The Life and Ministry of Christ is in His Abillity, Not Ours

Well, good morning. Glad you guys could make it. I'm glad you did make it. It would be pretty lonesome here if you didn't. Well, today I get to complete this little section. Then Mike's going to take over next week. But it's actually a pretty interesting section. Actually, I spent some time talking with Mike about it, back and forth, so this is a good lesson. Okay, so this part of the 4-6 is the part I'm going to talk about.

We're going to review a little bit in verses 1-3, but this is Christ's life and ministry is His ability, not ours. and I borrowed that from Hal. Okay, so I'm going to use Hal's outline here. Basically, we started off back in Chapter 2 with the fact of we're triumphant in Christ who always leads us into victory. And last week we talked about being epistles of Christ. We're going to review that a little bit. And now this week we're going to talk about his sufficiency, not ours. Then Mike's going to pick up in this whole comparison of the law of Moses and then the new covenant we have in Christ. He's going to talk about that. Okay, so reviewing last week, and this is just amazing verses.

You are our letter or you continuously are our letter. You don't cease to be a letter of Christ. Having been written in our hearts, And this having been written is the idea to, it's in the passive, perfect passive, so it basically can be rendered, it was written in the past and remains written in the present, permanently in our hearts. You are a letter which has been permanently written and engraved in our hearts.

I like to use we sometimes because I'll study the word out and then he'll kind of, he tries to pick up the original language a lot so you can see he picks up the idea of permanency, permanently engraved in our hearts, being known and being read by all men. So they're both in the present tense. So men are continuously looking at us and they know us and they read us and with no exceptions.

So this leads to a thought I've had. This is a story I've told on and off over the years. I had a roommate at my work and actually I knew him before I met the Lord and then after I met the Lord. So there was a change from a time period before I knew the Lord and then I knew the Lord. After I knew the Lord, he kind of recognized there was a change over time, which was an exciting thing.

It was good. It was good. I wasn't trying to do anything, but it was just... So it kind of confused him, and so we'd have discussions, and he would always defend himself and this and that. He says, well, you know, I've been to church, and they're talking right at me. They're just talking right to me. And I kind of chuckled and thought, well, that's what it's all about, where the Lord uses his word to talk to you.

But he noticed I had changed and he, it was funny, he didn't like the change. He didn't like the change that happened to me. He didn't really like it. And that was kind of, it hurt a little bit, but he didn't like it. I don't want to become like you, which is kind of, So anyway, so I thought, well, and that's, men are reading you, they're seeing what you're about. They may like it, they may be encouraged or comfortable, or they may push away and say, no, I don't want that.

I think Mike's talked about that when he became a believer. He lost some friends along the way. So anyway, so that's what happens. That's what being a letter of Christ is about. But what's neat is it goes on, verse three kind of explains even more about that, being manifest, that you are a letter of Christ. So Paul, I'm just going to add some more details about that. What happens, he's talking, firstly, he's talking about the Corinthian believers, that they were, that his ministry, he could see in their hearts, it was written in their hearts, and this applies to all believers as well.

So the idea of being manifest is this cool word. It's openly shown, or actually I saw a little pictorial of that. I don't have it, but they have like a can, and you remove the lid, you take the lid off. Being manifested is to reveal or to openly show, which I thought was a cool way of looking at that. So to be manifest is to be revealed or made known one's true character. And for the believer, that's Christ's character. And then how Christ is manifesting His glory through you, you're not trying to imitate Him. The fact that we know that we are a letter doesn't mean that we need to to say, well, I gotta show my letter today, or maybe my letter isn't too good, I'm gonna hide it today. No, our letter is just who we are. We act by faith in the Christian life.

So you're being manifested, you are, and once again, this is a permanent state. It doesn't change over time. And then it goes on, a letter of Christ. The word is epistle, written, a written message. The letter identifies the subject you, it's identifying you as an epistle of Christ. As a letter you give a message, spoken or unspoken to those who read us. The content of the message is Christ and His glory.

And again, Weiss kind of sums this up, he picks out the cool verb tenses, you are those who are openly shown to be a letter which exhibits Christ. So that's a brief, I'm not going to go, the last part is really cool here, how it's written in your heart.

And it has this idea of tablets of stone and tablets of the human heart. And we're going to kind of see that's a reference to the Old Testament about the tablets that were brought down by Moses versus the tablets of the human heart. God wrote in the Old Testament on tablets of stone. Now he writes on tablets of the human heart.

Quite a contrast between Israel and the church. Okay, so today's verses, it says, such confidence we have toward Christ. such confidence we have through Christ toward God, not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. So a really interesting verse, especially verse six is just really, I spent a lot of my time on verse six.

