Old covenant vs the new

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Thank you. Perhaps when its early again you could expand a bit on what knowing Jesus means.
 
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Wow, there’s some real scholarship in all that. Maybe I could’ve narrowed things a bit by using the language the Church sometimes uses: Old Law and New Law. Either way I’m looking to find how the New Covenant is a “new and better one”, why it was needed and why it made the old one(s) “obsolete”, how they differ in basic ways.
 
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Are you sure the Church teaches that any of the Old Covenants are obsolete. The Church teaches that God maintains all His Covenants with us through Salvation History. They are all important.

Eucharistic Covenant

With the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Calvary, God has at last ushered in the New Covenant which He promised to Israel through Ezekiel so long ago. Each and every covenant that was made up to this point has been merely a foreshadowing of this New, Eternal Covenant, whereby mankind is restored in his relationship to God and is, by means of divine grace, taken into God’s family and endowed with the blessings and privileges of His kingdom. The Church in Heaven is the true promised land, the heavenly Jerusalem of which Eden, the ark, and David’s kingdom were merely types. The new, true temple in which God restores his people to Himself is the Body of Christ. Thus, we see that the temple of Eden, Noah’s ark, and even Solomon’s temple were prefigurements of the true temple of Christ’s Mystical Body. It is thanks to the infinitely meritorious sacrifice of Christ Whose Body is at once a temple and a sacrifice, we are now given a covenant that cannot be broken. This sacrifice, which extends forward for all time by means of the Mass, ensures that no sin, however great, will ever undermine the Covenant which God has established with His own Blood. If as individuals, we suffer the misfortune of breaking our own relationship with God, we may simply repent by confessing our sins to a new covenant priest, through whom God manifests His presence in the world, so that, by means of Christ’s most precious Blood, we may be cleansed of our sins and brought back into that covenantal relationship with God.

Both those authors are pretty good , 🙂
 
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I am going to tag @CRM_Brother who is pretty good at explaining theology from what I have read.
 
The bible, in Hebrews, I believe, uses the term obsolete while the Church teaches that the OC was never revoked. I don’t think those two concepts conflict, however, because I think it can be said that the new makes the old obsolete by simply providing the better or right means to fulfill it.
 
God never breaks His Covenants or contracts with us. We break them with God all the time. If you read through each of the Old Testament Covenants, they are still pretty relevant, i.e. Noah and the flood, Abraham and his descendants, (that includes us) …
 
I understand, and yet the new is distinctly different in some final way. I appreciate the excerpt regarding the Eucharist and how Christ’s sacrifice deals with sin. But is there more to the NC promises?
 
GiftofMErcy is quite right: there have been several “pre-Christian” covenants, and mountains are involved in each. Thus we hear of mountains regularly in scripture.

Distilled, the Incarnation changed everything - forever, through the absolute mystery of the hypostatic union, in which God in Christ became man while also remaining God. Mankind saw Him, heard Him, was touched and healed by Him. And, in the consecrated bread and wine, ate and drank the new Passover - so that Christ - yes, God - dwells in us both spiritually and physically. The seven Sacraments were instituted by Christ.

Love is now the rule. Sacrifice remains, in the re-presentation of Christ to the Father, in atonement for our sins, but our primary “law” or rule of life is a reflection of the unconditional love which God has for us.

To understand that various covenants between God and man, a good book is Bible Basics for Catholics by Dr. John Bergsma.
 
The New Covenant is established by Jesus with his death and resurrection. He is the New Moses.
 
In the old covenant we became god’s people by bloody circumcision of infants and our sins were ‘covered’ not forgiven , the old covenant is sealed by the blood of sacrificing countless lambs in the new we enter through circumcision of our hearts and are sins are forgiven by the lamb of god who takes away the sins of the world - his blood shed on the cross, the blood is the wine at our Eucharistic meal.
 
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Ok, I appreciate all the answers, and they’re all on the spot. One question I’m looking at, though, is how righteousness or justification is dealt with between the two, the interplay between law and grace.

po 18guy mentioned how Christ dwells is us and about love now being the law, which ties in with the “New Law” of Church teachings, and Dan that Jesus is the new Moses, and Tony how we’re now circumcised in a new, spiritual way, and these are all answers that tend to move us away from legalism/Pelgianism, errors that the Catholic Church is often charged with promoting, but I guess I’m thinking to explain or define the difference between the covenants in the clearest, fullest while most concise manner, especially regarding what really makes us just or right in God’s eyes. How about the New Covenant prophecies of Ezekiel and maybe most importantly Jer 31 and how they tie in to this question?
 
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fhansen said:
but I guess I’m thinking to explain or define the difference between the covenants in the clearest, fullest while most concise manner, especially regarding what really makes us just or right in God’s eyes
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Good question.

I’m just thinking out loud. From God’s perspective the New Covenant was the goal from the beginning of time. & each covenant was a step in God’s revelation of Himself.

Adam & Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus… it’s all the same story told again & again but each time it is our understanding that changes. Then when you take all the stories together, from Genesis to Revelation, it’s again the same story.

So our justification today is the same as Jesus’ David’s, Mose’s, Abraham’s, Noah’s, Adam & Eve. Hear the word of God and keep it.

The Garden, the Ark, the Promised Land, the Temple all points to the Church which points to Heaven.
 
Justin_Mary said:
Good question.

I’m just thinking out loud. From God’s perspective the New Covenant was the goal from the beginning of time. & each covenant was a step in God’s revelation of Himself.

