us commits sin daily - whether by thought or by deed. But in so doing we do not immediately lose our salvation.

Indeed, it is impossible for any believer to lose their salvation, in the strictest sense, because a believer is one who is faithful - if all too fallible.

Yes, we make mistakes. Yes we sin (and usually quite often). But God is a merciful and faithful husband even when we are not as faithful we ought to be to him, because our relationship with God is not merely a contract based on our own performance (or works) but a love covenant cut between him and his Son Jesus Christ in whose Blood it is ratified - the Blood of the New Covenant.

That’s why Romans 8:3 tells us…

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.

What many miss when they read this passage is that the flesh in which God condemned sin was Jesus’ flesh and not ours. That why Paul makes such a big deal about Jesus coming in the likeness of sinful flesh. And, since Jesus had no sin, the sin which God condemned in his flesh was clearly ours. Indeed, we read that much in 2 Corinthians 5:21...

For he has made him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

God takes the New Covenant extremely seriously, even if we don't, and it is his will to be gracious towards us and to show us undeserved mercy and favour whenever we appropriate his grace by our faith in the finished work of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. When we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth that Jesus died in our place to redeem us from the curse of the law of sin and death, we enter into that covenant with him - just like a marriage - whereupon God’s own righteousness is imputed to us - because once we are in covenant relationship whatever is his becomes ours and whatever we have becomes his.

That is a covenant promise which God first made to the Jews but that he since extended to the Gentiles by grafting us into Israel by faith (Romans 11:17-22). So, whoever despises Israel or the Jews, despises the New Covenant and spits on their own salvation.

No, sin doesn’t break our covenant with God, but over time it can harden our hearts to where we reach a place where we eventually relinquish our faith and walk away from our covenant - as I said earlier, in a type of spiritual divorce, the only way back from which is total repentance.

But there is a fine balance here between warning people not to go that way and making them unnecessarily anxious that they may have committed the unpardonable sin, or deceiving them into thinking that grace is a licence to live any old how.

One reason for this is that worrying that we may have committed the unpardonable sin (Matthew 12:31) is a contradiction in terms, because no-one who has ever committed it has ever been the least worried about doing so.

That is because it is complete and utter apostasy, and a total relinquishing of one’s faith. Once you’ve committed the unpardonable sin, worrying about it is the last thing on your mind.

One of the most dramatic examples of apostasy is that of Dr Charles Bradley Templeton (1915-2001) who became a Christian in 1936 and went on to become a renowned evangelist.

In 1946, Templeton co-founded what became known as ‘Youth for Christ International’ and travelled the world with their first full-time evangelist - a young Christian by the name of Billy Graham. He later returned to work in Canada where at one time he was a regular broadcaster on the CBC television network.

By 1957, however, Templeton openly confessed to having doubts and admitted that he those doubts had led him to become an agnostic, and in 1995 his last book was published - ‘Farewell to God: My reasons for rejecting the Christian faith’.

So, is it easy to repent of the unpardonable sin? Sadly, I believe it is not, because unrepentance lies at its very heart.

1 John 5:16-17

If anyone sees his brother sin a sin not to death, he shall ask, and He shall give him life for those that do not sin to death. There is a sin to death, I do not say that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not to death.

This is the only place I can think of in Scripture where God actually says not to pray for a brother, so there is a point that an apostate can reach where even God loses patience with them. But I suspect that if you feel prompted to pray for someone who has gone down this road there may still be some faint ember of hope that God can fan.

Some would argue that Templeton was never really a Christian, but that doesn’t square with the words of Jesus.

Most Christians are familiar with ‘the Parable of the Sower’, which many also call ‘the Parable of Parables’, because of Jesus’ words in Mark 4:13, when asked by his disciples to explain it ...

And he said to them, “Do you not know this parable? And how will you know all parables?”

In other words, if you cannot understand this parable, you will never understand any.

That being said, let us now look at Jesus’ interpretation, in Luke 8:11-15...

And this is the parable: The seed is the Word of God.

And those by the roadside are those who hear, then the devil comes and takes away the Word from their heart, lest believing they may be saved.

And those on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the Word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a time, and in time of trial draw back.

And those falling in the thorn bushes, these are those hearing, but under cares and riches and pleasures of life, moving along, they are choked, and do not bear to maturity.