Lots of time, and it's one that's been talked about on and off. Anyway, let's just move on here. So we start off with this idea of confidence. So we have, this is something we continually have, confidence, we're persuaded, we're assured, or trust. And there's kind of a parallel verse in Ephesians about confidence. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have, we have boldness is one thing, but we have confident access through faith in Him. So the confidence that Paul is talking about here, as a letter of Christ we can have confidence. God is going to take the message of our lives and what we talk about, who we proclaim, He's going to use that for His purposes. and it's two modifiers here, through Christ, this confidence is through our living union with Christ, and then secondly, toward God, we can have confidence that we can approach, there's a Hebrew, we approach the throne of grace because we're in Christ. So our confidence is surely founded upon our Savior.

So he goes on with this idea and talks about, this is something he talked about back in the last part of chapter two, about not being adequate. Not that we are adequate in ourselves, is the first phrase. So he starts off with a negative, what follows will be the negative of this. It will say, we are, this is the state which we are in, we're not adequate, meaning sufficient or competent. so and the subject modifies is modified by the adequate in ourselves and again we have the this is a verse from chapter 2 to the to the one the aroma of death to death to the other an aroma of life to life and who is adequate for these things we're not adequate to be to have this aroma are we adequate to adequate to be an epistle of Christ the Lord in us is adequate but we're not adequate within ourselves and that's kind of the contrast we see here to consider anything that's coming from ourselves.

We don't contribute to becoming letters of Christ, and it's not out from ourselves as a source, but it's out from God, out from His adequacy. We are letters of Christ by the Holy Spirit written, writing the person of Christ in our hearts. This is out from God as a source. And so we have this comparison, out from ourselves or out from God. And the Christian life is out from God, not ourselves.

Okay, so now we move into the interesting verse. Let me just read the verse first and I'll go back to the first phrase. Who has also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.

So we start out, It is God who also, here again, he knows all these things. God is performing these actions in the believer's life. He's providing this aroma through our lives. He's providing this letter through our lives. And now he's gonna talk about this aspect of making us adequate. It's gonna be about being adequate ministers for Christ. And again, to make sufficient, to render fit. You know, it's an Aristotelian past point fact, it happened at a point in time and God performed the action to every believer.

And here's kind of a parallel verse in Colossians 1.12, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified, it's the same word, adequate there, has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. So in this case we saw actually in the previous verse we saw we're not adequate in ourselves. So we have this word adequate three times in two verses basically. We're not adequate within ourselves, we're not adequate, but we're adequate in God. And he's made us adequate with a purpose here. And this is a purpose.

As servants or ministers of the new covenant. So now we're gonna talk about this word servant is interesting. So the Amplified Bible has it as ministers and dispensers of a new covenant of salvation through Christ. You know, in studying this, I like to look at other translations. I use Amplified a lot, because besides the Weiss translation, it brings out other aspects. So it tries to help us understand what this new covenant is about. We're going to talk a lot about that here in a bit, but this kind of got me started thinking.

So basically, the word servant or ministers is diakonos with the word deacon. But in this case, it's not used so much as the function of a deacon. It's used more of the idea of being a servant, servant of Christ in the work of preaching and teaching the gospel. So that's how the minister is being used here.

So Christ is ministering through us a new covenant. And in 3.5, this is back in chapter 1, 3.5, it says, remember when he said, then what then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants are ministers through you who believe. So it points out that the job of the minister is basically the opportunity to preach Christ.

But here we're gonna talk about kind of an aspect which we maybe haven't thought about before. So let's look at this, as servants or ministers of a new covenant. So the question is, what's this new covenant about? So Merriman, he has the idea here is that Paul now takes this word, it's really the word for covenant, and applies it to his ministry and to all true ministers. So what's gonna be talked about here is a ministry we probably didn't realize that we were involved in, ministering a new covenant. So what's a covenant?

Well, to answer that question, I had to go back 20 years. And I went back to some charts that my name's on, but I contributed very little to. I had the privilege when I first got here in 2002 to teach with Hal. And so he put my name on the charts, but I didn't add very much to it. I was there in the class, and I maybe asked a question or two. So I'm going to depend heavily upon these. And actually, I found I never actually understood the charts, the confession.

But I think I have a better understanding now, 20 years later. And actually, it's a good understanding, I think, and it helps because we have discussions about covenants and grace, and a covenant seems to go against the idea of grace. It seems to be counter to that.

Why does a church need a covenant? I think these charts are going to hopefully answer that question. Why this verse? Why does it say that we're made ministers or servants of a new covenant? Why does it say that? So here's one, this is the start of Hal's charts here. So what's a covenant?

