Let me repeat the conclusion I arrived at previously:
Jesus is the Redeemer who saves by the Spirit through the New covenant!
Peter’s Speech at Jerusalem
As Peter is rehearsing his experience at the house of Cornelius in Acts 11 he supplies as his main argument for God bringing salvation to the Gentiles the fact that they were given the Holy Spirit. And he made a point of saying the Spirit received by the Gentiles was “the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 11:17). Here’s Peter’s conclusion:
“If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.” – Acts 11:17-18.
The Gentiles (Cornelius’s household) had believed on Jesus Christ and had received the Holy Spirit; the same gift the believing Jews, the apostles first, had been given. According to Luke 22:20 Jesus initiated the New covenant in His blood with those who would become the apostles. Jesus told them,
“This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.” (My emphasis).
What is one to think after reading these words? That the New covenant was not initiated in Luke 22? That assumption is hardly warranted. Jesus explicitly declares that His New covenant blood was shed for the disciples. So Peter, John, James and the rest were saved with New covenant blood. That understood, we must decide what we’re going to do with Paul’s assertion in Ephesians 2:19-20:
Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.
If the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and [NT] prophets and the apostles were saved with New covenant blood is it feasible to opine that the Church is not also saved by New covenant blood? Paul goes on to say that the Ephesian Gentiles were “being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” (Eph. 2:22 My emphasis). This would seem to confirm that the Church is indeed connected to the New covenant through the Holy Spirit on the basis of Christ’s blood of the New covenant.
What I have just argued for is that the covernance of the Church is directly related to the New covenant. And I haven’t even come to the strongest passages yet. But I believe I stand on firm enough ground widen the assertion I began with above:
Jesus is the Redeemer who saves by the Spirit both Jews and Gentiles through the New covenant!
Isaiah 42 and 49: Crucial New Covenant Texts
I want to take a step back and return to the OT.
Dave Fredrickson tells us that he studied the expositions of Isaiah 42:6 and 49:8 in scholarship of the past and did not find many men identifying those texts with the New covenant (See Fredrickson, “Which are the New Covenant Passages in the Bible?” 29 n. 2). That is an interesting bit of information. I think, however, the matter is not too mysterious once one comprehends the mental grip Covenant Theology had upon the minds of so many Christian writers and preachers prior to the 19th Century. The “covenant” of Isaiah 42:6 and 49:8 would be viewed as (or in light of) the “covenant of grace,” as it is, for example, by John Calvin and Petrus Van Mastricht. This is an example of the damage that Covenant Theology does to the reading of the Bible via its unbiblical hermeneutics. Whatever anomalies were introduced because of Covenant Theology, nearly all commentators (including modern covenant theologians) relate these Servant songs to the New covenant. And indeed, most dispensational scholars embrace these texts as New covenant texts.
Here are the two crucial texts in Isaiah:
I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness,
And will hold Your hand;
I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people,
As a light to the Gentiles – Isaiah 42:6 (My emphasis)
Thus says the LORD:
“In an acceptable time I have heard You,
And in the day of salvation I have helped You;
I will preserve You and give You
As a covenant to the people,
To restore the earth,
To cause them to inherit the desolate heritages – Isaiah 49:8 (My emphasis).
I shall return to the highlighted words shortly, but these texts are from the first two “Servant Songs” of Isaiah. These songs are quoted in the NT at various places and always in relation to Christ. For example, the aged Simeon exclaimed “my eyes have seen Your salvation” (Lk. 2:30). He went on to cite the Servant song in Isaiah 49:6, which refers to Jesus as,
A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles,
And the glory of Your people Israel. – Luke 2:32.
And the apostle Paul repaired to this verse in his apology for his ministry in Acts 13:47:
“For so the Lord has commanded us:
‘I have set you as a light to the Gentiles,
That you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.
Michael Vlach correctly divines what is happening here:
When Paul was converted, Jesus commissioned Paul to represent Him to the Gentiles…While Paul himself is not the Servant of Isaiah, when Jesus saved and appointed him as an apostle to the Gentiles, the mission of the Servant (Jesus) became Paul’s mission too. – Michael Vlach, The Old in the New, 198.
We find Paul doing something similar in Acts 26:47 where he again cites this New covenant text. Now if Paul believed he was continuing the work of the Servant of Isaiah 49:6 in his missionary activities among the Gentiles it is hard to imagine him thinking that he was pursuing non-New covenant ministry.
