A New Covenant
Hebrews / Chapter 8 / V8-13
But God found fault with the people and said: “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. ~He 8:8-13
When Jesus came to the world, He marked the beginning of the era of the New Covenant. The passage was quoted from the Old Testament, book of Jeremiah chapter 31. The author specially mentioned it for the sake of the Hebrew Christians, so they would know that the plans for a new covenant had been revealed way back during the time of the Old Testament. If we put ourselves in the shoes of the Israelites, we would realise it was not easy for the Hebrew Christians who had lived thousands of years under the Old Testament Law to now turn away from it and accept a completely new covenant. Therefore, God gave them the book of Hebrews to testify that the new era had truly come and had been made evident in the Old Testament. It was time for them to leave behind the old and embrace the new; to discard the obsolete which accomplished nothing and to live according to the new covenant which was complete, perfect, and able to achieve all things.
Hebrews chapters 8 to 10 speak of Jesus as the mediator of the “more superior” and “more excellent” covenant. A mediator, commonly known as the middleman between two parties, acts as the conciliator in resolving disputes and stands as the witness. In the Old Testament times, whosoever broke the Law and offended God, was required to make a sin offering with a goat or bull to atone for his sins. By doing so, God’s anger might be appeased and the covenant between God and man could be restored and remained binding. Yet in all these, we know that the offering of sacrifices could never cleanse one’s conscience or make anyone perfect. For the man who offers a sacrifice, continues to sin even thereafter. As a result, it is necessary to make offerings repeatedly to atone for his sins, through which he is reminded constantly that he is a sinner. The imperfect ritual of the old covenant persisted for thousands of years until the time of restoration came. When Jesus came, He no longer used the blood of animals, but His own blood, shed once and for all to become the final sin offering and accomplished the eternal act of atonement. Through this one and only sacrifice, all penalties of sins were fully redeemed, guilty consciences were cleansed and sinners were made perfect. All this while, the old covenant had been a foreshadow of something more excellent to come – the new covenant, which was the covenant intended by God from the very beginning. Although the new covenant would not have come without the preceding of the old covenant, with the arrival of the new covenant, the old covenant had served its purpose and therefore made obsolete.
The passage also teaches several other important aspects of the new covenant. During the time of Jeremiah, the Israelites could not understand how God could possibly put His laws in their minds and write them on their hearts, without the need of a teacher, from the youngest to the oldest, everyone would know God. This new covenant differed drastically from the old covenant. The old covenant was stringent and required the laws to be written on stone tablets, to be fervently taught by teachers; whether sitting at home, walking on the road, lying or getting up, at every opportune time the laws should be spoken of. They had to be tied on hands, bound on foreheads and written on door frames of houses and on gates. (Dt 6:6-9) God wanted Israel to do all these so that they would not forget His laws and would keep them deeply embedded in their hearts.
Thus, the new covenant was a complete mystery to them, that even with their most imaginative minds, none of the Israelites could foresee how God was going to fulfil this new covenant. However, believers today and also the Hebrew Christians then understood it completely. When the era of the New Testament arrived, God gave the author of the Law – the Holy Spirit, to be planted in the heart of every believer, who led and taught us all things concerning God. When we received the Lord Jesus as our Saviour, at that very instant, the Holy Spirit entered into our hearts; fulfilling the covenant “I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.” Whether young or old, male or female, if they had believed in the Lord Jesus, each and every one of them would have been taught personally by the Holy Spirit concerning the Word of God – “No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” The author wanted the Hebrew Christians to understand that with the giving of the Holy Spirit, the prophecy concerning the new covenant as spoken in the book of Jeremiah had been fulfilled. The era of the new covenant had come, they ought to depart from the old covenant which was ageing, outdated and would soon disappear.
The old covenant laws brought death, but the Holy Spirit of the new covenant gave life. No matter how diligently the Israelites taught the old covenant laws, they eventually failed to keep them and rebelled against God leading to the downfall of their nation. This is because the Law is spiritual while we are of the flesh, therefore it is impossible for us to keep the Law. But Jesus came and made it all possible, granting us a new hope, by fulfilling the full requirements of the Law and bestowing His righteousness upon us freely. We are now made perfect by Jesus and stand before God unafraid, no longer an object of wrath under His Law.