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What About The Covenant?-1
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September 20-What About The Covenant?-1

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The days will come, says the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel....I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts. Heb. 8:8-10, RSV.

A religious covenant is an agreement between God and individuals in which God pledges to bless those who accept and commit themselves to Him. That is a good definition. But what exactly does it mean? What are its implications? Such questions divided the Adventist community back in the 1880s.

Smith and Butler had their answer to the covenant issue. It was simple: "Obey and live." Those who obeyed would have eternal life. Thus their emphasis on the law, obedience, and personal righteousness.

But Waggoner stood the "obey and live" equation on its head. First, he claimed, came justification and life in Christ, and only then obedience. Thus we might state his formula
as "live [in Christ] and [then] obey."

The crucial problem of the old covenant, from Waggoner's perspective, was that "it made no provision for forgiveness of sins." But the new covenant had righteousness by faith in Jesus at its very center. It was a covenant of grace in which born again Christians have the law of God in their hearts. "Walking in the law," Waggoner asserted, will be a natural way of life for those who have been born into the family of God and have the indwelling law in their inner being.

The Adventists of 1888 were concerned with the covenant. And they should have been. After all, what is more important than salvation? Nothing! Compared to salvation, a new car, better house, or even earthly life itself has no significance.

We should not fault those Adventists of more than a century ago for their excitement when someone challenged their idea of salvation and the mission of the church. Each of us ought to be deeply concerned about the same issues. We live in a messed-up world of sickness and death. Is there anything better? Will this mess go on forever and ever?

On what basis can God save problematic people in a problematic world? These are the
questions of religious belief.

Their answers stimulated the formation of the Adventist Church and they will be related
to its final destiny.

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Help us, Father, to learn to think Your thoughts. Help us to understand the most important issues in the Bible and in life.
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