Testament – A legal document defining rights, inheritances, legacies and related issues. These are defined in law and have the backing of law. They are clearly defined and finite and often pass away with generations.
Covenant – An agreed form of relationship which has no ending. It is infinite and can pass from generation to generation. It has no natural ending. Covenant has a legal dimension but it is much, much more than a testament.
Notwithstanding that covenants have no end, men can and do bring them to an end when they for example break the covenant of marriage through infidelity and/or divorce. Also God can set aside man’s covenant with man as in Is 28:14-18 as the covenant was illegal. Israel was not free to make such a covenant. But His covenant with man is never set aside.
As covenants with God never come to an end clearly we cannot be in a situation whereby the so-called New Covenant has replaced the so-call Old Covenant.
B’rit Hadashah – is the Hebrew name for the so-called New Testament in English. New Testament is a wrong terminology and is a poor translation from the Hebrew. The very terminology NT is heavy with anti-Semitism because it is loaded with inference that God has finished with the Jewish people.
But how can that be if covenants never pass away?
Exodus 2:24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
Exodus 6:4 And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers.
Exodus 34:27 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.
These are covenants which the legal element contained within them says can never pass away and contained within the terms of the covenant is an inheritance or testament – the land of Israel as defined to Abraham, not as seen on a map in 2013.
So – the covenants made with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, with David -they are all still in place and each successive covenant enfolds and adds to the earlier one.
A better translation of the Hebrew B’rit Hadashah is RENEWED or RESTORED Covenant – NOT New Testament. It is only new in the sense that every month there is a new moon. The moon is not new it is just revealed again, and so it is with the B’rit Hadashah.
The RENEWED Covenant does contain an element of testament insofar as the greater inheritance is revealed and who will receive it is defined.
God’s revelation does not come in two halves but is continuous from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21
Later I will talk to you in more detail about covenants and will pose the question which an understanding of covenants throw up – “So you are a member of the Body of Christ, but are you also a part of the bride?”
Until then God willing – God bless you all.
