The New Covenant is often misunderstood, even by those of us who call ourselves Christians. It is such a radical departure from the Old Covenant that it boggles the imagination. We are so conditioned to think in terms of our performance in relation to the Law’s demands that we often fail to grasp the enormity of the shift the New Covenant brought.

An important key to understanding the New Covenant is the new birth. The New Covenant give us a new identity, which is an unseen internal change, rather than something external that is obvious to the observer and easily measurable.

When Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again, he wasn’t being poetic. He shared a fundamental truth related to the New Covenant.

Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. 6  Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. 7  So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ 8  The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” John 3:5-8 (NLT) 

The Old Covenant failed because it was fundamentally flawed. (Hebrews 8:7) The Law is perfect, but we are born into this world under the thumb of sin. It was impossible for humans to attain or maintain a right relationship with God through adequately keeping the Law. It always ended up condemning us before God. The best it could do was point us toward our desperate need for a Savior. (Galatians 3:22-24) God’s solution to the problem of human depravity was to provide the absolutely ingenious New Covenant way to be made right with God. This is called a “new and living way.” (Romans 7:6)

The first real clues about the nature of the New Covenant are found in Jeremiah.

“The day is coming,” says the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 32  This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the LORD. 33  “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day,” says the LORD. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34  And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the LORD.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the LORD. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NLT) 

Later Ezekiel added his prophetic insights.

And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart, 20  so they will obey my decrees and regulations. Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God. Ezekiel 11:19-20 (NLT) 

Both prophets spoke of God’s doing something altogether new and different in his people that would fundamentally alter their behavior by putting a different spirit and heart within them. How could that be done? When Jesus told Nicodemus about the new birth via the Spirit’s work inside a person, the mechanism for this radical change was clarified.

Paul called it a new creation.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NASB) 

The new thing God has done is the fusion of our Spirit with the Holy Spirit via what Jesus called the new birth. When we are born of the Spirit, we are joined to the Holy Spirit in a radical and unprecedented move by God. (1 Corinthians 6:17) We become sons of God because the Spirit of his Son lives within us!

But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. 5  God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. 6  And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” 7  Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir. Galatians 4:4-7 (NLT) 

The innermost part of our being, the spirit, is born anew or recreated in the image of God, being united with God. God’s own life invades ours in the new birth. This is why our hearts now want to do what is right and pleasing to God. Our deepest desires spring from God now. This is a big key to understanding the New Covenant.

At first this may sound too good to be true, and our experience often seems to contradict it. Those of us who have experienced the new birth still battle with sin. How can this be, if our spirits are united with God? Paul dealt with this issue in Romans Chapter 7. After explaining in Chapter 6 that we are now dead to sin due to being united with Christ in his death and resurrection, he goes on to recognize the ongoing problem we still have with sin in the following chapter. The essence of the problem is that, while we have recreated spirits, we also have bodies that are very much part of the sinful old order of things under Adam. These bodies of ours are condemned to die because of the judgment against Adam’s (and our) sin. Jesus will one day resurrect our bodies from the dead and replace them with glorious spiritual bodies that will no longer be subject to sin and death, thus completely ending sin’s reign in our lives.

Until the resurrection, however, we live in the paradox of being dead to sin yet being still pulled by sin. Paul called this the war between the flesh and the spirit.

So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. 17  The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. 18  But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses. Galatians 5:16-18 (NLT) 

Jesus acknowledged this problem when he told his disciples that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41)

Paul went a little further in his explanation in Romans Chapter 7.

So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. 15  I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. 16  But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. 17  So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. Romans 7:14-17 (NLT) 

Even the best intentioned God-fearing believers, such as Paul, battle with sin that originates with the “flesh,” that part of us that is still connected to the mortal body in which we live. Our souls are the result of the spirit being “breathed” into our bodies. (Genesis 2:7) The fusion of a born again spirit with a mortal sin-corrupted body makes us conflicted to say the least.

What Paul is saying in the above passage is that we have a decision to make: will we identify with the new creation part of us or with the “flesh”? Paul chose to say that his true identity was the new man in Christ.

Jesus said much the same thing in John Chapter 8.

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. 35  A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever. 36  So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free. John 8:34-36 (NLT) 

In his typically mysterious way of speaking that requires us to unpack his words, Jesus said the following:

• Slavery to sin results from our being a child of the devil, an enslaved descendant of the first Adam.
• Slaves are not God’s children, only those who are born of the Father.
• When we are born again, we are set free from slavery to sin because we become new creations whose inward motivation derives from God himself.
• Therefore, all born again children of God are no longer slaves to sin.

This agrees with Paul’s teaching in Romans 6-8 and John’s first letter, where he wrote the following.

Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God. 1 John 3:9 (NLT) 

In other words, if we are born again, we cannot continue to sin without suffering internal conflict of a major sort. It goes against our fundamental nature now to continue to sin. Yet, we all struggle in some area of our lives because we still live in these bodies.

Paul tells us that now we must learn to live above the downward pull of sin by “walking in the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:25)

We are also able to escape the enervating power of condemnation because we realize that sin no longer defines us and the Law does not control us any longer. We have a new identity in Christ that transcends sin’s power to dominate and control and we died to the Law so that it can no longer condemn us. (Romans 7:4)

We are still responsible for the sins we commit, but we are not defined or condemned by them.

God wants us to acknowledge and renounce them without allowing them to tear us down or make us doubt our true identity in Christ. We dare not become careless or flippant about sin, because we have a loving Father who knows how to discipline his wayward children.

The power to rise above the condemning power of the Law is absolutely essential in the process of learning to walk by faith in the Spirit.

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2  And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. Romans 8:1-2 (NLT) 

So the next time you fall for the same old lie and commit some besetting sin, do not beat yourself up or start doubting if you are even saved. If you know that you have put your faith and allegiance in Christ, acknowledge your sin, ask forgiveness, renounce it, and move on, trusting that the Spirit will help us live out of our new identity as God’s child. Claim your God-given freedom from sin by faith. The Bible says that sin will not rule over us. (Romans 6:14) Learn to walk in the freedom and power of the Spirit. Then we will experience all that Christ died to give us, for if the Son sets us free, we are free indeed.