[Thanks to my friend, David, expert on finding Christ in culture, for this little piece if information.]

During U2’s Elevation Tour, Bono quoted from Peterson’s Bible paraphrase, The Message, during the opening moments of “Where the Streets Have No Name:”

What can I give back to God for the blessings he’s poured out on me? I’ll lift high the cup of salvation – A toast to God! I’ll pray in the name of God; I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do, and I’ll do it together with his people (Psalm 116:12-14).

This verse is a great example of the new covenant in the Old Testament. This is a Psalm of David, and David got it. David got that the old way and the new way are both in the process of coming to know God and walk with Him.

David knew what it was like to try and follow the laws of God and fail. He failed miserably on a number of counts, adultery and murder being the most obvious, but David also found out about God’s forgiveness, God’s love and His salvation, and even though he may not have fully grasped what we know now — that the blood of Christ would have to fill that cup of salvation* — he knew that salvation was something God freely offered, and not anything he could earn.

The closest he could come to earning his salvation was to raise a toast to God. If he had earned it or deserved it, he would have toasted his own accomplishments, but as it was, he had no accomplishments to toast.

The fact that he is going to complete the promise gives indication that the promise began earlier in his life — that he had tried and failed and perhaps given up on the promise altogether. That’s all old covenant. But now he’s seen something else. He’s seen his salvation. He drank from the cup of what he could not earn, and his response is to receive it, raise a toast to the one who gave it to him, and complete what he started.

Whatever we do for God is in response to what He has done for us, and it is ultimately done in the power of the one who has already completed it. Our very lives lived out in faith are a toast to the one who accomplished our salvation and can now complete the promise in us through what David could only prophesy about: His Spirit living is us. That’s the new way.

*I say this also wondering if David might have known what would be in that cup. I think we often sell people in the Old Testament short on what they could have known and figured out from the prophesies — David himself being the author of some of those in his Psalms.