And those in the good ground, these are the ones who in a right and good heart, hearing the Word, they hold it and bear fruit in patience.

The two significant phrases here are in verses 12 and 13, where Jesus compares and contrasts two principles…

Firstly, those from whom the devil steals the Word straight away, ‘lest believing they may be saved’, thus equating faithfulness with salvation.

Secondly, he refers to those ‘who believe for a time…’.

Having thus established that those who believe are saved, when Jesus then speaks of those who ‘believed’, we may therefore presume that they had also been saved…

…but he then goes on to tell us that they did not stay that way.

However, if you are a believer who has committed sin, the Holy Spirit will convict you of your righteousness through your covenant with him (John 16:8), which in turn will cause a Godly sorrow to rise up that will motivate you to repent. And when you have done so, he will remind you that your sin is not just forgiven but is now forgotten (Jeremiah 31:34).

My assertion that the unpardonable sin is only unforgivable once we die in it, is demonstrated by the example of Jesus’ own followers.

The first category of follower in the parable were those who heard but did not understand the Word. They are like the crowd in John 6:60, who heard Jesus teach but could not receive his teaching…

Then many of his disciples having heard, they said, “This Word is hard; who is able to hear it?”

This is shortly followed by verse 66…

From this time many of his disciples went away into the things behind, and no longer walked with him.

The second category, however…

‘…are those who, when they hear, receive the Word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a time, and in time of trial draw back.

They remind me of the apostle Peter who walked with Jesus for three and stayed the course until he was tested in the Temple courtyard following Jesus’ arrest, when he denied his Master three times, and each time more vehemently than the last.

Firstly Peter was challenged by a young servant girl of the High priest, who kept the door to the Temple court, who recognised him as one of Jesus’ companions, whereupon he quickly denied it.

Then another servant woman said the same, but this time addressed her remarks to the crowd, whereupon Peter added an oath to his denial.

Lastly, as an increasingly hostile crowd gathered, a relative of the man whose ear Peter cut off in the Garden of Gethsemane recognised his Galilean accent, at which Peter, in his increasing panic, denied Jesus a third time, with cursing and swearing (Matthew 26:69-74; Mark 14:66-72; Luke 22:55-62; John 18:15-18, 25-27).

The third category…

‘…are those hearing, but under cares and riches and pleasures of life, moving along, they are choked, and do not bear to maturity.’

These remind me of the apostle Judas - although we often forget to think of him as that. However, unlike Peter, Judas suffered an altogether different fate for his betrayal of Christ, even though the two men’s sins were equally serious. What made the difference was not God’s willingness to forgive them, but their respective willingness to repent.

Then there was the final category…

‘…the ones who in a right and good heart, hearing the Word, they hold it and bear fruit in patience’.

These remind me of the apostle John, who not only never betrayed his Lord, but remained with him to the Cross, and to whom Jesus entrusted the care of his mother.

What separated these three groups was their grasp of their New Covenant relationship to God through Jesus Christ.

John fully appreciated his New Covenant right to rest in God’s grace and in Jesus’ love for him. Remember that it was he who rested on Jesus‘ bosom at the last Supper, and who on five occasions in his own Gospel referred to himself as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’.

Peter, was somewhat slower than John to understand his New Covenant standing with God, and so had a tendency to want to do things his own way, which led to his undoing when his faithfulness was tested on the night of Jesus’ trial. But he got it eventually.

Judas got a superficial glimpse of who Jesus was, and went along with his fellow apostles for a season, but was insufficiently rooted in his New Covenant relationship with Jesus to withstand temptation when it came, and unlike Peter he was never to recover from the experience of betraying his Master.

As for the crowd, they just didn’t get it at all. They saw the miracles, because the same guys who walked out on Jesus in John chapter 6, were the self-same individuals who were counted among the five thousand whom Jesus miraculously fed only the day before.

They had an appetite for bread and a hankering to be entertained by signs and wonders, but what they didn’t have was any tolerance for sound doctrine.

What we call the Ten Commandmentsactually formed the core of what we also call the Old Covenant, and just like any other solemn covenant, it was ratified in blood, as we find detailed in Exodus 24:4-8...

And Moses wrote all the Words of Yahweh. And he rose early in the morning and built an altar below the mountain, and twelve memorial pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel.

