The Covenant Is Ours

Greetings, sons and daughters, in the name of the Lord who loved us, in peace. [a]

God’s righteous acts toward you are great and generous, and I am glad past all measure over your blessed and honored spirits. That is how deeply planted the grace of the spiritual gift is that you received. So I congratulate myself all the more, hoping to be saved, because I truly see the Spirit poured out on you from the Lord’s rich spring. The sight of you, which I had wanted so badly, left me astonished at you. I am convinced of this, then, and sure of it in myself: since I began speaking among you I understand a great deal, because the Lord has traveled with me on the road of righteousness. And that is exactly why I am under every compulsion to love you more than my own life — great faith and love live in you, in the hope of his life. So I worked it out this way: if I take the trouble to pass on to you some part of what I received, serving spirits like yours will count as my reward. So I have been eager to send you a little at a time, so that along with your faith you may have complete knowledge.

There are three teachings of the Lord: the hope of life, which is the beginning and the end of our faith; and righteousness, which is the beginning and the end of judgment; and love, glad and rejoicing, the witness of deeds done right. For the Master made known to us through the prophets what is past and what is present, and he gave us the first taste of what is coming. Seeing each of these things happen just as he said it would, we ought to draw near in our fear of him, more richly and more loftily. I am not writing as your teacher but as one of you, and I will point out a few things that will make you glad in your present circumstances.

Since the days are evil and the one at work in them holds the power, we ought to pay attention to ourselves and search out what the Lord requires. The helpers of our faith are fear and endurance; our allies are patience and self-control. While these stay pure toward the Lord, wisdom, understanding, insight and knowledge are glad along with them. For he has shown us through all the prophets that he needs no sacrifices, no burnt offerings, no offerings. He said once: “What is this crowd of your sacrifices to me? says the Lord. I have had my fill of burnt offerings, and I do not want the fat of lambs or the blood of bulls and goats — not even when you come to be seen by me. Who asked all this from your hands? Do not go on trampling my courtyard. If you bring fine flour, it is pointless. Incense disgusts me. Your new moons and your sabbaths I cannot stand.” So he canceled all that, so that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which carries no yoke of compulsion, would have an offering not made by human hands. And again he says to them: “Did I command your fathers, when they were coming out of the land of Egypt, to bring me burnt offerings and sacrifices? No. This is what I commanded them: none of you is to hold a grudge in his heart against his neighbor, and do not love a false oath.” [e]

So we ought to see the kind intention of our Father, since we are not without sense. He is speaking to us, and what he wants is that we not go astray as they did, but ask how we are to come to him. To us, then, he says this: “A sacrifice to the Lord is a broken heart; a fragrance the Lord welcomes is a heart that gives glory to the one who formed it.” So we ought to be exact about our salvation, brothers, so that the evil one does not slip in among us by deceit and sling us out of our life.

Again he says to them about these same things: “Why do you fast for me, says the Lord, the way you are doing today, so that your voice is heard in a shout? This is not the fast I chose, says the Lord — not a man humbling his own soul. Not even if you bend your neck like a ring and put on sackcloth and spread ashes under you; not even then will you call it a fast that is welcome.” But to us he says: “Look, this is the fast I chose, says the Lord: loosen every knot of injustice, undo the cords of agreements forced on people, send away free those who have been crushed, and tear up every unjust contract. Break your bread for the hungry, and clothe the naked man when you see him. Bring the homeless into your house, and if you see someone brought low do not look past him — and do not look past your own family either. Then your light will break through early, and your clothes will spring up quickly. Righteousness will go ahead of you, and the glory of God will close in around you. Then you will call out, and God will answer you; while you are still speaking he will say: Look, here I am — if you take away from among you the chain, and the stretching out of the hands, and the muttered word, and give your bread to the hungry out of your own soul, and show mercy to a soul that has been brought low.” This is why he is patient, brothers. He saw ahead how the people he prepared in his Beloved would come to believe with an undivided heart, and so he showed us everything in advance, so that we would not smash ourselves against their law like newcomers. [j]

