The Two Covenants Andrew Murray Distinguished
⏱ 11 min read
You have been trying to live the Christian life by effort. You know it has not been working. What you may not yet know is that the same effort did not work in the Old Testament either — that the long arc of Israel’s history under the first covenant was a sustained demonstration that the human will, even at its most devout, cannot keep the law from the outside. The exhaustion you have been carrying for years is the exhaustion the prophets named. The remedy you have been reaching for is the remedy already given — and Andrew Murray, in The Two Covenants, wrote one of the most patient pastoral treatments in English of why the first covenant could not produce what the second covenant alone delivers. What is the new covenant in Christianity, in Murray’s reading? It is the moving of the law from the stone tablets outside you to the new heart inside you, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit — the shift from effort upward to grace inward. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is built around this kind of slow scriptural inhabiting, if you would like a daily place to take the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
Murray wrote The Two Covenants late in his ministry, after decades of pastoring believers who had inherited the gospel and were nevertheless living, functionally, under the first covenant — trying to perform their Christianity by willpower while the indwelling Spirit Christ had purchased for them sat unaccessed in the room. The book is Murray’s gentle correction of that pattern. The first chapter, The First Covenant, lays the diagnosis. The remaining chapters describe the second covenant in language slow enough for the exhausted believer to actually hear.
The first passage — the spiritual realities actually within you
Murray, in The Two Covenants, gave the sentence that names the central new-covenant truth in the simplest terms — and that the effort-fatigued Christian most needs to receive.
“When we read of ‘the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit,’ of ‘Christ dwelling in the heart,’ of ‘a clean heart,’ of ‘loving each other with a clean heart fervently,’ of ‘God establishing our heart unblamable in holiness,’ we must, with the eye of faith, regard these spiritual realities as actually and in very deed existing within us.”
— Andrew Murray, The Two Covenants
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is actually and in very deed existing within us. This is the hinge of the whole new covenant, in one phrase. The old covenant put the law on stone outside the believer, and asked the will to climb up to it. The new covenant puts Christ dwelling in the heart, the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, a clean heart established unblamable in holiness — and asks the believer to regard these spiritual realities as actually and in very deed existing inside her, by faith, this morning, before any effort is exerted.
The effort-fatigued Christian has been doing the opposite. She has been treating the new-covenant realities as goals to climb toward, by performance, the way the Old Testament Israelite climbed toward the stone tablet. She has been trying to produce the love of God in her heart by trying harder to love. She has been trying to establish her own heart in holiness by stricter self-management. She has been pursuing what Christ has already, in the very deed of His indwelling, given. The pursuing has exhausted her, because what she has been chasing is already inside the room.
Murray’s quiet correction is simple. Regard these spiritual realities as actually existing within us. The looking changes. The effort changes. The pursuing stops being upward, toward an external goal, and becomes inward, toward the gift already given. The Christian life under the new covenant is not the production of these realities. It is the recognition of them, by faith, and the slow daily receiving of what is already there.
(For the wider context, the sibling article what Andrew Murray meant by the deeper Christian life walks the inward turn into the heart-room, and why Andrew Murray said the Holy Spirit is the Christian’s secret is the companion piece on the indwelling itself.)
The somatic — for the body that has been carrying the old covenant
Pause here. The old-covenant Christian life has not only lived in your theology. It has lived in your body. The muscles have been the carriers of the should. The jaw has been set against the next law you were trying to keep. The lower back has been quietly braced under the weight of an external standard you have been trying to climb to. The body has been performing the first covenant for you, faithfully, in the background of every Christian year you have lived.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat against the floor. Let the shoulders lower by a small amount — not by trying to relax them, but by stopping the small effort of holding them up. Let the jaw release. Place one hand lightly on the centre of the chest, where the indwelling Christ is, in the new-covenant vocabulary, already at home. Take one slow inhale. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale, until the next breath arrives on its own.
The hand on the chest is not a technique. It is a small bodily honouring of what is actually and in very deed existing within you. The room is being held by Him. The law is no longer on the wall above you. The law has been written, by His Spirit, on the heart underneath your hand. The body can lower the bracing. The Person who is the new covenant is already in the room.
The second passage — the Holy Spirit as the abiding gift
Murray, in The Two Covenants, named the Person of the new covenant in language the modern Christian needs to hear, because the modern Christian has often known the doctrine and not the Person.
“He is the Spirit of grace and of power, by whom the obedience of the Covenant and the fellowship with God can be maintained without interruption. He Himself is the Possessor and the Bearer and the Communicator of all the Covenant promises, the Revealer and the Glorifier of Jesus, its Mediator and Surety. To believe fully in the Holy Spirit, as the present and abiding and all-comprehending gift of the New Covenant, has been to many a one an entrance into its fulness of blessing. Begin at once, child of God, to give the Holy Spirit the place in thy religion He has in God’s plan. Be still before God, and believe that He is within thee, and ask the Father to work in thee through Him.”