Adam & Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus… it’s all the same story told again & again but each time it is our understanding that changes. Then when you take all the stories together, from Genesis to Revelation, it’s again the same story.

So our justification today is the same as Jesus’ David’s, Mose’s, Abraham’s, Noah’s, Adam & Eve. Hear the word of God and keep it.

The Garden, the Ark, the Promised Land, the Temple all points to the Church which points to Heaven.
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Yes, I agree that the NC was always the goal, and that man has always been obligated to be obedient, to be righteous. And I think the goal of the NC is union-communion-with God, ‘apart from whom we can do nothing’, to paraphrase John 15:5. This is the relationship-or potential relationship-that Adam shattered at the Fall where man lost communion with God, and in the process became lost himself.

And if the law that was to come later might show man what true justice or righteousness “looked like”, it did not have the power to make man right, to justify Him. Only God can do that. So the first step in man becoming who he was created to be is be reconciled with the God whom Jesus came to fully reveal, so that we may believe in, hope in, and ultimately love Him. Man doesn’t need to be sinless first of all in order to please and be united with God, rather man must be united with God first of all in order to be sinless, or to begin to approach it in any case. Man needs grace, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Man was made for communion with God.

So Hebrews 10:16, quoting Jeremiah:
“This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds.”

And Jeremiah continues:
"I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
 
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I think we may need to step back a second and examine what we mean by “covenant” and “law”. I’ve seen them used somewhat interchangeably above but they are truly distinct concepts.

Covenants are absolute. They carry no inherent penalties or repercussions if broken. They are freely given and all encompassing. They can be one sided, as God’s covenant with David or Noah, or two sided when both sides bind themselves to action in covenant, like when God renewed the Abrahamic covenant and Moses actively entered into the covenant on behalf of the people of Israel by accepting the Ten Commandments.

The Law, however is largely man-made. Repeatedly we see in the Old Testament that the Law was generally created by the Prophets so as to help Israel turn away from its wicked ways. The first reading today at Mass specifically says that Joshua created laws and statutes to help Israel reorient itself to God.

It is the Old Law which passes away, not the Old Covenants. No direct laws which were handed down directly by God has been done away with (like the Ten Commandments) but instead have been synthesized in the Great Commandment “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This New Law is love and it was what Old Law was originally centered around before it became expanded legalism rather than a spiritual liberation through love of God.

The Old Covenants are actually founded upon the New Covenant…

Let that sink in for a moment…

Think of it this way. The New Covenant is like the sun. You see and experience its presence in the predawn hours as the night sky slowly lightens. Even if you never experienced the sun before, you would still know that something is happening for change slowly creeps up upon you. So too with the New Covenant. The very act of creation was a primordial covenant of existence. Creation from its beginning has been aiming towards the New and Everlasting Covenant in Christ. Each proceeding covenant (Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David) slowly signaled the rising of the New Covenant. These do not pass away. If we seek the existence of the New Covenant, then it would be impossible for them to be discarded, just as dawn could not be discarded if we desire the sun.

The exact line of theology behind the relation of the covenants is almost identical to that of Christ being the cause of the Immaculate Conception.
 
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Justin_Mary said:
So our justification today is the same as Jesus’ David’s, Mose’s, Abraham’s, Noah’s, Adam & Eve. Hear the word of God and keep it.
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We must be careful when speaking of justification. Our justification does not stem from hearing the Word of God and keeping it. This gets too close to the Protestant accusation of Catholics: “Sola Opera”, salvation by works alone. Hear the Word of God, do what it says and then you’re justified.

Our justification stems from nothing we do. It is solely through Christ’s free willing of our justification that anyone (David, Moses, Abraham, Noah, Adam, Eve, and even ourselves) is justified. In Baptism, we take the New Covenant upon ourselves. We enter into it just as Moses entered Israel into the Abrahamic Covenant. The Law of Love is our attempt to live in union with that Covenant we have taken upon ourselves. Keeping the Word of God is living out of this love and gradually conforms our souls to Christ.
 
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Judaism taught that the Jews were obligated, by God’s covenant with Moses, to be obedient to the Law. And, yes, the New Testament or New Covenant or New Law did nothing to change that obligation, which is why the Church teaches that the Old Covenant has not been revoked, just superseded by a new and better one. The New one has the capability to accomplish in man what the Old could not. So the Law is revealed to be a teacher that disclosed sin , while not being capable by itself of overcoming that sin. Only grace, only God, can accomplish that feat in us. So, again, the New Covenant is about man and God in union, rather than apart, with man no longer attempting to be righteous or sinless on his own as if he already possessed that quality. Again, the chief characteristic of Original sin is spiritual separation from God, aka “the death of the soul”, while the chief characteristic of the New Covenant is union with God, which brings life. And this relationship is established by faith, a gift of grace itself.

In Rom 7 St Paul speaks of the Law being insufficient to save us, identifying and utilizing one of the Ten Commandments in this case, certainly not man-made Laws. He speaks of the Law being holy, righteous, good, and spiritual, with man not being spiritual, thus the need for change which is the purpose of the New Covenant where God replaces hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, etc. as we’re reconciled with Him in a new distinctive way. We’re not only challenged to love God and neighbor; the Old Testament did that as well, but now we’re given the grace to accomplish this as we cooperate in the endeavor. And, yes, the virtue of love is the goal, and arguably constitutes the very definition of justice for man as it excludes sin and fulfills the Law by its nature.

And the Old Law, speaking of the moral law outlined by the Ten Commandments, is considered by the Church to still be in effect; we’re still obligated to obey it.
 
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