And he sent young men of the sons of Israel. And they offered up burnt offerings, and offered sacrifices of bulls, peace offerings to Yahweh.

And Moses took half of the blood, and he put it in basins. And he sprinkled half of the blood on the altar.

And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the ears of the people. And they said, “We will do all that Yahweh has spoken, and we will hear.”

And Moses took the blood and sprinkled on the people, and said, “Behold, the blood of the covenant which Yahweh has cut with you concerning these words.”

Obviously, when this occurred the covenant thus enacted was brand spanking new, and only later became known as the Old Covenant, when it was superseded by the one that now pertains.

That happened as described in Hebrews 8:6-12...

But now he has gotten a more excellent ministry, also by so much as he is a Mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.

For if that first was faultless, place would not have been sought for a second. For finding fault, he said to them, “Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and I will make an end on the house of Israel and on the house of Judah; a new covenant shall be, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day of my taking hold of their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in my covenant, and I did not regard them, says the Lord.

Because this is the covenant which I will covenant with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord, giving my Laws into their mind, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And they shall no more teach each one their neighbour, and each one his brother, saying, Know the Lord; because all shall know me, from the least of them to their great ones. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousnesses, and I will not at all remember their sins and their lawless deeds.

What the advocates of license have never understood is that God’s standards never changed, and the New Covenant is not an excuse to sin. It is simply a different way of imputing God’s righteousness to us.

Right from the outset, God knew that Israel could not keep his Law, and if God had simply left it like that, he would have had to enact its provisions and wiped them all out as transgressors.

Instead, he gave them the sacrificial system as a typological depiction of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. Make no mistake, the Israelites understood that God’s mercy was contingent upon their sine being covered by the shedding of blood and the death of an innocent creature in substitution for their guilt.

The idea of atonement was far from foreign to them. It’s just that they thought that what they had was the real deal, most of them didn‘t realise that their system was merely a shadow of a fulfilment yet to come.

But also be very clear that the Israelites were no fools, and understood all too well that their forgiveness was down to God’s grace and not something they could earn - because they understood the concept of covenant.

As I said earlier, what the Church has done to a very large extent, is to merchandise the Gospel, by compartmentalising the new Covenant into digestible blessing-bytes.

This has been an enormous mistake which has resulted in our understanding of Covenant being diminished by displacing it with a weird kind of blessing theology, in which everything from salvation to prosperity are purchasable commodities, instead of covenant rights.

To call this merchandising process perverse hardly does it justice because has even managed to turn faith into works.

Like tithes and offerings, for example, which under the New Covenant are supposed to be our thankful response to God’s goodness, but have more often been repackaged as something we give to God on a quid pro quo basis. In other words, ‘If you tithe you will be blessed’.

Rubbish! - Christians are asked to give their tithes and offerings out of a heart of generosity and thanksgiving - in the realisation that they are already blessed by being in New Covenant relationship with God.

Even salvation has been packaged - almost as an abstract commodity - yet that is absolutely not the Biblical paradigm. No wonder so many people fear that they can ‘lose it’, when they don‘t realise what they have or how they ‘got it’.

When I go to the newsagent and buy a paper, I don’t expect the shopkeeper to come home with me. I buy the paper, walk away with it and leave, because the newspaper is the commodity I came for, and the thing that I purchased.

But that’s not how Covenant blessing works. We don’t just receive salvation from the hand of Jesus! Jesus IS our salvation.

The commodity heresy is like saying we go to Church, sign the register, put on a ring and then walk away married - but without our husband or wife.

Idiocy!

You can go through the whole rigmarole of a big fancy wedding, with the dress, the cake, the church, the limousines and a cast of thousands…

…But if no intimacy occurs on the wedding night, then the whole thing can be annulled as a sham.

Likewise, we do not go to God to ‘collect’ our salvation and take it home in a box. We go to God in repentance, and Jesus comes to dwell with us.

John 17:3

And this is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

That’s Covenant! And that’s why we never have to strive for God’s blessing, or crawl on our belly for his forgiveness. Because everything he has is ours for the asking - by covenant right.

We are not saved because we are good enough. We are saved because God is good.

We are not blessed because we deserve to be. We are blessed because God is good…

…And because we are in covenant relationship with him.

But won’t some people take advantage of it?

