What's New About the New Covenant? (Jeremiah 31:31-37)
Writing from Jerusalem at a time when Judah was being exiled to Babylon, Jeremiah prophesied with a purpose similar to that of Isaiah a century prior: comfort (cf. Isa. 40:1). Having received a divine dream of God’s glorious plans to restore His people (cf. Jer. 31:26), Jeremiah had quite a bit of hope to give those exiles who were not only confused, frightened, and despondent, but also plagued with misinformation and lies from false prophets (cf. Jer. 29:15-32). And so it was that God commanded him to write down these words in a book (cf. Jer. 30:2), a book that many scholars today refer to as the “Book of Consolation.”[1] Spanning from chapter thirty to chapter thirty-three, this “Book of Consolation” also contains one of the most key passages in all the Old Testament—the promise of the New Covenant. Because of its massive significance, this passage is widely known. But because it’s widely known, it’s also widely misunderstood.
For example, since Jeremiah 31:33 speaks of God putting His law within His people, and Ezekiel 36:26 speaks of God giving His people a new heart, many Dispensationalists have wrongly concluded that the Holy Spirit’s work of regeneration is strictly a New Covenant reality. That is to say, some think that believers in the Old Testament did not experience the new birth during their lifetime, and that regeneration is solely an aspect of God’s saving work that began on the day of Pentecost. Of course, that idea clashes with the reality that all men are born totally depraved and enslaved to sin, unable to understand—much less believe—spiritual realities like the promises of God (cf. Gen. 6:5, Psa. 51:5, Rom. 3:10-18, Rom. 6:6-7, 1 Cor. 2:14, et. al). Even Jeremiah himself said that the human heart is “more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9). Thus, in order for an Old Testament saint to believe in the coming Savior, he or she would have first needed a new heart—to be born again, just like Moses taught (cf. Deut. 29:2-4). Although the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a New Covenant reality, the regenerating work of the Spirit is not. If no one in the Old Testament had been born again, no one in the Old Testament would have come to genuine faith in the promised Messiah.
John MacArthur notes this as well:
Old Testament believers were regenerated. They were born again. They were made new. They were transformed by the power of God through the agency of the Holy Spirit. That should be patently obvious. Why? Well, first of all, they were all wretched sinners. They were all totally depraved. Their hearts were deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. They had no capacity to change. They couldn’t do anything to alter their wretched condition. Can the Ethiopian change his color; can the leopard change his spots? As a prophet, the answer is “no.” So there are all of humanity, trapped in this terrible condition of utter depravity and inability; they can’t do anything to please God. Even their righteousness is what? Filthy rags. Now, how, on their own, are they going to start to love God, please God, hate sin, serve God, and worship God? Can’t happen. Can’t happen. It’s filthy rags. They have to be regenerated.[2]
On the other hand, many Covenantalists have wrongly asserted that the New Covenant promise was given by Jeremiah to the Church, rather than to the nation of Israel. In reference to Jeremiah’s words that the New Covenant will be made “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah” (Jer. 31:31), one commentator claimed, “In other words, Israel and Judah stand here for the true people or church of God, especially the gospel church.”[3] Yet, such a claim assaults the very essence of the language itself, as Jeremiah plainly used the words “Israel” and “Judah” to refer to the Northern and Southern Kingdoms which would one day be united again through this New Covenant. Furthermore, by sandwiching the description of the New Covenant between other promises that refer to literal, historical locations such as “Samaria” (Jer. 31:5), and “Tower of Hananel” (Jer. 31:38), what’s unmistakable is that Jeremiah was speaking to the actual ethnic nation of those physically descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The future restoration of the nation of Israel is certain, and the New Covenant is that guarantee (cf. Jer. 31:37, Rom. 11:26).
