The New Testament believers are not under the law in God’s economy but under the grace in God’s economy (Rom. 6:14). Today we are not the saints in the Old Testament who were under the law; rather, as the New Testament believers, we are all under the grace of God.
To carry out God’s economy and achieve the purpose of obtaining an organism for God involves two covenants. One covenant is a covenant that existed originally, and the other covenant is a covenant added along the way, a covenant that should have been unnecessary. The Bible uses two women to signify these two covenants: The first woman is Sarah, the wife of Abraham as the rightful woman, and the other woman is Hagar, who was a concubine. In the Bible, the position of the law is like that of a concubine and not like that of a rightful woman, so the children brought forth by the law were unto slavery and could not be reckoned as the free children of God (cf. Gal. 4:22-31).
In between the covenant that God made with Abraham and the new covenant that the Lord enacted with His precious blood, there was the covenant of Moses. Moses, who, on the one hand, represented God, and on the other hand, represented Israel, enacted a covenant for the two parties, which covenant was the old covenant. The old covenant, referred to as “the first” in Hebrews 8, was a covenant which was becoming old and growing decrepit and which was near to disappearing (vv. 13b, 7a). This first covenant was a covenant that should not have existed; it was not in God’s plan but was added along the way. We may illustrate this in the following way: A person drives from Anaheim to the airport, and because he has no plan to see a doctor on the way, he expects to arrive at the airport in fifty minutes. However, along the way he has an accident and is injured. The car is pulled aside, while a policeman calls a doctor. This is the story of the law of the Old Testament. According to Romans 5, the law was something added; it was not something in the original plan but was inserted afterwards. The law is God’s portrait, God’s photograph; it is not God Himself. The photograph came first, and then the person Himself followed. The law is God’s photograph, and grace is God Himself. Before God came, He first sent a picture to testify of Himself and also to expose man’s real condition. God knew that man had fallen to such an extent that he was filled with the devil, having the devil’s life and nature and even the devil himself, so that man could not walk according to God’s law.
When the Lord Jesus came (by God’s incarnation), grace came. Grace is for the new covenant in God’s economy, which is also called the second covenant, the better covenant (Heb. 8:13a, 7c, 6b). The law requires us to do something by ourselves; grace is God doing something for us. Actually, we do not have to do anything, and we cannot do anything. God does not require us to do anything; He does everything for us from the beginning to the end. It was God who carried out His incarnation, it was He who lived out His human living for thirty-three and a half years, it was He who accomplished the all-inclusive death on the cross, it was He who attained His entrance into resurrection, and it was He who accomplished His entrance into ascension. Everything was accomplished by Him. We just need to enter into His accomplishments and enjoy Him as our rest. This is grace.