Genesis Notes: The New Covenant is Fulfillment of the Old

We're at the end of the Genesis study and amidst all the stories there has been a clear thread for us to follow — God's covenant with us.

Watching from the beginning of creation to the establishment of God's family through covenant  has given me a much better understanding of how the old covenant was achieved in the first place ... which then leads to a better understanding of how the New Covenant completes the old.

First Day of Creation (from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle)

The New Covenant in which we live is not a different covenant but a fulfillment of the Old. God still is a Father who makes and keeps promises and who is building His family by covenant. The New Covenant is all the promises of the Old, wrapped up in one and sealed by the sacrament of Christ's death and resurrection. In it God promises:

1. To restore creation: not just turn back the clock to Genesis 2 but to replace the old with new life, His own life, a life that is greater than anything we could have hoped for without the Fall.
2. To defeat Satan, the Serpent who started the whole problem in Eden;
3. To save us from sin, as He saved Noah from the wickedness of the world before the flood;
4. To give us not just a homeland on earth but an eternal home in heaven;
5. To make us not a powerful earthly kingdom but a kingdom of priests, a royal nation that will encompass the whole world and be a blessing to all nations.

Best of all -- these are not only promised, they are offered together with the power we need to keep our part of the covenant, which is to love God with all our hearts and love our neighbor as ourselves; to be holy as He is holy. Only the divine nature flowing through us can accomplish that.

All quotes from Genesis, Part II: God and His Family. This series first ran in 2004 and 2005. I'm refreshing it as I go. For links to the whole study, go to the Genesis Index. For more about the resources used, go here.