MacArthur addresses this misunderstanding as well:
The new covenant is not made with the Church; it is made with the same people the old covenant was made with. It is made with Israel. You say, “Well, what are we doing?” Well, we’re beneficiaries of the old covenant just like Gentiles could be beneficiaries—we’re beneficiaries of the new covenant just like Gentiles could be beneficiaries of the old covenant. But notice, it couldn’t be any clearer, “I will make a new covenant with the Church”—is that what it says? No—“with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” And the Amillennialist—those are people who don’t believe in any kingdom or any restoration of Israel—comes along and says, “Well, when the Jews executed Christ, they forfeited everything.” Not so, friend. God said, “I will make a new covenant with Israel and Judah.” That’s both sections of Israel. Right? You say, “I thought the Northern tribes got lost.” They may have gotten lost, but God knows where they are. They may be lost to some people, and there may be a lot of weird explanations about who they are, but they’re not lost to God. And God has made His covenant with His people. It’s an important note. You see, nowhere in Scripture do you read that God ever made a covenant with Gentiles.[4]
When it comes to the New Covenant, the word “new” used in the Septuagint (Greek translation) of this passage, as well as the word “new” repeated in the book of Hebrew’s quotation of this passage, is kainos (which means “a new edition”), rather than neos (which means “brand new”). This indicates that the New Covenant was not, and is not, something entirely different from the Old Covenant. Instead, there is actually much continuity.[5] With these things in mind—that the New Covenant was made with ethnic Israel (not the Church) just like previous covenants, and that the New Covenant did not newly introduce the concept of regeneration (but continued on with it)—then the question is: what exactly is new about the New Covenant?
Jeremiah answers this question with the New Covenant’s announcement (Jer. 31:31-32), aspects (Jer. 31:33-34), and assurance (Jer. 31:35-37), providing hope and joy to believers of the past as well as believers of today.
The Announcement of the New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-32)
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
Jeremiah began this portion of his message of hope with the words “Behold, days are coming,” which is a Messianic formula that speaks to the end times (cf. Jer. 3:16, 16:14, 23:5, et. al.).[6] Rather than giving false hope to the exiles that they would be restored to Edenic conditions upon the completion of their seventy year captivity, Jeremiah pointed their eyes further out to the distant future. Even though their near future would include a return to the land under the leadership of men like Zerubbabel and Nehemiah, and at the direction of King Cyrus of Persia, that return would not encompass the glorious realities of unending peace, joy, and freedom that Jeremiah received in his divine dream written just prior to this announcement (cf. Jer. 30:1-31:26). Instead, Jeremiah made it clear that the fulfillment of their true peace in the land would only come when the Messiah arrived.
But that raises an interesting question: why had Israel forfeited their peace in the land in the first place? Why had their history up to that point in time been so tumultuous anyway? After all, by the time Jeremiah wrote this prophecy, the Northern Kingdom had already been swept away by Assyria, and the Southern Kingdom was in the process of being swept away by Babylon—and all this was after centuries of war and strife with other neighboring nations like Philistia and Syria.
Scripture makes the reason for their exile clear in passages like 2 Kings 18:11-12: “Then the king of Assyria carried Israel away into exile to Assyria, and put them in Halah and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes, because they did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed His covenant, even all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded; they would neither listen nor do it” (emphasis mine). In other words, Moses warned the people that if they did not obey the covenant established at Mount Sinai, God would punish them for their sins, ultimately banishing them from the land (cf. Deut. 28:64-65). And that is exactly what happened. Iniquity led to exile.
Jeremiah went on to recount the fact that after God did a miraculous work of redeeming His people out of Egypt, they had no interest in remaining faithful to the covenant He established with them. In fact, because they broke the covenant, God turned His back on them (cf. Jer. 7:15, 28-29). The end of Jeremiah’s announcement of the New Covenant indicates this as well. Jeremiah 31:32 says, “‘…My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord.” Based on textual critical considerations, and the citation of this passage in Hebrews 8:9, the phrase, “although I was a husband to them” is better rendered as “and I did not care for them.” This alternative phrase is based on manuscript variations of a single Hebrew letter: the word ba’alti (“I was a husband”) versus the word ga’alti (“I abhorred”).[7] Ultimately, the point is this: when the people abandoned the Mosaic Covenant, God despised them.
