Internalizing Your Love for Jesus

“But now He (Jesus) has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. This is the new covenant between God and man.

In the Old Testament era the Lord established a covenant with His people and instructed them to build an ark symbolizing it. That was a good covenant for the time, but there came a time for a new covenant to be implemented. Things change.

For example, in an anthropology class the teacher was talking about how ideas of beauty change. He said seventy years ago the winner of the Miss America Pageant was only five feet tall, weighed just over 100 pounds and her measurements were 30-25-32. Then he asked, “How do you think she would have been regarded by the judges of this year’s contest?” One student replied, “Not very well!” “And why not?” queried the teacher. “She would be too old,” said the student.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. “Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:6, 7, 13).

Jesus is depicted as “Mediator of a new covenant” between you and God the Father.

A covenant is a type of contract. In a covenant, the person making the promise (Jesus) is the covenantor, and the person who is benefitting from the promise is a covenantee, the individual believer.

A contract is invalid when one of the involved parties violates it. On the other hand, a covenant remains intact even if one of the parties breaches it.

It is considered immoral to break a covenant—it is a betrayal of trust. There is never a sense in which it is morally upright for a person to break a covenant.

God is a covenant-keeping God, and Christians should be covenant-keeping people. The new covenant established an intimacy between God and the believer. God remains faithful even when we are faithless. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself” (II Timothy 2: 12).     

Question: “Does that mean we can do whatever we want?” Augustine answered that well: “Love God — and do what you please.” Jesus was even more direct: “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching” (John 14:23).

Love is the bonding element, His love for us and our love for Him. If you love Him there will be a desire to please Him.

The concept of a covenant is all about the believer and Jesus. He arranged for it on Calvary and for an individual to be a part of it they must at a point in time, divorced from time embrace Him as Savior and Master to be obeyed and followed.

Frequently consider your covenant relationship with Jesus and enjoy the relationship. Repeat, ENJOY.