The New Covenant (Complete Fulfillment, Part 6)

Previously in this series we have seen that God’s covenants form the backbone of the Bible and serve to reveal his character and ours. Using the graphic at right, we have looked at how each covenant fits in the story line of Scripture and seen how each one has been violated by human sin. Thus, each covenant illustrates both humanity’s need for a Savior and the roles that Savior will need to fulfill. Understanding how Christ fulfills those covenants is essential to our understanding of the New Covenant on which our all of our hope for today and tomorrow is placed.

So what makes this New Covenant “new”? To understand that, let’s go back to the Old Testament where it was promised:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:31-34).

The Old Testament is the story of generation after generation of people breaking covenant with God. But in Jeremiah God promised something entirely different. This new covenant would become the basis upon which God would ultimately fulfill His promise to Abraham: “I will be their God” (see Gen. 17:7-8). According to Jeremiah, this New Covenant is “new” because it is:

1. Internal—Rather than working from the outside in with commands carved on stone tablets, God writes his precepts directly on the hearts of his New Covenant people. As God said to Ezekiel: “. . . I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (11:19-20). New Covenant obedience comes from the heart.

2. Unmixed—the Old Covenant community was primarily racial. Biological offspring of Israel were inducted into the covenant community as infants by the rite of circumcision, and were subject to its jurisdiction (and its blessings and its curses) whether they believed God or not. Israel’s rocky history reveals that the covenant community seldom contained more than a remnant of hearts faithful to God. By contrast, God describes the New Covenant community as a people who “all know me.” It consists only of believers, people with new hearts unpon whichGod has written his law. This is not to say that God’s people do not need instruction in God’s word. Rather it is to say that they no longer need to be evangelized. And, as Jeremiah tells us: he has forgiven their iniquities, which leads us to another new aspect of the New Covenant.

3. Perfectly mediated—under the Old Covenant even the priests were sinful. They needed to make sacrifices for their own sin before they could offer sacrifices for the people, “but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever” (Heb. 7:28) For “ . . . every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God . . . For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Heb. 10: 11-14). Christ is the perfect priest. But not only that, he is himself the ultimate sacrifice for sin. “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb. 10:4). This leads us to a final new aspect of the New Covenant.

4. Unbreakable—The fundamental weakness of the old covenants has always been human sin. But, as Paul puts it: “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4). So, as strange and impossible as it seems, in Christ’s perfection, not only are we perfected, but as we walk according to his Spirit, we find ourselves actually fulfilling God’s law.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:31-35, 37-39).

This, my dear brothers and sisters is the confidence that the New Covenant in Christ’s blood breathes into his people. This is the great love to which all Scripture points. This is the joy of our “already” and our confidence in the fulfilments of the “not yet”. The blood of Christ, proof of his love, is the assurance of our great and glorious future with him.

*This graphic borrows several details from Fig. 16.3 in Kingdom Through Covenant, by Peter Gentry & Stephen Wellum. Wellum taught a biblical theology class I audited at Cornerstone Seminary in 2021. When I realized that his book contained a diagram similar to the one I had envisioned, I incorporated several details of his diagram into my own.