So you have two parties in the covenant. And there's something between these two parties. We typically think of illustration issues like in real estate. You know, you got party one, party two. Party one's a seller, party two's a buyer. And they make an agreement to buy a house. Well, that's one aspect of it. But there's also other aspects with other names. And it's also the idea of binding these two parties together. And so let's look at some definitions here. definition.

A covenant, diakēphē, and just as a side point, diakēphē is a word that's used, as best I could tell, every time you see the word covenant, that's a word that's used, so it's not like sometimes it uses a different word. Scripture uses the same original word. And the idea of diakēphē is to place between two parties so as to bind them together, like in marriage.

So when you get that idea involved, you know, an agreement's one thing, but binding two people together is another thought. And I think we're going to see that doesn't, the fact that we're going to see we're bound to the Lord Jesus doesn't doesn't, it only amplifies God's grace, it doesn't take away from God's grace. And we see there's two types of covenants, two types of duration, conditional, unconditional, temporal, and eternal.

So I'm going to expand on that a little bit in the next chart. So just definition, breaking the word down, diakethe, di is the idea that it means between two, and The last part of the word is to put or place. So what is put or place between these two parties? There are three words that I found that are kind of focused in scripture.

There's an agreement, there's a promise, and there's a binder. We're going to look at all three. What I'm doing here, I'm trying to build a case that Don't get too hung up on the word covenant, because our first thought is, well that's counter to grace. Israel needed covenants, but why does the church need covenants? But if you think about the fact that God has declared, God has promised something, and He has established a binding relationship, I think that fits well with grace.

Anyway, keep going here. So the types again, we talked about this before. Conditional. Conditional is where, an example of that would be like, remember in the Old Testament, He said, if Israel kept God's law, they would receive blessing, right? If they disobeyed God's law, they were cursed. And that's the curse and the blessings in the Old Testament. Well, that was a conditional covenant. Unconditional is like the example of the Abrahamic covenant where he says, you know, I'm going to unilaterally bless Israel. They're going to have a land and a seed and a blessing. Irrespective, they have no responsibility. I, God, love them. I'm going to make them a nation for my purposes. So that's unconditional.

And we're going to see, actually, if you look at the list of covenants in the Old and New Testament, the majority are unconditional. and then duration, there's two types, temporal again, it's limited duration, and that's one that was used actually with the Abrahamic covenant, with the Mosaic covenant, because there's a covenant that's gonna replace that, and we'll see that shortly. Then there are eternal covenants, and we'll see that too. So now the next three charts, I'm gonna talk about the Eternal Covenant, then there's Israel's New Covenant, and then I'm going to talk about the Church's New Covenant. Those three covenants I'm going to talk about.

But before that, we need a Hal picture. So here we go. Hal liked to put as much, his goal was to put as much on one chart as you possibly could do. And I think he achieved it with this chart. Well, I'm gonna try to go through it. I've left actually one part out for purposes of, well, see if you, you'll probably notice it here as we start talking.

Well, the basis of all covenants stems from the eternal covenant. We're gonna talk about that in the next chart. That underpins everything. That's where Christ made an agreement with the Father that he would lay down his life and the Father agreed he would take it up again. We're gonna talk about that shortly. Then on top of that, on the left-hand side of that vertical column there is the Abrahamic covenant.

And then we have the Palestinian Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, and the New Covenant, which is only Israel. Israel has a New Covenant, but it's only for Israel. And that's where I think a lot of people historically, they want to take that New Covenant, and they want to say that verse we're just talking about here right now, they say that's what he's talking about. He's talking about Israel's New Covenant, and they apply it to the church. Well, no, you can't do that, because Israel's covenant talks directly to the nation of Israel. And then we have the Mosaic covenant, which we're going to refer to on and off, and it talks a lot about that in Hebrews.

So now, what I left off the chart was this, the church's new covenant. And I propose we change it to the church's binding agreement with his Savior. Anyway, and what we find out, this is really cool, it's too bad that the lock words aren't here. Because I've had a discussion with Joanne, she said, Roger, you do the Lord's Table a lot, it says in there, about the new covenant. What's it talking about, this covenant in the Lord's table? Well, we're going to see that this new covenant is intimately related to the Lord's table. In fact, we're to remember this new covenant in the Lord's table, and it says that in the verse. We'll see that shortly.