On that basis, the fact that God promised to return His people back to the Promised Land presented a dilemma: if transgressing the Mosaic Covenant led to exile in the first place, what’s to say it wouldn’t happen again? What comfort would there be in a promise that God would restore His people, if it left open the possibility of being subsequently re-exiled? After all, the cycle of sin, suffering, sorrow, and salvation happened over and over again in the book of Judges. The nation turned from God, experienced judgment, cried out for help, and found deliverance through a God-appointed judge. But then in due time, they fell right back into their sinful habits, needing redemption repeatedly. Therefore, restoration on its own could not provide any guarantee of long-term relief.
What the nation really needed was a new covenant. And what they needed, God provided.
The Aspects of the New Covenant (Jer. 31:33-34)
“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
At the outset, what is evident is that this covenant is a sovereign, unilateral work of God. The phrase “I will” echoes as a refrain in the description of this covenant, occurring a whopping six times in two short verses. Rather than blessings that are based upon the obedience of the nation, as under the Old Covenant (cf. Deut. 28:1-2), blessings in the New Covenant are granted solely in accordance with God’s decision to do so. Beyond that, in describing the superiority of the New Covenant, Jeremiah pointed out three aspects that would truly be new in comparison to the Old Covenant: the New Covenant would be permanent, personal, and perfect.
First, Jeremiah described the permanent nature of the New Covenant: “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jer. 31:33b). The Old Covenant, as represented by the Ten Commandments, was written by the finger of God on tablets of stone, and given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Yet, as Scripture shows, while this was happening, the Israelites were at the base of the mountain doing the unthinkable: giving themselves over to idolatry and debauchery (cf. Exod. 32:1-6). When Moses returned to see this, he responded in a moment of abject anger and shattered the two tablets at the foot of the mountain. This shattering was a vivid representation of the breach of the covenant committed by the nation. It’s no surprise, then, that when Moses reiterated the Law of God to the Israelites later on, just prior to entering the Promised Land, he said, “You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul” (Deut. 11:18). This instruction meant that they were to bind themselves to the Law so as never to depart from it. Of course, redemptive history reveals that the nation of Israel did not do that. In contrast, however, the first aspect of the New Covenant revealed that God was going to do what frail humans could not—write His Law upon the hearts of all who were in the New Covenant. When the Law was written on stone tablets, stored away in the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, it was easy for the average Israelite to depart from it. As they say, “Out of sight, out of mind.” But if the Law were written upon the very heart of an individual, that individual could never escape it. And so it is that the New Covenant is permanant for all who are a part of it.
Secondly, the New Covenant is personal: “They shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord” (Jer. 31:34a). In the Old Covenant, only those from the tribe of Levi could serve at the temple, and among them, only those who were descendants of Aaron could serve in the priesthood (a position which allowed an individual to draw nearest to God in worship). Further still, it was only the high priest who could enter into God’s direct presence in the Holy of Holies—and that only once per year on the Day of Atonement. If you were an average Israelite under the Old Covenant, the closest you could get to God’s manifested presence was the courtyard of the temple (cf. Luke 1:10). Your knowledge of God was limited, being mediated through a priesthood. But in the New Covenant, the great high priest is Jesus, who allows all believers to draw near to God and boldly approach His throne (cf. Heb. 4:15-16). Clothed in the righteousness of Christ, with our sins expiated on the cross, all are now able to enter God’s presence directly (cf. Jer. 30:21, Isa. 6:5-7). And this reality will become even more evident when believers are physically with Christ as well. As one commentator says, “The firsthand knowledge of God will be completely fulfilled in the coming kingdom.”[8] And so it is that the Apostle Peter said that all those in the New Covenant are part of “a royal priesthood” and “a holy nation” (1 Pet. 2:9). The Apostle John, similarly indicated that “He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father” (cf. Rev. 1:6). Intimate knowledge of God is no longer tiered; it is widespread and comprehensive from the least to the greatest. It is mediated through no one but the very Son of God Himself (cf. 1 Tim. 2:5).
