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Some things are so familiar to us that we never stop to ask what they really are and what their purpose is. One such thing is the simple promise. What is a promise? A promise made in earnest is an invitation to a relationship. The one who makes the promise seeks to assure and evoke confidence in the other based on words spoken. And the words spoken are a pledge of an action that will be performed. And in many of our most important relationships, promises are the sacred fabric of life. A husband’s vows to his wife. A mother’s vows to her children. An under-shepherd’s vow to the sheep under his care. Without these promises, human relationships cannot flourish. The promise is a gift God has given to his world.
And, as Martin Luther passionately argued, God is a promise-making God. That is, God seeks to assure his people and evoke confidence from them in himself. And he does this by speaking words that he most surely intends to perform. Of course, not all these promise-words are happy words. The promised curses of Deuteronomy 28 make clear that God makes all kinds of promises in accord with his own character. Even so, God’s interaction with his people is built around the things he says he will do.
The biblical terminology for this is covenant. Various views as to what constitutes a covenant in the Bible (Did God have a covenant with Adam? Hos. 6:7) or whether covenants are conditional (the Mosaic covenant) or unconditional (the Davidic covenant) are certainly important, but they are not essential for our present purpose. For in greater and lesser ways they are all arrows pointing forward toward the New Covenant accomplished in Jesus, the Messiah.
This article seeks to explore the promise and provision of the New Covenant. It begins by examining the covenant in Isaiah and the Servant of the Lord’s role in its renewal. Secondly, it shows how Jesus brings to fulfilment the promises of Isaiah. Thirdly, it will close by offering some reflections on what it means to be a people who live in the New Covenant.
Broken and Renewed: the Covenant in Isaiah
When we read Isaiah, we often come across courtroom scenes, where God is prosecuting and Israel is in the dock. The vocabulary of contending (Isa. 3:3; 34:8; 51:22; 57:16) and reasoning together (Isa. 1:18) comes from this setting. But these scenes assume that there was some sort of known standard by which Israel should have conducted herself. That standard, of course, was the covenant. The fact that there is a lawsuit shows that there is a powerful sense in which Israel has broken the covenant: “they have spurned the law of Yahweh Almighty” (Isa. 5:24, author’s translation, here and throughout).
With this in mind, it is no surprise that Isaiah 40-66, which focuses on hope and consolation of God’s people, should address the fundamental covenant question. The Servant of the Lord’s mission is central to this: after describing his mission of gentleness in Isaiah 42:1-4, God says he will appoint the Servant as “a covenant for his people, a light to the nations,” a promise that will be repeated later (49:8). Clearly, the background of a broken covenant and God’s justice (Isa. 40:1–11) is the context for the Servant’s mission. So also, when the Spirit is portrayed as proclaiming comfort to the afflicted and captive people of God, part of the new hope that he brings is this promise from God: “I will cut an eternal covenant for them” (Isa. 61:8).
However, like Moses the mediator of the first covenant, the Servant of the Lord suffers. He may come “proclaiming peace,” that is, the Kingdom of God (Isa. 52:7), but context tells us that “the punishment for our peace was on him and by his wounds there is healing for us” (Isa. 53:5). This provides the necessary background for the beautiful statement of Isaiah 54:10, “the mountains may depart and the hills be moved, but my steadfast love will not depart from you and my covenant of peace will not be moved.” The new covenant of peace is the shalom of the Kingdom of God, the shalom which is purchased by the death of the Servant of the Lord. Practically, what does this covenant of peace mean for the future? “All your children shall be taught by the Lord and great shall be the peace of your children” (Isa. 54:13).
In the chapters that follow, Isaiah will return to discussions of the covenant. This covenant of peace in the Servant-Messiah brings to fulfilment God’s faithful mercy in the Davidic covenant (Isa. 55:3; 2 Sam. 23:5). We see the future people of God as covenant people from whom the Spirit will not depart forever (Isa. 59:21, see Isa. 44:3). It is clear that the people of God have a future with God because he will rise up and take decisive covenant action.
Lastly, before we turn from this to the New Testament, it is worth noting how often this new covenant story is phrased in echoes of the covenant God had already made when he brought Israel out of Egypt (Exod. 19-20). A few examples will have to suffice. God will restore his people to the land by a path through the wilderness which will lead them to see God’s glory (Isa. 40:3-5; see Isa. 11:15-16), just as he led them through the wilderness in order to tabernacle among them. The language of Israel “going out” is a regular part of the vision (Isa. 52:11; 55:12), this time from Babylon rather than Egypt.
Even more significantly, God promises to go before his people and be a rear guard (Isa. 52:12, 58:8) just as he was in Egypt (Num. 14:14). However, this time the journey will not be in haste (Isa. 52:12, see Exod. 12:11). The fulfillment of the Servant’s mission will turn the people of God into priests and ministers (Isa. 61:6), surely an echo of God’s original intention for a kingdom of priests (Exod. 19:4-6). Thus, the coming of the Servant will bring a new and better “Exodus.”
A Better Exodus: Jesus and the New Covenant
It is worth noting from the beginning that Jesus portrays his own ministry as that of the Servant (Matt. 12:18-21). After all, talk of setting captives free was bound to conjure up feelings of Exodus in Israel. Jesus also proclaims that he has come to bring the Kingdom of God (Matt. 4:17). This is the restoration and comfort that had been promised. To be sure, this kingdom brings to fulfillment the former covenants, and yet as we will see, it also surpasses them.