Well, maybe some immature believers will play around with it to begin with, but remember what Jesus said about them in Luke 8:14?

And those falling in the thorn bushes, these are those hearing, but under cares and riches and pleasures of life, moving along, they are choked, and do not bear to maturity.

That is why Jesus never commanded his Church to go out and make ‘converts’, because a convert left to his own devices will almost certainly never mature. Jesus commanded that they go out and make ‘disciples’ (Matthew 28:19), so that those who become converts might mature, and not fall away for lack of sound teaching - like Judas Iscariot and Charles Templeton.

But then, some might ask, ‘Didn’t Jesus teach Judas properly?’

Yes, he did. But Jesus was not responsible for Judas refusing to listen. Nor had he finished teaching his disciples when he left. Had Judas chosen to stay around he could have been restored and gone on to learn more.

John 14:26

But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said to you.

John 16:7, 12

But I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you…I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

An aspect of obedience that is sorely missed by the liberal church is that God’s trust has to be earned.

Those words may come as a shock to many who have been taught that God’s love is unconditional, that salvation is a free gift, and that Grace is God’s unmerited, unearned and undeserved favour.

And I agree! - Those statements are totally true, but please note that I did not say that God’s love is conditional, nor that we can pay for our salvation, nor do we ever deserve God’s grace.

What I said was that we have to earn God’s trust, and that is not something I made up, but a principle that is clearly revealed in Luke 16:10-12...

He who is faithful in the least is also faithful in much. And he who is unjust in the least is also unjust in much.

Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust the true riches to you?

And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who shall give you that which is your own?

As we touched on earlier, the whole issue of giving (in terms of tithes and offerings) is widely mistaught due to the Church’s lack of understanding of the concept of Covenant.

By and large giving is taught in performance-based Old Covenant terms: Namely, that God blesses us when we tithe or give offerings.

Let me shock you - that is not true!

Under the New Covenant we are already blessed by virtue of our Covenant relationship with our Father, so God does not actually bless us if we give - although it can appear that way if we don't understand the Covenant dynamic that is involved.

What actually happens when we give to God, is that we demonstrate our faith in its highest form - as thanksgiving - whereby we appropriate the blessing that God has already made freely available.

Contrary to what is widely taught, therefore, God does not open the windows of heaven over us when we give, because under the New Covenant those widows are perpetually open above us anyway, because of our Covenant relationship with God our Father. What hinders God's blessing from reaching us much of the time is not his unwillingness to pour out his blessing, but our inability to receive it because of the umbrella we create by our unbelief.

So, would I discourage believers from giving tithes and offerings?

Not at all. But I would very much discourage ministers from encouraging Christians to give for the wrong reasons.

Mammon is often translated here as wealth or riches, but actually derives from an Aramaic root meaning trust or confidence, therefore, Jesus is indulging in a rabbinical play on words here, warning against putting our trust in that which God has entrusted to us.

How this relates to Judas is something God showed me some years ago. Why do you suppose Jesus put Judas in charge of his ministry’s moneybag - especially when he was fully aware that Judas was a thief? (John 12:6)

Simple. Jesus did so because he placed the disciple he least trusted, in charge of that which he least valued.

From the day Jesus first chose Judas to be one of his twelve apostles, he knew that Judas would ultimately betray him. So Jesus knew that Judas was not to be trusted with anything of value, and that is why he gave Judas charge of the money.

And so it is with any disciple, that God watches carefully how they mature before investing his trust in them. And in that verse we read, the word trust is the Greek pisteuó - the verb of pistis, which we discussed earlier as meaning faithfulness.

What actually happens when we give to God is almost a kind of logical feedback that works in every area, and goes something like this:

We give thanks to God as we respond to his grace, because we believe he has blessed us. Therefore, our thanks are a demonstration of our belief that we have been blessed.

That’s called faith, both in the sense of faithfulness and of believing, and it is that faith which appropriates God’s blessing accordingly. If you don’t believe me, then consider what Jesus had to say about it…

Matthew 9:21-23

…for she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.

Matthew 9:28-29

And coming into the house, the blind ones came near to him. And Jesus says to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” And they said to him, “Yes, Lord.” Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith let it be to you.”

Matthew 15:28

Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Mark 2:5

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Mark 10:52

And Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.

