Have you made out a will in preparation for your demise? Experts say we should all have one so we can pass on our possessions in an efficient & tax-saving manner. This legal document ensures our wishes are carried out after death. Did you ever consider that the reason the Christian Scriptures are called the “New Testament” is that it’s a similar document?
Who is the testator? Jesus is the one who made the will, establishing the New Covenant & naming the obligations, inheritance, & beneficiaries (Heb. 9:15). The ideas of a will & a covenant are very similar. A will is conditioned on the death of the testator (Heb. 9:17-18). So the New Testament could not go into effect until Christ had died. His death activated the terms of His Last Will & Testament.
But this particular testator didn’t remain dead! Any legal document must be probated—proven authoritative. Jesus probated His own will by the resurrection. So the New Testament invalidates the Old Testament. Hebrews 10:9 says, “He does away with the first in order to establish the second.” The New fulfills, & so supersedes the Old. This is yet another important point of law—only the last will is the authoritative one. Therefore, we are no longer under the terms of the Old Testament. As Christians, we have entered a New Covenant with Christ.
But what are the terms of this New Testament? It’s superior to the Old because it’s founded on better promises (Heb. 8:6). Most folks leave an inheritance to their children as the designated beneficiaries. As Christians, we are God’s children & His heirs (Rom. 8:17). Yet, we are not orphans because Jesus lives to give us the blessings: forgiveness, abundant & eternal life, justification, the Spirit, peace, righteousness, & more! The Old promises were primarily temporal & material. The New promises are primarily eternal & spiritual (1 Pet. 1:4).
But along with these promises come obligations. Salvation is the free gift of God; we can’t earn it. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t do anything. There are certain conditions we must comply with. Otherwise, everyone would be saved automatically. God’s grace is conditioned not on meritorious works, but on faith. Faith, in that sense, is something we must “do” to be saved (John 6:29). Repentance & baptism are also things we must “do,” but they are no more human works than faith is (Acts 2:38-39). They are responses of faith to God’s gracious conditions—the terms for entering the New Covenant & receiving the promises.
We can either accept or reject those terms, but we cannot alter them. In legal terms, we say that a will has an inviolable character. Once it has been made, no one else can change it. We enter the covenant on the Lord’s terms, not ours, without negotiation.
To see that the will is revealed & carried out, it’s crucial to have an executor directly nominated in the will. We have a strange situation in this case because this will is the only one whose testator came back from the dead. In a sense, Jesus became His own will’s executor—the mediator of the New Covenant, representing both parties as fully divine & fully human (Heb. 9:15).
He made sure His will would be carried out when He commissioned His Apostles (Matt. 28:18-20). In another sense, then, the Apostles were also named as executors. Jesus chose them to reveal the gospel (John 20:22). But in another sense, all Christians are executors because we’re also told to go into all the world & tell the gospel to make known both the promises & the obligations. This is really a great relief because we simply act as executors—we can’t change the message. The Apostles couldn’t even change it (Gal. 1:8-9). So if someone tries to challenge us, we can say that we only pass on what’s in the covenant.
This often becomes the case when we present baptism as part of the terms for entering the New Covenant (John 3:3-6, Mark 16:16, Acts 22:16, Gal. 3:26-27, 1 Pet. 3:21). Some will typically object, “But the thief on the cross was saved without being baptized.” True, not only because of the logistical challenge, but for a couple of other major reasons. (1) While the testator is still alive, He can do whatever He wants with the inheritance. Jesus could offer whatever terms He chooses. But when He dies, His will goes into effect, & its terms are announced as binding on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:36-39). (2) The Old Covenant was still in effect. The New couldn’t go into effect until the death & resurrection of Christ; hence, there was no Christian baptism yet since it’s the place or occasion where we die with Christ, are buried, & rise up with Him (Rom. 6:3-4).
When people reject that salvific view of baptism, relegating it to only an act of obedience that becomes “an outward sign of an inward grace” (something the New Testament never calls it), then we simply claim, “Hey, I’m not the testator; I’m just the lawyer reading the will. You can either accept it or reject it, but I can’t change it.” We’re not judging such people, we’re just being faithful to the Lord’s terms by not taking away from or adding to it.