New and Everlasting

One of the phrases that we often hear in the Church is the “new and everlasting covenant.”  This comes from the Doctrine and Covenants and only appears in a few sections.  The first is in a revelation given shortly after the organization of the Church when the Lord said, “Behold, I say unto you that all old covenants have I caused to be done away in this thing; and this is a new and an everlasting covenant, even that which was from the beginning” (D&C 22:1).  The phrase is then used in one of the last sections, D&C 132, in which the Lord spoke about celestial marriage and the need to be married “by the new and everlasting covenant” (v19).  In the previous section we find the phrase “new and everlasting covenant of marriage,” the only time that phrase is used.  From these we gather that marriage plays a prominent role in the new and everlasting covenant, but it does not encompass the whole of it.  Elder Christofferson gave us this succinct definition of what it is: “The new and everlasting covenant is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, the doctrines and commandments of the gospel constitute the substance of an everlasting covenant between God and man that is newly restored in each dispensation.”

               As I was thinking about the new and everlasting covenant today I realized that at least in one sense the two adjectives “new” and “everlasting” are actually opposites.  Something that is new is just beginning; something that is everlasting has been around forever and will exist forever.  The verse above in D&C 22 seems to highlight this contrast: all the old covenants are done away (i.e. we are getting something new) but at the same time what we receive is “that which was from the beginning” (i.e. we are not getting something new).  It reminds me of the phrases that the Lord is “the beginning and the end” and “the first and the last”—they seem like paradoxes until we understand that he is the first/the beginning in some ways and the last/the end in other ways (D&C 38:1, 110:4).  For example, He was the Firstborn of His Father but He was also the last in terms of suffering because He suffered more than anyone else.  Clearly the Lord is trying to teach us something about the covenants we make in the gospel by using the phrase “new and everlasting.”  I think there are multiple teachings we might extract from the term.  On one level, the restoration was new because Joseph Smith received it directly from the Lord, but at the same time what he received was the plan from before the world began and so it was everlasting.  The ordinances we receive are new to us and yet they are the same everlasting covenants that have been around since Adam was on the earth.  They are also new in that they make us new as we receive them and become a “new creature in Christ;” yet these covenants we make are really the same promises we made before we even came to the earth (2 Corinthians 5:17).  Perhaps the important thing for us is to remember that whatever important principle or practice seems new to us in the gospel, we can know that it has in reality been around since the beginning—it is everlasting.