Where the new covenant is announced
The phrase “new covenant” comes from Jeremiah, and everything the New Testament says about it builds on this passage. We begin here.
“Behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband to them,” says the LORD. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the LORD: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will no longer each teach his neighbor, and every man teach his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD;’ for they will all know me, from their least to their greatest,” says the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Four things stand out. The new covenant is made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It is unlike the Sinai covenant in one stated respect: that covenant “they broke.” Its content is “my law,” the same Hebrew word, torah, that Jeremiah uses for the law of Moses, now written on hearts. And it brings full forgiveness. Nothing here says the law changes. What changes is where it lives and how it is kept.
What the old covenant was
The old covenant is the agreement God made with Israel at Sinai. God spoke his terms, the people bound themselves to them, and the bond was sealed with blood.
“He took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, “We will do all that the LORD has said, and be obedient.” Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, “Look, this is the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has made with you concerning all these words.”
Exodus 24:7-8
A covenant is not the same thing as a law. The law is the content; the covenant is the binding relationship built on it. The Sinai covenant already took in the foreigners living among Israel and the generations not yet born (Deuteronomy 29:10-15), and its promise was that Israel would be the LORD’s own possession among the nations (Exodus 19:5-6).
What went wrong
Hebrews quotes Jeremiah at length and tells us where the fault lay.
“For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. For finding fault with them, he said, “Behold, the days are coming”, says the Lord, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they didn’t continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them,” says the Lord.
Hebrews 8:7-9
The fault was found “with them.” The people did not continue in the covenant. Moses had predicted it before they entered the land (Deuteronomy 31:16, 20), and Jeremiah and Hosea watched it happen (Jeremiah 11:10; Hosea 8:1). Paul says the same in his own words: the law could not produce righteousness in us because “it was weak through the flesh” (Romans 8:3). The weakness was in us. The law itself remained “holy, righteous, and good” (Romans 7:12).
God had already promised the remedy inside the Torah: he himself would circumcise their hearts so that they would love him and live (Deuteronomy 30:6). A covenant written on stone needed a people with new hearts.
What is new
Ezekiel fills in how the writing on the heart happens.
“I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. You will keep my ordinances and do them.”
Ezekiel 36:26-27
Here is the difference. Under the old covenant the people promised to keep God’s statutes and failed; under the new, God puts his Spirit within us and causes us to walk in them. The same statutes, kept by a new power. Paul describes believers as a letter “written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone, but in tablets that are hearts of flesh” (2 Corinthians 3:3).
The new covenant also has a better mediator and a better sacrifice. Jesus is “the mediator of a better covenant, which on better promises has been given as law” (Hebrews 8:6), and his death redeems the transgressions committed under the first covenant (Hebrews 9:15). He entered the Holy Place once for all with his own blood (Hebrews 9:11-12). At the last supper he put that covenant in our hands.
“Likewise, he took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”
Luke 22:20
So the new covenant has the same God, the same people (see Question 9 on how believers from the nations are grafted in), and the same law. What is new is the heart, the Spirit, the Mediator, and the forgiveness.
What Hebrews 8:13 calls obsolete
Now the verse that seems to say the opposite.
“In that he says, “A new covenant”, he has made the first obsolete. But that which is becoming obsolete and grows aged is near to vanishing away.”
Hebrews 8:13
This verse says the first covenant is obsolete, and we do not argue with it. The question is what “the first” refers to, and the letter itself answers. Hebrews is an argument about priesthood and sacrifice. It says that because the priesthood has changed, “there is of necessity a change made also in the law” (Hebrews 7:12), and it names what has been set aside.
“This is a symbol of the present age, where gifts and sacrifices are offered that are incapable, concerning the conscience, of making the worshiper perfect, being only (with foods and drinks and various washings) fleshly ordinances, imposed until a time of reformation.”
Hebrews 9:9-10
The first covenant “had ordinances of divine service and an earthly sanctuary” (Hebrews 9:1), which Hebrews calls a copy and a shadow (Hebrews 8:5). The earthly priesthood and the repeated animal offerings, as the way our sins are dealt with: that administration is what has grown old. Hebrews speaks of priests who are still offering gifts (Hebrews 8:4), so the temple was evidently standing as he wrote, which is why the verse says “becoming obsolete” and “near to vanishing away” rather than already gone.
What Hebrews 8:13 cannot mean is that the commandments are obsolete, because three verses earlier the same chapter quotes God promising to write those commandments on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10). A covenant whose central promise is the law on the heart is not a covenant that discards the law. The writer is not contradicting himself. He is distinguishing the old administration from the enduring instruction it administered.
Paul’s contrast between letter and Spirit fits here too (2 Corinthians 3:6). The letter engraved on stone brought condemnation, because a standard we cannot keep can only accuse. The Spirit writes the same words on hearts of flesh and gives life. The difference is not in the words. It is in us.
Sacrifices cannot be offered today, since there is no temple and no functioning priesthood. Whether they are abolished, and what the prophets say about them, is Question 8.
The difference, side by side
Putting it together:
- Same parties. Both covenants are made with Israel and Judah (Jeremiah 31:31; Hebrews 8:8). Believers from the nations enter by being joined to Israel.
- Same law. The Torah spoken at Sinai is the law God writes on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10).
- Different writing surface. Tablets of stone then; minds and hearts now (2 Corinthians 3:3).
- Different power. The people’s promise then; God’s Spirit within us now (Ezekiel 36:27).
- Different mediator and blood. Moses, with the blood of animals; now the Son, with his own blood, once for all (Hebrews 9:11-15; Luke 22:20).
- Different outcome. A covenant the people broke; a covenant Jesus guarantees (Hebrews 7:22), with sins remembered no more (Hebrews 8:12).
The old covenant rested on the people’s promise to do all that the LORD had said (Exodus 24:7). The new covenant rests on God’s promise to cause us to walk in his statutes (Ezekiel 36:27). That is the difference, and it is why we keep the commandments with gladness rather than dread.