The New Covenant Law and the Law of Christ -- By: Femi Adeyemi
Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 163:652 (Oct 2006)
Article: The New Covenant Law and the Law of Christ
Author: Femi Adeyemi
BSac 163:652 (October-December 2006) p. 438
The New Covenant Law and the Law of Christ
Feִmi Adeyeִmi is a Visiting Lecturer at the ECWA (Evangelical Church of West Africa) Theological Seminary, Igbaja, Nigeria.
This is the second article in a three-part series “The Identity of the New Covenant ‘Law.’ ”
The first article in this three-part series noted that the New Covenant, promised in Jeremiah 31:31–34, will provide numerous blessings for Israel when the nation is in the land and under the millennial reign of Jesus Christ. One of these blessings is the inner appropriation of God’s “law.” “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it” (v. 33).1 Many scholars say this law refers to the Mosaic Law reinstated with Israel, whereas others say the New Covenant Law is a “renewed” form of the Mosaic Covenant. However, several arguments were given to show that these two “laws” are not the same.2
What then is the law of which Jeremiah wrote? This writer proposes that it is to be identified with “the law of Christ,” which Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 9:21 and Galatians 6:2.
On several other occasions the apostle Paul wrote about the New Covenant, which he affirmed was established at the Cross, with its spiritual benefits being applied to believers in the church age. In 2 Corinthians 3:3 he wrote that believers are “a letter of Christ. .. written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”3
BSac 163:652 (October-December 2006) p. 439
This echoes Jeremiah 31:33, where God promised that He will write His Law on human hearts. Then in 2 Corinthians 3:6 Paul stated that he and other believers “are servants of a new covenant, not of the letter [the Mosaic Law] but of the Spirit,” for the former kills, “but the Spirit gives life.”
This alludes to Ezekiel 36:27, another New Covenant text. Furthermore in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 Paul portrayed believers, both Jews and Gentiles, as N...
Click here to subscribe