Why the Physical Promises of the Old Covenant Cannot Be a Part of the New Covenant without Denying the Gospel

 If the physical promises of the old covenant are now a part of the new then the new covenant rejects the New Testament teaching about it. The gospel is the means by which we have favor from God. Love as it is expressed in personal and communal holiness is the marker that one is in Christ and has the favor of God.

If a physical promise to individual saints must be fulfilled as a marker that one is in the new covenant then this runs contrary to the teaching of the apostles who teach that there is no physical marker of one's status in Christ but love as it is expressed through the abstaining from evil and the doing of good in the body. 

If long life in the land, no miscarriages, no poverty, no sickness, etc. are a part of the new covenant promises then the gospel of the apostles that promises suffering and loss in this world is contrary to that of the covenant God has made in the new covenant.

This is because a covenant promise is not something God has the option of giving if the other party has kept their part. God is not allowed by His own justice to decide whether He will give all of the above to every individual. He must do it. Every. Single. Time. That is the nature of a covenant that one swears by His own death if He does not do what He says if the other party does what they swear to do. 

So if the old covenant promise to let children live long in the land for honoring their fathers and mothers means that they will live a long time in their own lands within the new covenant, then God must cause them to live long in their land.

Of course, one might point out that the land the text is referring to is the land of Israel and this is being spoken to Israelites during the time of the old covenant, and thus, it doesn't apply to us in that way. Rather, such a picture points to who will enter the new heavens and new earth rather than some temporal blessing today. That would be the apostolic application of such a verse. 

But if the new covenant contains the promises of the temporary shadows of this world within it, then whoever does not receive these things in the here and now does not have God's favor. They can now be identified, not by their love for the brethren, but by the fact that they have not received the promises that mark one who has God's favor.

Thus, the favorable new covenant believers are known as having favor from God or more favor from God by virtue of old covenant promises, sitting them at one table and those less blessed at another. 

The following three facts display that this theology is false.

1.    1. A covenantal promise, as these promises are, is an obligation that God has to fulfill them every single time. He cannot break it by not delivering or underdelivering. God is bound by His own promises and He cannot lie. They must be fulfilled as they are stated. Yet, we know that God does not give such promises to faithful believers, not even to the apostles, not even to Christ (Did Christ not honor His father and mother in order to live long in the land because He died at the age of 33?). The old covenant has passed away at the coming of Christ. Its promises to Israel are shadows that look to both the spiritual redemption of those who believe in the here and now and the physical redemption of creation in eschaton.

2.  2. God’s giving of the promises or curses are a sign of one’s identification as having favor from God or being an apostate. This is not what the NT argues. One's identification is marked by their love for one another and having received the promise of the regenerating Holy Spirit of the new covenant who produces that love. Suffering, not success, in ruling over the world is promised until Christ returns and is tied to the sanctification of God's people as they learn to put the deeds of the body to death.

3.  3. Even if these promises were to be applied generically to other groups outside of Israel or just literally applied to the church specifically, the promises are contingent upon obeying the entirety of the law, not just one part of it. That means that one will live long in the land when he obeys his father and mother only if he worships the true God, is not an idolater, not a blasphemer, does not break the sabbath, does not murder, steal, commit adultery, bear false witness, or covet. He must obey all of the ritual law, civil law, and moral law without fault. Hence, since only Christ could do this, these promises cannot be contingent upon the obedience of individual Christians but upon Christ and therefore received by every Christian. And yet, we know these temporal promises are not. Again, they cannot function as general truisms. They are covenantal promises that God must fulfill if they are promised to Christians through Christ in the same way that they are promised to Israel, i.e., physical and temporal as well as spiritual and eternal. This ideology is self-evidently false. Therefore, this gospel is not the gospel of the New Testament.