THE CONTINUED NOT IN MY COVENANT
The wisdom of the fathers
"THEY CONTINUED NOT IN MY COVENANT"
"For this Is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after these days, says the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and on their hearts also will I write them."
We have seen what the fault was of the old covenant, "But they continued not in My covenant." We have seen that the one object of the new covenant is to repair the fault of the old. There is henceforth no more need of the word, "But they continued not." The one distinguishing characteristic of the new covenant is to be, "There is grace for those who enter it to continue." The great mark of the priest after the order of Melchizedek is—"He abides continually." The great mark of each of His people is meant to be too — "he abides continually."
But are we not, some one will say, all living under the new covenant, and yet is not the ordinary experience of Christians still the same as of old, "But they continued not?" Alas, it is so. And how, then, with the provision of the covenant? Is it really to be taken so literally? And if so, has not the new covenant failed just as the old did, of securing the continual obedience God desired? The answer will be found in what we have more than once pointed out . The Hebrews were Christians under the new covenant, but with their life in the old.
The new covenant does not do violence to man's will. It is only where the heart sees and believes what God has promised, and is ready at any cost to claim and possess it, that any blessing can be realised.
With most Christians there is not even the intellectual belief that God means His promise literally. They are so sure that their views of man's sinfulness and the necessity of always sinning are correct, that the teaching of God's word in regard to His purpose to make an end of the "but they continued not" can never enter the mind. Others there are who accept the truth, but through unbelief enter not into the full possession. And the whole state of the Church of Christ is such that but few live in the full experience of what the New Covenant means.
(from "The Holiest of All" by Andrew Murray)