I will use the defintion of "covenant" from the NT given by Progressive Dispensationalist Robert L. Saucy: "According to Johannes Behm, the true religious sense of the term 'diatheke' ('covenant') in the New Testament is the 'disposition of God, the mighty declaration of the sovereign will of God in history, by which He orders the relation between Himself and men according to His own saving purposes, and carries with it the authorative divine ordering'" (Saucy, The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism [Zondervan Publishing House, 1993], p.132).

The primary meaning of the Greek word translated covenant in the NT is "a disposition, arrangement of any sort, which one wishes to be valid" (Thayer's Greek English Lexicon).

Christians are ministers of today's New Covenant and are ministers of the Spirit which gives life:

"He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant-not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor.3:6; NIV).

The Christian ministers the gospel that comes in the power of the Holy Spirit to the sinner and upon believing the gospel the sinner is "born again". This is a "heavenly" blessing, as witnessed by the Lord Jesus' words spoken to Nicodemus.

The Christian is said to have a "heavenly" citizenship: "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ" (Phil.3:20; NIV).

At the moment the sinner believes the gospel he is "born again" (1 Pet.1:23) and he becomes a participant in today's New Covenant. Under Israel's New Covenant the spiritual blessings will be received on earth but under today's New Covenant the Father "hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ" (Eph.1:3).

Lewis Sperry Chafer writes that "The Church is composed of all nations, including Israelites, and sustains no citizenship here, but instead the believers are strangers and pilgrims...every covenant or promise for the Church is for a heavenly reality, and she continues in heavenly citizenship when the heavens are recreated" [emphasis added] (Chafer, Systematic Theology, IV:47-53).

Chafer correctly understands that today's New Covenant "for the church is for a heavenly reality." Paul writes that the Lord "hath quickened us together with Christ...and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph.2:5-6).

Therefore today's New Covenant is in regard to an "arrangement" where the Lord orders a relationship between Himself and believers. In this arrangement it is the "individual" believer who receives the blessings of this arrangement, and these blessings are received "in heavenly places in Christ."

The same definition for covenant given by Saucy fits Israel's New Covenant. Under Israel's New Covenant the Lord will "order the relationship between Himself" and the "nation" of Israel, and that ordering will be an "earthly" one where the nation will receive spiritual blessings on the earth. The nation will be regenerated and will receive the forgiveness of sins and many other blessings.

This covenant is on an altogether lower level, and the blessings that will be received by the nation of Israel on the earth are clearly "types" of the blessings that the individual believer receives today "in heavenly places in Christ."

Glenny admits that today's blessings "surpass" the blessings of Israel's New Covenant, writing that "the context in 1 Peter indicates that Peter is doing more than simply comparing Israel and the church; the context of 1 Peter demonstrates a divinely ordained historical correspondence and an escalation from lesser to greater, which indicates a typological-prophetic connection between Israel and the church" (Blaising and Bock,Ibid., p.181).