“This is the covenant I will make with the house 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.’’ (v.10)
A covenant is a binding agreement between two parties, normally one is greater and one is less! Several covenants in the O.T. announced what God would do, irrespective of what men might do. However, the Mosaic Covenant differed in that it was conditional: The covenant stated what God would do if the Israelites obeyed his laws, and what He would do if they disobeyed!
The weakness of the Mosaic covenant lay not in Gods ability to do His part, but in man’s inability to live an obedient life. Essentially what the Law could not do was to transform the believer from within, so that righteousness was ‘written on the heart’.
In today’s passage the writer argues the very prediction in Jer 31:31-34, of a ‘new’ covenant to replace the old one given through Moses. This ‘new’ covenant contains three unconditional promises:
- God will transform believers from within, planting His law on the hearts and minds of believers;
- God will establish an unbreakable relationship which will make Him ‘our’ God and us ‘His’ people; and
- God will ‘forgive…..and remember their sins no more’. (v.12)
The new covenant is instituted by the death and resurrection of Christ – Thus in Him, all three promises are our present possession, guaranteed by God Himself!
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Questions:
This chapter in Hebrews talks specifically about the house of Israel, so how does this relate to us? (see Rom 11: 11-24). Is the new covenant really unconditional? How do we gain access to the new covenant?
Pray: Lord, by your Holy Spirit may I fully enter into a righteous life under the new covenant in Christ Jesus, my Lord. Amen.