Finally, the New Covenant is perfect: “…for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jer. 31:34b). Don’t be mistaken—that’s not to say that the Old Covenant was wrong or bad. After all, the Law of God is good, holy, and right (cf. Rom. 7:12, 1 Tim. 1:8). Rather, it’s that the Old Covenant was weak (cf. Rom. 8:3).
As John MacArthur says,
If the covenant of the Old Testament, the covenant given to Moses, the covenant of law had been perfect, had been flawless, had been faultless, had been able to accomplish all that God wanted to accomplish, there never would have been a New Covenant, right? In other words, the very fact that there's a New Covenant says that the Old Covenant needed to be improved upon. It needed to be bettered.[9]
Though the sacrificial system outlined for the Levitical priesthood was a gracious provision by God for its time, the reality is that the animal sacrifices were not able to provide lasting forgiveness of sin. “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb. 10:4). The fact that sacrifices under the Old Covenant had to be repeated over and over (including even the greatest of sacrifices performed annually on the Day of Atonement) is proof that this is so. Only a sinless man could serve as a substitute for guilty men; only the Lamb of God could truly take away the sin of the world. As the 1840 Engles’ Catechism asks and answers, “How were sinners saved before Christ came? By believing in the Messiah to come. How did they show their faith? By offering the sacrifices God required. What did these sacrifices represent? Christ, the Lamb of God, who would come to die for sinners.”
And so it is that the Old Covenant was but a template to guide true believers as they looked for something greater (cf. Gal. 3:24).
Under the New Covenant, forgiveness finds its true grounding: the Lord Jesus Christ, serving as both high priest and substitionary sacrifice, took upon Himself the sins of His people on the cross—expiating the guilt of their iniquity, propitiating the wrath of God on their behalf, rising again from the dead, and sitting at the right hand of the Father from which He ever lives to make intercession. Unlike the sacrifices repeated by the Levitical priests, His sacrifice was once for all time. It never was to be repeated, nor did it need to be: it was a perfect sacrifice. Thus, under the New Covenant, God can say, “I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
The Assurance of the New Covenant (Jer. 31:35-37)
Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; the Lord of hosts is His name: “If this fixed order departs from before Me,” declares the Lord, “Then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before Me forever.” Thus says the Lord, “If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done,” declares the Lord.
Jeremiah ended by declaring God’s guarantee that all of this would come to pass. The only way God would let His chosen nation die out, and these promises go unfulfilled, is if the natural phenomena that governed the world—indeed, the very “fixed order” of life itself—stopped operating. Just as the sun could be depended upon for plant-nourishing light, and just as the stars could be depended on for direction-providing guidance, so too could God be depended upon to preserve His people and bring them safely into His kingdom. In spite of their sin, the exiles in Babylon were assured that just as the far extents of the sky and earth could never be fully explored, neither could God’s protection of His people ever fail. The New Covenant, in all its glory, would come.
And come it did, just as the Lord Jesus Christ declared to His disciples when He instituted the Lord’s Supper, saying, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me,” followed by, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me” (1 Cor. 11:24-25). While history unravels, advancing toward the repentance of the nation of Israel such that they corporately enter into this New Covenant and receive the associated blessings of the promised kingdom, it is the great privilege and joy of Gentiles to be partakers of it through faith alone. Today, as often as we eat the bread and drink the cup, proclaiming the Lord’s death until He comes, may we praise God that the New Covenant is here (cf. 1 Cor. 11:26).
References:
[1] Charles L. Feinberg, Jeremiah: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: The Zondervan Corporation, 1982), 202.
[2] https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/47-21/the-glory-of-the-new-covenant-part-7
[3] https://biblehub.com/commentaries/benson/jeremiah/31.htm
[4] https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1619/the-new-covenant-part-1
[5] https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/new-covenant-2
[6] Charles L. Feinberg, Jeremiah: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: The Zondervan Corporation, 1982), 203.
[7] Ibid., 221-222.
[8] Ibid., 221.
[9] https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1297/victory-in-the-new-covenant