Amid the darkness of Israel’s rebellion and the failure of David’s house, the LORD spoke about a promised new or everlasting covenant. This covenant would emerge out of the LORD's previous covenant promises.
7 For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8 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.
9 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.
10 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.
11 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.
12 For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
13 By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.
—Hebrews 8:7-13 NIV
In Hebrews 8:7-13 (and the text the author quotes here, Jeremiah 31:31-34), we learn that the problem with the old covenant was that Israel was unfaithful. Look at Hebrews 8:9: "...they did not remain faithful." Israel broke the covenant. But with the new covenant, the LORD makes three promises:
The people will obey because God will put the law on their hearts (Heb 8:10)
Every member of the new covenant will actually know God (Heb 8:11)
God will accomplish this by fully and finally forgiving all the sin of his people. (Heb 8:12)
We cannot miss this third point. In the covenants with Adam, Noah, and Israel, obedience would bring life. Disobedience would bring death. But the new covenant begins with full and complete forgiveness. Right at the outset of the new covenant, God dealt fully and finally with our covenant-breaking by pouring out his justice on Jesus in our place. Thus, there is nothing left to break the covenant. Through the cross, God removed every barrier between us and his faithful, covenant love. As the Apostle Paul proclaims in Colossians 1:9-15:
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
—Colossians 1:19-15
Only if Jesus was God the Son who fully entered our humanity as David's son could he be a sufficient substitute for our sins and so bring about God's promised new covenant.
We read more about the promised new covenant in Jeremiah 32:
36 “Now therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, ‘It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, and by pestilence’: 37 Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation. I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety. 38 And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 39 I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. 40 I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. 41 I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.
—Jeremiah 32:36-41 ESV
Here in Jeremiah 32:38-41 God also makes several promises about the new covenant:
This covenant will last forever (Jer 32:40)
The LORD will never stop doing good and giving life to the people (Jer 32:40-41)
The LORD will create obedience in the hearts of his people by causing their hearts to fear and love him (Jer 32:40)
The LORD also speaks about the promised new covenant through the Prophet Ezekiel:
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.
—Ezekiel 36:26-28 NIV
In Ezekiel 36:26-28, God promised to give his people a new heart by giving them the Holy Spirit. Whereas the old covenant commanded Israel to circumcise their own hearts (Deut 10:16), God had promised through Moses that in the future:
The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.
—Deuteronomy 30:6
These verses in Ezekiel reflect God's commitment to fulfill this promise. And God did fulfill it when Jesus went up into heaven to receive "the promised Holy Spirit" from the Father and then pour out the Spirit of God down upon his people at Pentecost (Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2).
Jesus Christ: The Climax of the Covenants
The NT testifies to Jesus within this OT covenantal context. Matthew opens by introducing Jesus as the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. Mark begins with the good news of God’s kingdom. Luke starts out by showing how Jesus’s birth brings about God’s long-awaited promise to overcome the curse of sin and death. And John begins by identifying Jesus as Yahweh Incarnate, the one who fulfills and replaces the Mosaic Law with something better.
So, what do we learn about who Jesus is from these progressive covenants?
Consider how Jesus uniquely meets the three needs we pointed out along the way:
(1) He is a new covenant head, who is the son of David, the offspring of Abraham, and the seed of Eve. He is fully human, a Hebrew from the tribe of Judah and the line of David. Yet, he is also more than this. He is God the Son. Just as the LORD himself promised to come down and deliver his people, so Jesus came down into our humanity to save us from our sins (John 3:16; 1 Tim 1:15). He is the God-man, fully God and fully man united in one person. And as the God-man, Christ alone meets our need for a new covenant head who is both like Adam but altogether different than Adam. He is the Last Adam.
(2) Jesus perfectly obeyed the Law and so received life. When others unjustly put him to death, God vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead. Not only this, but his obedience secured righteousness for all his people. When the Spirit joins us to Jesus through faith, the outcome of his perfect obedience becomes ours: righteousness with God.
(3) Jesus provided full and final forgiveness for our sins by dying in our place on the cross. He delivered us from death by overcoming the grave. He freed us from the curse by pouring out the promised Holy Spirit upon us. He defeated the dark powers that held us captive (Col 2:15). Thus, as Paul says in Romans 8:1, "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ." God has already freed us from sin and darkness and freed us for Christ, even as we wait for Jesus to return to fully and finally deliver us and this creation from the curse.
Take some time to worship the Lord Jesus Christ before moving on: