Nova aliança
A Nova Aliança é o pacto de graça que Deus estabeleceu através de Jesus Cristo. Diferente da antiga, ela é escrita no coração, mediada pelo sangue de Cristo e acessível a todos.
A profecia da Nova Aliança
Jeremias profetizou uma aliança nova em que Deus escreveria sua lei no coração do povo. Essa promessa se cumpriu em Cristo.
Look! The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new agreement with the people of Israel and Judah. It won’t be like the agreement that I made with their forefathers when I held their hands and led them out of Egypt. They broke that agreement, even though I was faithful like a husband to them, declares the Lord.
But this is the agreement I’m going to make with the people of Israel at that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws inside them and write them in their minds. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No one will need to teach a neighbor or their brother, telling them, "You ought to know the Lord." For everyone will know me, from the smallest to the greatest. I will forgive them when they do wrong, and I will forget about their sins.
But Jesus has been given a far better ministry just as he is the one who mediates a far better agreed relationship between us and God, which is based on much better promises. If that first agreement had been perfect, then a second wouldn’t have been necessary.
By saying, "A new agreed relationship," he makes the first agreement out-of-date. The one that’s old and worn out has almost disappeared.
This is how Jesus became the guarantee of an agreed relationship with God that is so much better.
Selada com sangue
Jesus instituiu a Nova Aliança na Última Ceia: 'Este cálice é a nova aliança no meu sangue.' Seu sacrifício é definitivo e perfeito.
In the same way after they had finished supper, he picked up the cup and said, "This cup is the new agreement in my blood which is poured out for you."
Then he picked up the cup, blessed it, and gave it to them. "Drink from it, all of you," he told them. "For this is my blood of the agreement, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
how much more does the blood of Christ—who offered himself in his sinless life to God through the eternal Spirit—clean your consciences from your past sinful lives so you can serve the living God?
This is why he is the mediator of a new agreed relationship. Since a death has occurred to set them free from the sins committed under the first agreed relationship, now those who are called can receive the promise of an eternal inheritance.
For a will to be implemented, the person who made it must be dead. A will is only valid when there’s been a death—and is never applied while the person who made it is still alive. That’s why the first agreement was established with blood.
After Moses had given all the commandments of the law to everyone, he took the blood of calves and goats, and together with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, sprinkled the book itself and all the people. He said to them, "This is the blood of the agreed relationship that God has told you he wants with you."
The law is just a shadow of the good that was to come, and not the actual reality. So it can never through the repeated sacrifices offered year after year make right those who come to worship God. Otherwise wouldn’t the sacrifices have stopped being offered? If the worshipers had been made clean once and for all, they wouldn’t have had guilty consciences any longer. But in fact those sacrifices remind people of sins year after year, because it’s impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to remove sins.
Reconciliação e vida nova
Pela Nova Aliança somos reconciliados com Deus, trazidos para perto pelo sangue de Cristo e feitos embaixadores da reconciliação.
That’s why anyone who is in Christ is a new being—what was old is gone, the new has come! God did all this by changing us from enemies into friends through Christ. God gave us this same work of changing his enemies into his friends. For God was in Christ, bringing the world back from hostility to friendship with him, not counting anyone’s sins against them, and giving us this message to change his enemies into his friends. So we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God is pleading through us: "Please, won’t you come back and be God’s friend?" God made Jesus, who never personally sinned, experience the consequences of sin so that we could have a character that is good and right just as God is good and right.
We have total confidence before God through Christ.
Not that we would consider ourselves able to do this on our own—it’s God who gives us this capacity! He also gave us the ability to be ministers of a new agreement, based not on the letter of the law, but on the spirit. The letter of the law kills, but the spirit gives life.
So you who are "foreigners" humanly-speaking, called "uncircumcised" by those who are "circumcised" (which is only a procedure carried out by human beings), you need to remember that once you had no relationship to Christ. You were barred as foreigners from being citizens of Israel, strangers to the agreement God had promised. You had no hope and you lived in the world without God. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once a long way off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
This is love! It’s not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and he sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.