So we have to search hard into what is here now and look for whatever can save us. Let us run all the way clear of the works of lawlessness, so that the works of lawlessness never lay hold of us, and let us hate the deception of the present time, so that we may be loved in the time to come. Let us give our own souls no slack, or they will take the liberty of running along with sinners and the wicked, and we will end up like them. The last stumbling block is close. It is written about it, as Enoch says: “For this the Master has cut the times and the days short, so that his Beloved may hurry and come into his inheritance.” And the prophet says this too: “Ten kingdoms will rule on the earth, and after them a little king will rise up, who will bring down three of the kings at one stroke.” Daniel says the same about him: “And I saw the fourth beast, wicked and strong and more dangerous than all the beasts of the sea, and how ten horns grew out of it, and out of them a little sprouting horn, and how it brought down three of the great horns at one stroke.” [m]

So you ought to understand. And there is one more thing I ask of you, as one of you, and as a man who loves you all, each of you and all of you together, more than his own life: watch yourselves now. Do not be like certain people who pile up their sins and say, “The covenant is theirs and ours.” Ours, yes — but they lost it, and lost it for good, after Moses had already received it. For the scripture says: “And Moses was on the mountain fasting forty days and forty nights, and he received the covenant from the Lord, stone tablets written with the finger of the Lord’s hand.” But they turned to idols and lost it. For this is what the Lord says: “Moses, Moses, go down at once, because your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have broken the law.” And Moses understood, and threw the two tablets out of his hands, and their covenant was smashed — so that the covenant of the beloved Jesus might be sealed into our heart, in the hope that comes of trusting him.

There is a great deal I want to write. I am not your teacher, but a man who loves you should not fall short of giving you what we have, so I have been eager to write. I am the scrapings of you. So let us pay attention in these last days. The whole time our faith has run will do us no good unless now, in this lawless time, we also stand against the stumbling blocks that are coming, as sons of God should, and give the Black One no way in. Let us run from every empty thing. Let us hate the works of the evil way through and through. Do not slip off by yourselves and live alone, as though you were already counted righteous; come together in the same place and work out together what serves the common good. For the scripture says: “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.” Let us become spiritual. Let us become a temple complete for God. As far as it lies in us, let us practice the fear of God and fight to keep his commands, so that we can be glad in what he requires.

The Lord will judge the world without favoritism. Each will get back what he did: if he is good, his righteousness goes ahead of him; if he is wicked, the wage of his wickedness is in front of him. So let us never take our ease as men who have been called and fall asleep over our sins, and let the wicked ruler take power over us and shove us out of the kingdom of the Lord. And think about this as well, my brothers. You see that after such great signs and wonders were done in Israel, they were abandoned even so. Let us watch out, then, or we will be found, as it is written, among the many who are called and not the few who are chosen.

This is why the Lord submitted to handing his flesh over to ruin: so that we might be made clean by the forgiveness of sins, which is in the blood of his sprinkling. What is written about him is written partly toward Israel and partly toward us, and it says this: “He was wounded because of our lawless acts, and he was crushed because of our sins; by his bruise we were healed. He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, like a lamb with no voice in front of the man shearing it.” So we owe the Lord more thanks than we can give, because he has made known to us what is past, made us wise in what is present, and not left us without understanding of what is coming. And the scripture says, “Nets are not spread out for birds unjustly.” It means that a man perishes justly if he knows the way of righteousness and then shuts himself into the way of darkness. [t]

And there is this too, my brothers. If the Lord submitted to suffering for our soul — he who is Lord of the whole world, the one to whom God said at the founding of the world, “Let us make man in our image and likeness” — how did he come to submit to suffering at human hands? Learn. The prophets had grace from him, and they prophesied about him. And he, in order to put an end to death and show the resurrection from the dead, submitted to it, since he had to be revealed in flesh: he had to pay back the promise made to the fathers, and, getting the new people ready for himself, show while he was on earth that he will raise the dead himself and then judge. And in the end, teaching Israel and doing wonders and signs on that scale, he preached, and he loved him past all measure. But when he chose his own apostles, the men who were going to preach his good news, they were more lawless than any sin — to show that he did not come to call the righteous but sinners. Then he made it plain that he was the Son of God. For if he had not come in flesh, there is no way people could have been saved by looking at him. Look at the sun: it is going to stop existing one day and it is the work of his hands, and even so their eyes have no strength to look straight into its rays. So the Son of God came in flesh for this reason: to bring the full sum of sins to a head for the men who persecuted his prophets to death.

