The Newness of the Spirit and the Oldness of the Letter

The Newness of the Spirit and the Oldness of the Letter

All worship service that is not in the newness of spirit is human and belongs in the Old Testament. God established the old covenant with the natural man, and the worship service was therefore natural and human. They served God according to His precepts—that is, according to the letter, with their old human nature.

God established the new covenant with the spirit of man. He who worships God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Thus our spirit is lifted out of our natural and human way of being and is placed into this newness, namely, the Spirit of God. By this our worship of God has now become spiritual. We shall now live and walk and adore and worship God in this Spirit. This is the inner and invisible glory of the new covenant. In the new covenant we do not take along the flesh with its passions and desires; Christ has died, and we who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with all its passions and desires. For God, in the new covenant, has not entered into a covenant with the old nature that was utterly incapable of serving God that even the Law was powerless because of the flesh. However, by establishing the new covenant with man, He gave him a means—namely the cross—by which he could get rid of the flesh. So now our flesh is crucified and we no longer need to walk in it, but we walk in the Spirit.

In the old covenant a person could receive forgiveness for his sins, and he could serve God on a natural plane. Even now most believers serve God according to their old nature, often striving to do it as best as they can. However, there is always disunity among them and those who serve God in the newness of the spirit. There is an essential difference between them; they cannot be one in their experiences because each of them serves God in his own way. The first serve God on a human level; the latter serve Him in a spiritual manner. It is useless for them to come to any kind of compromise as if they were one; they should rather come to this firm conclusion that they serve God in two different ways.

However, now that we have received the Spirit of God, it is also vital that we walk in this Spirit and hear what He says and obey what we hear, because otherwise we will easily revert to the oldness of the letter and serve God on a human level instead of in the spirit. We find much of this human and natural way of serving God in the free assemblies in our land. They usually do not choose the old Lutheran forms, but they do invent other methods. However, the old nature is and remains the old nature whether they go around mumbling prayers as the Catholics do or hang their heads in order to make a humble appearance or rejoice loudly over God and His love or laugh and are happy over the many preacher stories of the “free” preachers and their comical behavior, or whether they descend to a more serious mood, captivated by his oratorical gifts. All that is and remains only a catholic form or the usual, human way of serving God, with all of it belonging to the old nature, and it has nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with the newness of the spirit. And those poor sheep in many of the “free assemblies” who at one time did receive the Spirit of God, are now left—in most places—with essentially the old ways with the word “free” on the outside like a sign. But when you pretend to be something you are not, the whole thing ends up as hypocrisy.

The new way of worshiping God with the old nature in the free assemblies is much more dangerous, because there the old nature rejoices, while in other places they sigh, and in yet other places they strive and toil with all kinds of works in order to please God. It is easily seen that the old nature is active because people get just as excited over religious comedy as they do over the Word itself. But the Spirit of God is not pleased with that kind of rejoicing. Consequently, there is also division and disunity between the “free” who worship God according to the old nature with its new methods, and those who continue to worship God in spirit.

This is precisely why in many places there are disputes concerning Skjulte Skatter and what this publication stands for. Nevertheless, it will always be our task and joy to drive out the bondwoman and her son whether they exult or sigh or complain. But if someone acts in defense of the new methods by which the old nature serves God, he will personally have to bear responsibility for it—regardless of who he is. And we will urgently pray the brethren to keep their eyes open for these things, so that they will not be deceived one day.