Although there are likely allusions to the Exodus throughout the gospels (such as Jesus’s “exodus” at the transfiguration in Luke 9:31), pride of place must go to the Last Supper. The Last Supper was a pivotal event in the calendar of Israel and, in eating the Passover lamb, there would be a careful rehearsal of the truths of the Exodus. Assuming the traditions of the Mishnah reached all the way back to the time of Jesus, something like the following would have happened every year:
Think of the Last Supper: 12 men (symbolic of the 12 tribes) celebrating the Passover, the great remembrance of God’s delivering act (Luke 22:14). They do this uniquely, apart from their families, which was the regular context for Passover celebration. And all this with a Man who has privately confessed himself as the Messiah who brings the rule of God (Luke 9:20).
Jesus reveals that he has longed to celebrate this with them, and that he will not celebrate it again until the Messianic feast of the final rule of God (Luke 22:16). Like the Servant in Isaiah (Isa. 53:10), Jesus confesses that his suffering will precede the final rule of God (Luke 22:14-16). At several points in his ministry, Jesus has pointed toward his climactic death and resurrection—and now it is drawing near.
Thus far the accumulated context is made up of several elements: the Exodus, Jesus as Messiah, impending suffering, and the coming of the Kingdom of God (all Isaianic themes). Then Jesus inserts the final element: the New Covenant. He explains, “this is my body, given for you, do this to remember me.” The divine passive “given” points to the ultimate cause of Jesus’ death: God himself.
And then Jesus made a parallel statement with regard to the cup. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). The language of “blood being poured out” harkens back to Exodus 24:6-8 when an animal was put to death (see Lev. 17:11) as the sacrifice of the Mosaic covenant was made. When Jesus is numbered among the transgressors (Luke 22:37; Isa. 53:12) and drinks the cup of God’s wrath (Luke 22:42), the New Covenant will be made. Jesus’s death “for you” was the means by which the new covenant was accomplished. Matthew and Mark make the connection with the Servant of the Lord even more explicit by saying it is “for many” (Matt. 26:28, see Isa. 53:11-12). And the cup and the bread together (rather than the old covenant lamb) form the new covenant meal, a greater Exodus through a greater sacrifice by the Messiah of God’s people. This is the greater Passover of the New Covenant, a fact not missed by later Christians (1 Cor. 5:7).
Unbelievable: Our New Covenant Life
Although some have rightly stressed that the covenants lie in continuity with each other, we must not allow this to overshadow the remarkable nature of the New Covenant. There is an objective and final rest that is totally unique in the New Covenant because it is based on the work of another.
Israel didn’t earn God’s gracious redemption in the Exodus, but they were called to respond rightly to it to maintain that relationship. But now the whole of covenant obedience is rooted to the perfect life (“no sin was found in his mouth”) and substitutionary death (“he poured out his soul unto death”) of the Servant of the Lord. And all this for a people that have spurned him, failing to show the same loyalty as cattle show their masters (Isa. 1:2-4). It is Hosea taking home a wandering wife and protecting and clothing her, however ungrateful she might be. The New Covenant really is unbelievable.
And, although as evangelicals we have often spoken of a relationship with God, covenant is really what we (must) mean. When we only speak of relationship at the expense of covenant, the covenant signs of baptism and communion can seem foreign. And sometimes this shows. We urge people to believe with fervour, but baptism is seen as less urgent. Communion can be seen as one more part of the “worship experience” rather than the means Jesus left to encounter his grace. When we read our modern Western relationships into our “relationship” with God, baptism and communion seem secondary. However, when we give the proper place to this covenant language, it becomes clear how important the signs of the covenant really are.
After all, baptism in the New Testament is not the after-the-fact demonstration of a private faith we have already embraced, but rather the fundamental act of confession and conversion (Acts 2:36-38; 1 Cor. 12:13; Rom. 6:1-4; Col. 2:11-12). We confess that we believe the unbelievable promises of God: Jesus, the exalted covenant Lord, was crushed for our iniquities. Baptism clarifies that we enter the covenant through our unity with the Anointed in his death and resurrection. And, as the church, when we baptize, we confess that we think this person has in truth entered into the New Covenant by the death of Christ.
Similarly, communion is the continual reminder that we, together as God’s people, live in covenant with our God by the death of Christ. What could be more pertinent for the health of our relationship with God? What could be more clarifying for our corporate identity? Just as Israel remembered God’s great deliverance at the Passover and renewed their covenant vision, so we the New Covenant people obey Jesus’s command and perform our covenant renewal ceremony with the bread and the wine.
These commands help us tie the objective realities of our New Covenant participation to the daily subjective realities that we experience as we walk before the Lord. When our sin and Satan’s accusations would cause us to condemn ourselves, the Lord’s table drives back the dark clouds. It reminds us that we participate in the covenant of peace because his punishment was our peace. Baptism starts us with the promises of God in Christ and communion returns us to the promises. It is a promise-driven life.
And this covenant framework is not just for today, it is the foundation for the future as well. After all, the New Covenant is an eternal covenant. We live a life that is tied to God’s covenant promises about the future. God’s promises create an internal mental narrative for the future that is rooted in God’s massive and unmerited generosity rather than naive optimism or performance. After all, Jesus reminds us that he will eat the covenant feast with us again.
At a fundamental level, God has given us Isaiah 53 to imprint upon his people across the millennia, until the Messianic feast of the Kingdom comes, that they will be his people and he will be their God by the death of the Servant.