Luke 5:20

And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

Luke 7:50

And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Luke 17:19

And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”

Luke 18:42

And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.”

The way these scriptures are usually taught is that Jesus was so impressed by their belief that he responded to it by blessing them, whereas, what actually happened was that Jesus assured them that their faith had succeeded in appropriating God’s grace.

Look again carefully, and you won’t see any instance of Jesus saying, “Because you had faith, I have made you well.”

To impress this point further, here is the same principle operating in reverse…

Mark 6:4-6

But Jesus said unto them, “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.” And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.

Jesus ability to perform miracles was contingent upon two things:

The power of the Holy Spirit operating through him by God’s grace; and the faith through which each individual concerned could appropriate that power which God’s grace had already provided. In other words, God’s power did not suddenly manifest in response to their faith, but their faith responded by tapping into what God had already made available by his grace.

In essence, the underlying cause of God’s grace being available to them in the first place was the existence of their Covenant relationship with God by virtue of their belief in Jesus. Miracles were not effected by the magnitude of their faith, but by the magnitude of the God in whom that faith was placed.

Returning to Judas Iscariot for just a moment, we might reasonably be prompted to ask why Jesus chose him as an apostle when he knew perfectly well what he was like.

There are a number of answers to that, because we must remember the great care with which Jesus chose all of his disciples, after consulting with his father about it for an entire night (Luke 6:12-13).

So, Judas was God’s choice, for one thing because he needed someone to betray his Son unto death, and Judas was deemed untrustworthy enough for the job.

But I suspect that another reason may well have been that, foreseeing the widespread error of ‘Once-saved-always-saved’ that would later emerge, God also decided to make Judas an example of why it simply isn’t true.

Of all the twelve apostles, there were two immediately to Jesus’ left and right at the Last Supper - John and Judas.

John was at Jesus’ right hand - the hand of grace, while Judas was on his left, the hand of judgement.

We can know that because diners reclined in Jesus’ day - lying on one their left side in order to eat with their right hand. That meant that John had to be on Jesus right in order to rest on his breast (John 13:23), while Judas had to be behind him in order for Jesus to place the dipped morsel into Judas’ mouth (John 13:24).

Twice in Mark chapter 7 Jesus challenged the religious leaders for substituting their own tradition for the Word of God. The first time was in verses 6-9...

…“Well did Isaiah prophesy concerning you, hypocrites; as it has been written: ‘This people honours me with the lips, but their heart is far away from me; and in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ For forsaking the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men: immersings of utensils and cups, and many other such like things you do.”

And he said to them, “Well do you to set aside the commandment of God so that you may keep your tradition.”

The second instance is in verse 13...

“…making the Word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have delivered. And you do many such things.”

And sometimes we can look around the Church and ask if anything has changed, because there seems not only to be an irrepressible appetite for religious tradition that is not to be found in Scripture, but an equal desire among the merchandisers of the Gospel to satisfy that appetite with whatever doctrines the tithe-paying believer is willing to pay for.

Thus there are countless churches today where the ministers seem afraid to tell their New Covenant flock that they don’t have to tithe, or that God won't curse them if they choose not to. There are countless others that seem happy to merchandise salvation and spiritual gifts as commodities that can be bought or earned - and, by a convenient coincidence, they just happen to know how that can be done.

But while it is regrettable that such error exists in the Body of Christ, it is little wonder when such a fundamental of the faith as our consciousness of our New Covenant relationship with our Father has either been drastically downplayed or completely disregarded in many churches.

As a result whole megachurches have been built around whatever word most appeals to the demographic proclivities of their target clientele (especially tithe-paying audiences) rather than teaching what is true according to the Word of God.

There is no sinner’s prayer: There is only true repentance and faith.

Eternal life is not a commodity: Eternal life is a relationship with God.

Grace is not a concept: Grace is part of who God is.

Obedience is not legalism: Obedience is what makes a disciple a disciple, and not just an unstable convert.

Throughout, the key to understanding all of these things - and more - is our understanding of our Covenant relationship with our Father, through his Son, Jesus Christ.

Because our Covenant with God is not a contract by which we may somehow mystically obtain what God has: Our Covenant with God is based on his concrete promise to be faithful to those who would be faithful to him. And that promise is so much more than just to share with us what he has: It is his promise that he will share with us all that he is.