So we see here's all the covenants for Israel, and underpinning. So the church really, and the other part of this is that Covenants, by the fact that we're beneficiaries of a covenant, we're beneficiaries of the eternal covenant, and we're beneficiaries of the new covenant too. We don't have to do a thing. God has done it to bless us. So let's see that. So let's start out here with the eternal covenant. So in the eternal covenant, and let me just read the verse that, The verse that is quoted here is Hebrews 13, 20. I'll read the verse and then we'll see kind of the diagram of the verse here that Hal made.

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord. So our brother Hal broke this down to kind of show the two parties, God the son on the left there, the great shepherd, and God the father on the right, the God of peace, they make an agreement.

So the son said, through the blood, he agrees to shed his blood for the sins of the world. And the father, the God of peace, agrees to raise him up again. So you see the phrase in the verse, through the blood and brought up again from the dead, our Lord Jesus. So the son agrees to lay his life down, the father agrees to raise him up again. So basically, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. To pay for the sins of the world, Christ had to shed his blood. That's Christ's part. And the Father's part was to raise him up again. Without resurrection, we would still be in our sins. It's proof that God is satisfied with Christ's work.

So there's an example, the eternal covenant, which applies to all men for all time of an agreement, a covenant agreement between the Father and the Son. And we're only the beneficiaries, we had nothing to do with that. And that happened before we showed up on the planet.

Okay, now let's look at Israel's new covenant. So in this case, God has promised something to the nation of Israel. And I'm not gonna read Jeremiah 31, but if you read that, you would see that it's gonna happen during the Millennial Kingdom. It's gonna be in Palestine. This is the Millennial Kingdom. Christ is ruling and reigning on David's throne.

And this promise is made. Here's some of the aspects of the promise that he makes to Israel. God will write the law of the kingdom in their hearts. The Holy Spirit will indwell them. Israel will receive the earthly, physical blessings. It's unconditional. It's eternal. But it starts during the Millennial Kingdom. OK? So now, let's go on to the crux of the discussion.

The New Covenant, if you look carefully, all the verses that talk about the New Covenant, except for the one today, all talk about the Lord's Table, or all are mentioned about the Lord's Table. So the two parties involved in the Church's New Covenant are the Lord Jesus and believers, and it's best to look at this as a binder, and I'll show you why now.

Okay, so if you look at the word, let me just read the passage, I'm going to read it next week when I do the Lord's Table. So when I read the Lord's Table I come down to the part about the cup. It says, In the same way he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is a new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

So the phrase, this cup is a new covenant in my blood. So that tells us the cup, the cup represents Christ's blood on the cross of the eternal covenant. So what we begin to realize, he's talking about a relationship that we already know, we already believe, our binding relationship with our Savior. And he's talking about his blood. The new covenant is the appropriation of the cup of the eternal covenant to every believer.

We appropriate what Christ laid his life down and we, by faith, we appropriate that. He's not asking us to do it again. He's just asking us to believe it, that he did that. And he's asking us at the Lord's table to remember that. The cup is Christ's blood or death. It binds you positionally to Christ's death. You grow conditionally and conforming to his death. it binds you to Christ's resurrection life. And all these things, if I didn't even talk about this particular verse, we all would say amen to all these things. We see because of Christ's blood, that was our access, that's how he accomplished our salvation through his blood. What he's talking about here in this covenant is a fact to remember that. So some key points, and Hal does get a bit busy. I have two charts of key points, so. Hal didn't lack in key points. And he repeats a few too along the way.

So how did this covenant happen? And it all links, it all is connected to the remembrance of the Lord's table. So Paul, you know, when he talked about the Lord's table, he says, you know, I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you. And the night he was betrayed, he took bread. So that's verse 23 there. He received it directly from the Lord. It was personally given to Paul by Christ.

It was totally separate and distinct from Israel's covenant. It's all about the Lord's table, all connected to the Lord's table. The church's new covenant was not previously revealed. And the definitions, he kind of repeats, this is a little repetition here, he repeats about the fact that the definition of a covenant, it's a place in between, it's a binder, he's binding us together through his blood. And I like this, you can think of this, the cup is the new covenant. the cup is a new, if you don't leave this place anything else, the cup that we remember, that the cup is a new covenant. That's what he's talking about.

The essence of the covenant, the cup represents Christ's blood and death which is part of the eternal covenant. He died and shed his blood on the cross for our sins as our substitute and unto our sins, unto our sin nature as our representative. Okay, so we got more, a few more things. Essence of the covenant. The cup is a cup of blessing. We see that because it procures for us the righteous life. So we're speaking about His blood certainly. The new covenant is appropriation of the cup of the eternal covenant to every believer. The cup, Christ's blood, binds you positionally to Christ's death. Some repetition here. It's a type of covenant, it's an unconditional covenant of eternal duration. And the Lord's Table is remembrance of that new covenant.

