JB2 wrote:
Now to my question…Is the “New Covenant“ the same as ”salvation” ? (Some scripture for your consideration: 1 Corinthians 11:25-30; Hebrews 6: 4-8; 10:26-31) Let me know what you think.
OK, before answering your questions, I wanted to address each of the scripture passages that you referenced for consideration. The comments are excerpts from MacArthur’s New Testament Commentary that represent my understanding of the scriptures.
1 Corinthians 11: 23-34 (The Lord’s Supper)
A person who partakes without coming in the right spirit eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not judge the body rightly. Judgment (krima) here has the idea of chastisement. Because “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1), the KJV rendering of damnation is especially unfortunate. The great difference in Paul’s use here of krima (judgment) and katakrima (condemned) is seen in verse 32, where it is clear that krima refers to discipline of the saved and katakrima refers to condemnation of the lost. That chastening comes if he does not judge the body rightly, that is, the blood and body used in Communion. To avoid God’s judgment, one must properly discern and respond to the holiness of the occasion.
Hebrews 6:4-8
Here is a warning to the merely intellectually convinced not to stop where he is. If he stops after having received full revelation, and especially after he is convinced of the truth of the revelation, he has only one way to go. If, when a man is totally convinced that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be, he then refuses to believe, this man is without excuse and without hope—because, though convinced of the truth of the gospel, he still will not put his trust in it. He is here warned that there is nothing else God can do. What is the greatest sin that a man can commit? The sin of rejecting Christ.
Hebrews 10:26-31
If a man has heard the gospel, understands it, and is intellectually convinced of its truth, but then willfully rejects Christ, what more can God do? Nothing! All God can now promise this man is “a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries” (v. 27). When you know the truth of the gospel and reject it, the consequences are terrible and permanent.
After considering the passages, 1 Corinthians is speaking to a regenerate member of the church and referencing judgement as chastisement of the believer rather than the unbiblical position of the regenerate member losing their salvation in judgement. Both Hebrews’ passages are directed to the unregenerate Hebrew people directing them to the consequences of the ultimate sin. I say all of this to refute these passages as proof texts that would point to a conditional membership aspect to the New Covenant and thereby implying the New Covenant and Salvation being different institutions/states.
I now would state my position that membership in the New Covenant and Salvation are the same thing. I would offer Jeremiah 31:31-34 as one of many proof texts of this position.
31 “aBehold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a bnew covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
32 not like the acovenant which I made with their fathers in the day I btook them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My ccovenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
33 “But athis is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “bI will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and cI will be their God, and they shall be My people.
34 “They will anot teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all bknow Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will cforgive their iniquity, and their dsin I will remember no more.” (emphasis mine)
JB1
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