That, then, is what he submitted to it for. For God says the wound in his flesh came from them: “When they strike their own shepherd, then the sheep of the flock will perish.” But he himself wanted to suffer this way, because it had to be that he suffer on a tree. For the one who prophesies about him says: “Spare my soul from the sword,” and: “Nail my flesh, because assemblies of evildoers have risen up against me.” And again he says: “Look, I have given my back to whips and my cheeks to blows, and I have set my face like solid rock.”

So when he had carried out the command, what does he say? “Who is it that will take me to court? Let him stand against me. Or who is it that will win a verdict against me? Let him come near the Lord’s servant. Woe to you, because every one of you will wear out like a garment, and the moth will eat you up.” And again the prophet says, since he was laid down as a strong stone for crushing: “Look, I am laying into the foundations of Zion a costly stone, chosen, a cornerstone, held in honor.” Then what does he say? “And whoever hopes in him will live forever.” Is our hope, then, on a stone? Of course not. It is because the Lord set his own flesh in place with strength. For he says: “And he set me as solid rock.” And again the prophet says: “The stone the builders rejected — this one has become the head of the corner.” And again he says: “This is the great and wonderful day that the Lord has made.” [z]

I am writing to you as plainly as I can, so that you will understand. I am the scrapings of your love. So what does the prophet say next? “An assembly of evildoers hemmed me in; they swarmed around me the way bees swarm a honeycomb,” and: “They cast lots for my clothing.” Since he was going to be revealed in flesh and to suffer, his suffering was shown in advance. For the prophet speaks against Israel: “Woe to their soul, because they have planned a wicked plan against themselves, saying: Let us tie up the righteous one, because he is inconvenient to us.” What does the other prophet, Moses, say to them? “Look, this is what the Lord God says: Go into the good land that the Lord swore to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and take it for your inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

And what does Knowledge say? Learn. “Hope,” she says, “in the one who is going to be revealed to you in flesh — Jesus.” For a man is earth that suffers: Adam was formed from the face of the earth. So what does it mean, “into the good land, a land flowing with milk and honey”? Blessed be our Lord, brothers, who put into us wisdom and a mind for his hidden things. For the prophet speaks a parable of the Lord: “Who will understand it, except a man who is wise and knowing and loves his Lord?”

So then: he made us new by the forgiveness of sins, and made us into another mold, so that we have the soul of children, as though he were indeed forming us over again. For the scripture says about us, where he speaks to the Son: “Let us make man in our image and likeness, and let them rule the beasts of the earth and the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea.” And the Lord said, looking at the beautiful thing he had formed of us: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth.” That was said to the Son.

Again I will show you how he speaks about us. He made a second forming at the end. The Lord says: “Look, I am making the last things like the first.” This is what the prophet was announcing: “Go into a land flowing with milk and honey, and take charge of it.” Look, then: we have been formed over again, just as he says in another prophet: “Look, says the Lord, I will take out of these people — that is, out of the ones the Spirit of the Lord saw in advance — their stony hearts, and I will put hearts of flesh in them.” He said it because he himself was going to be revealed in flesh and to live in us. For the dwelling place of our heart, my brothers, is a holy temple to the Lord.

For again the Lord says: “And how will I be seen before the Lord my God, and be glorified?” He says: “I will give thanks to you in the assembly of my brothers, and I will sing to you in the middle of the assembly of the holy ones.” So we are the ones he has brought into the good land. What, then, are the milk and the honey? A baby is kept alive first by honey and then by milk; and in the same way we too, kept alive by faith in the promise and by the word, will live and take charge of the earth. And we said above, “Let them increase and multiply and rule the fish.” Who is able, right now, to rule wild animals or fish or the birds of the sky? We ought to notice that ruling means authority — that a man gives an order and is master. So if this is not happening now, then he has told us when it will: when we ourselves have been made complete, so as to become heirs of the Lord’s covenant.