So that was an aspect, that's why Joanne asked me that question, because I rarely talked about that, I didn't understand it. I think I feel better about, as we remember the Lord's Table, we're remembering this binding relationship we have through His blood.

Okay, so let's finish up the verse. So it says that we're ministers. So amazingly, it says this is what we're ministering, it says, who also made adequate as servants or ministers of a new covenant. And it's gonna give us a, it's gonna say don't do this, but do this, it says. So Paul tells us the ministry of this new covenant will be as follows. It will not be of a letter, of the law, The law here speaks of the old covenant given at Mount Sinai, but of the Spirit.

A couple of verses here, Romans 7.6, but we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit, not in oldness of the letter.

And then in Romans 8.2, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the sin of law and death. So we see that this contrast, it's not from the law, it's through grace through the spirit.

And then the second part of that is kind of a realization of what the law can do. You know, Paul spent an awful long time talking about, in Galatians and other places, about the effect of the law, how detrimental it is. So this just kind of confirms it. It says, for the letter of the law kills. The letter of the law actually condemns us. If you think about it, Paul says that in this verse in Romans 7, he says, but when the commandment came, the law, sin became alive and I died. So the law shows us that we're a sinner and it shows us that we can't keep the law.

It's impossible. The Mosaic law never gave life. Chafer and McGee, I was just thinking about this, I read his little entry on this and he pointed out he'd have a challenge. He said, well the story basically is that since we cannot, the Mosaic Law does not give life, there's no way we can attain eternal life by the Mosaic Law. The law ministers death, according to Chafer, which I agree with.

But the Spirit gives, in the present tense, gives life, continually gives life. John 6 says, 63a, it is the Spirit who gives life. And then Romans 8.11 says, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal body through His Spirit who dwells in you. The Spirit ministers life, Christ's life. So Chaffer has this thing where the law is ministering death because it condemns us and we see we're sinners, but the Spirit is ministering life through our Savior, that contrast.

All right, so I actually, for those of you who are keeping count of final thoughts, And if you don't, the reason I, actually Ryan was here last week and he says, Dad, why did you talk about final thoughts? Why'd you make a big deal about your chart and final thoughts? I said, well, the week before, when you weren't here, I had like seven final thought charts. So I said, that was the reason why I mentioned this. Well, today I only have two final thought charts.

And actually what I tried to do here was I said, okay, Thank you, Lord, for our brother Hal. Thank you that he showed us this thing about the New Covenant. But is he a lone wolf? Is he the only one on the planet that ever saw this before? And he was not. So I found that Chafer actually talked about this, not quite in the depth that he talked about it, but at least to give maybe a benchmark.

So here's Chafer's kind of take on the New Covenant. He says, there remains to be recognized a heavenly covenant for heavenly people. And it was in the section he was discussing about 2 Corinthians 3.6, which also is styled like the preceding one for Israel's new covenant. So it's a heavenly covenant for heavenly people. I like that. It is made in the blood of Christ. And what does he do? He refers to a Lord's Table passage. That's a Mark passage that talks about the Lord's Table. So that's good.

And continues in effect through the ages, whereas the New Covenant made with Israel happens to be future in its application in the Millennial Kingdom. To suppose that these two covenants, one for Israel and one for the church, are the same is to assume that there is a latitude of common interest between God's purposes for Israel and His purposes for the church. So that's one of the things that is cleared up when rightly dividing the word.

If you see that this new covenant for the church is not Israel's covenant, that's just key. And he's trying to do that in these words here. Okay, chart two, Israel's covenant, however, is new only because it replaces the Mosaic covenant. And here's, this is a statement, somebody explain this to me, it's terrible, I'm going to ask you to explain it, bullet point here.

The church's covenant is new because it introduces that which is God's mysterious and unrelated purposes. I'm still scratching my head on that one. I left it in only because I didn't know what else to do with it. I could have left it out, I guess. But it is amazing that we think about what Christ accomplished for it. Most people are blown away by the fact that God would die on their behalf.

Anyway, Israel's new covenant rests specifically on the sovereign I will of Jehovah. The new covenant for the church is made in Christ's blood. So the cup is the covenant. The cup represents the Lord Jesus. That's what he's talking about that binds us with our Savior. And I think it ties in, it helped me, hopefully this wasn't too much over the top and too wordy and too long, but I think it helps and that's what Paul's talking about ministering. He's talking about the ministry that the that he's involved in, the ministry that all believers have. We're ministering, if you think, we're ministering Christ's blood and our connection to it, our binding relationship to Christ's blood. Okay, let's close. We thank you, Father, so much for this time. Father, thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior. In Christ's name, amen.