— Andrew Murray, The Two Covenants
Read it twice. Slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is the present and abiding and all-comprehending gift of the New Covenant. Three adjectives. Present — not future, not for the spiritually advanced, not for the missionaries and martyrs, but for you, today, in the chair you are sitting in. Abiding — not occasional, not a feeling that comes and goes, but a settled in-dwelling that does not leave when your feelings leave. All-comprehending — containing, in Himself, every other promise of the covenant. The Spirit is not one gift among many. The Spirit is the gift, and every other new-covenant blessing is carried in Him.
The obedience of the Covenant and the fellowship with God can be maintained without interruption. This is the line that quiets the effort-fatigued Christian. The obedience is not something you maintain. The Spirit maintains it through you, without interruption, when you are willing to give Him the place in your religion He has in God’s plan. The new covenant is not a more achievable list of laws. The new covenant is a Person, given to live the obedience inside you, while you do the small daily work of being still before God and asking the Father to work in you through Him.
This is what makes the new covenant new. It is not new in chronology only — though it is that. It is new in direction. The first covenant was the law moving outward, toward an external standard the human will could not reach. The new covenant is the Spirit moving inward, taking up residence, working the obedience from inside the heart He has given. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is shaped around this exact inward direction — a daily passage of scripture and a small space for the honest sentence, so the Spirit’s work in the heart can be quietly received on the page rather than rushed past.
(For the way other contemplatives have named the same indwelling, the bridge article what Brother Lawrence meant by practicing the presence of God is the kitchen-floor version of the abiding Person, and union with Christ — what Teresa of Ávila actually taught walks the same indwelling in Carmelite vocabulary.)
The third passage — grace alone at every step
Murray, in The Two Covenants, removed the last hiding-place of self-effort with a sentence the most advanced Christian needs to hear as much as the newest.
“It is not only at conversion and our admittance into God’s favour, but throughout all our life, at each step of our way, and amid the highest attainments of the most advanced saint; we owe everything to grace, and grace alone. The thought of merit and work and worthiness is for ever excluded. The exceeding abundance of grace is equally seen in the work which the Holy Spirit every moment maintains within us. We have found that the central blessing of the New Covenant, flowing from Christ’s redemption and the pardon of our sins, is the new heart in which God’s law and fear and love have been put.”
— Andrew Murray, The Two Covenants
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly.
Throughout all our life, at each step of our way, and amid the highest attainments of the most advanced saint; we owe everything to grace, and grace alone. This is the sentence that closes the door on the long Christian temptation to live the new covenant by old-covenant means. The temptation has been honest. The believer reads the Bible faithfully, prays faithfully, serves faithfully — and slowly, over years, begins to think that the advancing is a thing she is doing, by effort. Murray, with great pastoral firmness, will not let her keep that fiction. Every step — including the highest attainment of the most advanced saint — is grace. Grace alone. The new covenant has no second tier where merit takes over. There is no point at which the Christian outgrows dependence on the gift.
The central blessing of the New Covenant, flowing from Christ’s redemption and the pardon of our sins, is the new heart in which God’s law and fear and love have been put. This is Murray’s working definition of the new covenant in one sentence. The blessing is the new heart. The law is in it. The fear and the love of God are in it. The verb is have been put — past tense, completed action, accomplished by Christ at the cross, not by you at the prayer-bench. What is left for you is not the production of the new heart. What is left is the slow daily living from the heart already given.
The two covenants, Murray distinguished, are not two different ways of pleasing the same God. They are two different directions of the same divine love. The old covenant was God’s law moving outward, asking the will to climb. The new covenant is God’s Spirit moving inward, putting the law into the heart so the climb is no longer required. The exhaustion you have been carrying is the exhaustion of trying to live the second covenant by the means of the first. Murray’s slow correction is that the means changed at the cross. The grace is given. The Spirit is within. The heart is new. The believing is the daily recognising of what has already, in very deed, been done.
What the slow practice will do over a year
If you walk the question what is the new covenant in Christianity with Murray’s three passages as your quiet companion for the next year, what changes is the direction of your Christian life. The effort upward, slowly, stops. The receiving inward, slowly, starts. The old-covenant tightness in the body lowers. The new-covenant indwelling becomes, not a doctrine you assent to, but a quiet centre you live from. The high attainments stop being your project and start being His outflow. The exhaustion lifts. The Spirit, present and abiding and all-comprehending, takes the place in your religion He has in God’s plan.
Murray would say — and The Two Covenants says, in its closing chapter — that the new-covenant life is not finally achieved. It is daily entered. The slow walk is the practice. The new heart is His.
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A daily home for the new-heart practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each evening, a short scriptural passage and room for the honest sentence — a small daily place to regard the spiritual realities as actually and in very deed existing within, and to let the Spirit’s work be quietly received rather than chased.
We plan, in time, to reprint The Two Covenants through Everspring Press in a slow modern edition for the believer who has been trying, faithfully and for too long, to live the second covenant by the means of the first.
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — the spiritual realities actually existing within, the Holy Spirit as the present and abiding gift, grace alone at every step — into a daily companion for the believer whose effort has, at last, run out, and whose heart is ready to be lived from rather than climbed toward.
