While the Law Covenants culminated in Christ, His work on the Cross means nothing to us if we isolate it from from those prior covenants.
The claim of the Old Testament boils down to a rather simple story. There is a Creator God. We are accountable to Him first and foremost. He says there is something in human nature that refuses to embrace that accountability without a significant amount of prodding. So over a very long period He began proposing various schemes for creating an atmosphere amenable to people at least giving thought to such things.
At each point in His efforts during human history to clarify and restate things, various human impulses kept getting in the way. One of the things He felt might help would be building up a nation of people who would be strongly pressured to embrace accountability to Him. If the whole nation had a tendency to operate under some presumption of that accountability, it would give Him a better platform for declaring what it means to be accountable.
Part of raising up this nation would mean clarifying the understanding, the basic lore of their existence and identity as a separate nation. Within the package of material He chose to use for this clarifying process, He revealed the distinct presence of a factor in the whole question. First, the implications of holding themselves accountable to Him must be as clearly stated as possible. But the clarification must permit people to say “no” to some degree, to refuse His declaration. Not on the grounds of a confused story, as in times past, but requiring they confront His truth and turn away. Meanwhile, the heart of the matter must be written into the declaration.
Creation itself is accountable to Him, and operates by the implications. The humans living here must be offered a chance to see that living impulse within Creation to acknowledge His mastery. His instructions as a whole reflected the presence of this powerful impulse. When the nation managed to maintain some accountability to Him, nature around it offered support for that accountability. Nature did things which should have reflected in their minds as confirmation that His revelation was accurate. Meanwhile, the nature of Creation’s living impulse must not be too obvious without resorting to His revelation.
Once or twice in their history, that nation accomplished things no other nation did before or since. Outnumbered and completely overwhelmed on the obvious human level of perception, they managed to defeat their enemies. More than once, nature itself clobbered those threats directly. In essence, when they were faithful to God’s Law, nothing in Creation could harm them. Further, those who truly and consciously embraced this Law and sought to understand it as deeply as possible often found a deeper meaning and a deeper power which went beyond their own human abilities. They tasted powers and clarity of understanding from far outside mere human talent. By the same token, that nation was held accountable to a far higher standard the rest of humanity.
The only flaw in this situation was the broken human nature inherent in the people who made up this nation. There was nothing wrong with the process, but it really didn’t matter how easy He made it, they simply could not hack it. Too few were drawn into that higher understanding and their situation deteriorated to uselessness.
That’s where the Messiah comes into the picture. It was proven beyond all doubt mankind could not muster the focus and persistence, even after tasting the grand benefits of it. It needed something else, some sort of rescue from the very basic human condition to bring that power directly inside them. With that power, they could hold themselves accountable to the Creation instinctively. It made more sense to give them just enough of a spark that they could go on to heights of obedience seldom seen in the past.
Granted, this new “nation” of people are hardly any more faithful than their predecessors. Some parts of the implementation they do better than before, but too many parts are still deeply mired in human weakness. However, the potential for harvesting Creation’s living support no longer requires such broad participation. A greater measure of the Law’s power is available to individuals.
Meanwhile, the basic mission hasn’t really changed. This “nation” is still supposed to live in obedience to the implications of accountability as a demonstration to the rest of humanity. As part of the deal, they have access to far better understanding of the Laws and their implications on a much higher level, so they can implement it with a far greater flexibility. The same old rules by which nature responds to accountability still operate the same, and even better than before.
That’s what Christ did.
