Jesus Christ became a covenant to us (Isa. 42:6d; 49:8d). As a covenant, He is a surety of God being the inheritance to His people (Heb. 7:22). This covenant is a guarantee. It guarantees that God Himself is our inheritance. Ephesians 1:14 says that the Spirit is the pledge of God being our inheritance. Furthermore, the Spirit's sealing is to seal us as God's inheritance (vv. 13, 11). The Spirit put Himself upon us as a seal to indicate that we belong to God. God will inherit us. After this sealing, the Holy Spirit stays in us as a pledge to guarantee us that we have the right to inherit God as our inheritance.
We are God's inheritance not poor sinners. As mere sinners we have nothing and are nothing. We are His inheritance because we have been redeemed into Christ as the element. Because Christ is our element, we have been made excellent, a treasure to be God's inheritance. God Himself is also our inheritance. His divine attributes have become the unsearchable riches of Christ which we inherit. For this, Christ is a surety, and the Spirit is the pledge.
Legally speaking, we sinners, who offended God to the uttermost, could not inherit anything of God. But Christ fulfilled all the requirements of God's righteousness for us. This fulfilling of God's righteous requirements became a justice whereby we are forgiven and redeemed. Now we are no longer sinners, but saints. As saints, legally speaking, we are qualified. We have a righteous standing, a legal standing, to inherit all the things of God! Actually all the things of God are God Himself. God is life; God is love; God is righteousness; God is holiness; God is power; God is strength; and God is might. He is everything. We inherit Him, who is everything, as our inheritance. Christ is the surety, the guarantee, that we will inherit everything of God embodied in Christ.
Christ enacted the new covenant (which became the new testament—the will) with His blood for the redemption of the transgressions of God's people (Matt. 26:28; Heb. 9:15). Suppose that Christ did not die or shed His blood. Then He would have nothing based upon which He could make a covenant. But He died for us according to God's righteous requirements, and the blood He shed through that death was used to form a covenant. Even He Himself said that the cup of the Lord's table was a symbol of the new covenant in His blood (1 Cor. 11:25). He redeemed us back to God and qualified us to inherit everything of God. This is the new covenant. Actually, this new covenant is Christ Himself.
In resurrection Christ became the bequests of the new testament and the Mediator, the Executor, to execute the new testament (Heb. 9:15-17). This implies that Christ is the covenant. Suppose your father gives you a will which says that he will give you ten million dollars and much property. He has the deposit certificate for this money and also the title deeds to the property. If the will did not have these legal papers, the will would be nothing. Thus, in reality, all these legal papers are the will. The new testament is the covenant given to us by God. But what if there were no Christ? Then all the bequests in the new testament—the will—would be nothing. When God gave us the Bible as a will, this meant that God gave us Christ. Christ is the centrality and universality as the reality of the new testament. When Christ is given, that means He is the covenant. We not only have the items of the new testament in our mind, but we also have the reality of this covenant, who is Christ, in our spirit. Christ in our spirit is the reality of the new testament, so He is the covenant.
Christ, as the embodiment of the riches of the Godhead and as the crucified and resurrected One, has become the covenant of God to His people (Col. 2:9; 1:19). He is the covenant of God given to us, the reality of all that God is and of all that God has given us.
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