The following is an excerpted and edited portion of a message taught by Dr. Creflo Dollar on Sunday, August 27.
The New Covenant didn’t start until Jesus died and shed His blood, so there’s a new contract, a new agreement. In Second Timothy, chapter 2, verse 15, the King James Bible says:
Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Now, If the scripture says to “rightly divide the word of truth,” what happens when you wrongly divide it? How you believe will determine how you live. Right believing equals right living. But if you believe wrongly you’re going to live wrongly, and it starts off with the Word being divided wrongly.
The Amplified Bible says:
Study and be eager and do your utmost to present yourself to God approved (tested by trial), a workman who has no cause to be ashamed, correctly analyzing and accurately dividing [rightly handling and skillfully teaching] the Word of Truth.
We’ve got to be careful not to declare something according to the old agreement that is no longer the requirement in the new agreement. And then there’s something worse than that. It’s when you try to mix the requirements of the old with the requirements of the new. What do you have then? Babylon, confusion by mixture.
The Bible says you can’t put new wine in old wineskins because it will burst and you won’t get the benefit out of either one of them. But you’ve got a lot of churches that mix the old agreement with the new agreement.
Some say, "Well, the Bible says work out your own salvation."
I thought Jesus worked that out for me. In fact, I couldn’t work it out, which is why I needed Jesus to come and do it. If I could have worked it out by myself then He just wasted His blood and His body.
John, chapter 1, verse 17:
Now there’s an obvious distinction here that needs to be reconciled – the law that came by Moses and grace, which is the truth. That’s got to be correctly analyzed – the law that came by Moses versus the grace and truth that came by Jesus. The Old Covenant versus the New Covenant. The old agreement versus the new agreement.
Look at it this way: If you were under a contract that ended in 1982, and you’re still trying to live by a contract that is obsolete – voided out, no good, expired – that’s not good. That’s not for the dispensation that you’re in now. Do you see the problem? If you don’t rightly divide those you’re going to take hold of an agreement that’s expired, and you’re going to try to bring it over into the dispensation or the age that you live in right now. It’s like using a credit card that’s expired. You can run it through all day long at the store, but it’s not going to purchase anything.
There is a difference between the Old and the New Covenants, so it’s of utmost importance that we rightly interpret the Word of God regarding what speaks of the Old Covenant and what speaks of the New Covenant. If we’re not careful we might end up preaching elements of the Old Covenant as if they were for us today.
Now I’m not trying to say there is one part of the Bible that’s more important than the other part. I am trying to say that you’re not really going to see the Old Covenant until you put on New Covenant glasses. See, I teach from the Old Covenant now that I have on the right kind of glasses. So I’m not one of those guys who say, “I’m a New Covenant kind of Christian.” No, I’m a whole Bible kind of Christian.
The Bible says that those things that were written aforetime were written for our learning so that we through them might have hope, but you just have to know how to see [them] with New Covenant glasses so you won’t be trying to ask God to rain down fire and burn up somebody because you’re mad at them because they didn’t give you your twenty-five dollars last week. That doesn’t work anymore.
So as we read the Bible let’s ask ourselves, is this spoken before or after the cross?
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