New Covenant

Jesus by His death on the cross, established a new agreement, testament, or covenant between God and man, whereby His blood would remove the sin of all those who put their faith in Him. Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). At the Last Supper, just prior to His

Two parties must make a commitment to establish and maintain a covenant

sacrificial death, Jesus stated that the grape juice in the cup represented the new covenant in His blood for the forgiveness of sin (Lk 22:20). The old covenant focused on the human involvement as the people were required to repeatedly sacrifice something of value to deal with their sin. The new agreement based on the once-only sacrifice of Christ (by His death) offers the forgiveness of sin and the human response focuses on acceptance of that gift of grace, then the subsequent walking a life pleasing to the Saviour (Rom 6:4; Eph 2:8,9; Heb 7:22, 8:6-13, 9:15). This unique relationship, termed becoming a child of God, is available to anyone, whereas the old covenant was biased towards the Jewish nation (Jn 1:12; Act 2:21; Rom 10:11-13). Although Christ has purchased our salvation we are still required to outwork it in our lives to make it effective (Phil 2:12).

See also: covenant, New Testament, Old Testament.