The Old and The New Covenant

Taken from Great Texts of the Bible

The formula of the Old Covenant is, “Thou shalt not.” These great words, like a flash of lightning, discovered to man what lies in the depths of his own being–moral obligation along with a sense of utter impotence to meet it, darkness and despair as of chaos returning.

The formula of the New Covenant is “I will”; still greater words, which discover the heights above, as it were the body of heaven in its clearness, unruffled serenity and easy self-achievement of the grace of God. It would not be possible to represent what is characteristic in each dispensation more vividly than by these contrasted formulas.

On the one side is a vain effort to attain, a strife between the law of the mind and the law of the members, a sense of hopeless duality that the centre of a man’s being. On the other side is the rest of faith, a great reserve of spiritual power, the reconciliation of divine ideals with the practice of human lives achieved by grace.

Moral obligation persists under the gospel, but only as it is resolved into the higher freedom of the new life. As Pascal says,” The law demands what it cannot give; grace gives all it demands.”