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Jeremiah's New Covenant, part 8 (final)

Jeremiah 31:31 says,

³¹ “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,”

This New Covenant is not restricted to Israel and Judah, any more than the Old Covenant was. There were Egyptians and perhaps others who left Egypt with the Israelites, and these aliens became part of Israel. Exodus 12:37, 38 says,

³⁷ Now the sons of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, aside from children. ³⁸ A mixed multitude also went up with them, along with flocks and herds, a very large number of livestock.

God made a second covenant with them 40 years later in the plains of Moab (Deuteronomy 29:1), which foreshadowed the New Covenant because it was God’s oath to them. This covenant applied to the aliens as well (Deuteronomy 29:11). Furthermore, this covenant applied to everyone in the world, as we see from Deuteronomy 29:14, 15,

¹⁴ Now not with you alone am I making this covenant and this oath, ¹⁵ but both with those who stand here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here today.

People were either present or not when this covenant was made. The promise to the fathers was not exclusive to their biological children but to all who would join themselves to the covenant (Isaiah 56:6-8). The Holy Spirit was one of those promises (Acts 2:33). Peter learned later that this applied also to the Samaritans (Acts 8:17) and still later to the Romans (Acts 10:44).

The Distinction Between the Covenants

Jeremiah 31:32 continues,

³² “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. “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.”

The New Covenant is “not like” the one made with Israel when God took them out of Egypt—that is, the Old Covenant. The oath at Sinai was made by the Israelites, while the New Covenant speaks only about what God Himself will do. The difference is identical to that of the two covenants in Exodus 19 and Deuteronomy 29.

The Old Covenant at Sinai, God said, was broken, “although I was a husband to them.” God married Israel at Mount Sinai, but Israel proved to be unfaithful. Hosea portrays Israel as a harlot. In Hosea 2:2 God says of Israel, “I am not her husband,” and He then put her away. Jeremiah 3:8 tells us that God gave Israel a bill of divorce.

The New Covenant, then, was a remarriage but based on better promises to ensure that there would be no more need for divorce.

Changing One’s Behavior vs Changing One’s Nature

Jeremiah 31:33 says,

³³ 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.”

The problem with the Old Covenant is that the people vowed to be obedient but were not empowered by the Holy Spirit to fulfill that vow. Hence, they could only change their behavior, which was effective to a point but could not perfect anyone. They all broke the law both outwardly and inwardly, and this meant that they could never truly be His people in the sense that God required.

But the New Covenant, being unlike the other, is one where God vowed to write His law within their hearts. No longer was the law to be an external command that regulated behavior. Now God Himself vowed to make them His people by changing their hearts from the inside. The Father's promise, the Holy Spirit, is the divine agent by which this is to be accomplished.

The law, which emanates from the Father, reveals the nature of God. To write His law upon our hearts is to replace human nature that is mortal and corruptible with the nature of God which is immortal and incorruptible. This transformation does not occur immediately. It comes in a three-step process that is set forth in the three main feasts of the Lord.

Passover is our justification, which comes by Abrahamic faith (Romans 4:21, 22). Pentecost is our sanctification, a process that is worked into us by experience as we learn to hear His voice and as He writes His law on our hearts. Tabernacles is the redemption and glorification of our body, the third and final step where the saints are perfected. Each of these feasts has both a personal and a historic fulfillment.

We should also note here that God’s law has never been set aside. Those who teach such a thing will be the least in the Kingdom (Matthew 5:19). The divine plan is to take the nature of God (that is, His law) and transplant it within the hearts of men by the power of the Spirit. We ought to study the law so that we are aware of the goals of the Holy Spirit as He works within us. By studying the law, we gain an understanding of the divine standard of righteousness that we are to attain, not by the power of flesh, nor by simply changing our behavior, but by observing the way in which the Holy Spirit is gradually changing our hearts to conform to the image of Christ.

Religion compels men to alter their behavior by the power of their flesh. Religion is about self-improvement, and religious prayer hopes that God will assist their flesh in perfecting them. True Christianity is different, for it simply believes the promise of God, having confidence that God is able to do in us what He has promised (Romans 4:21, 22).

By faith we are begotten by the Holy Spirit, resulting in a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)—an embryo, so to speak. This new creation has two parents: God and man. Hence, it is both a son of God and a son of man, even as was Jesus Himself. We are called upon to identify with this new creation and cease to think of ourselves as the man of flesh that was begotten by our earthly fathers. We then live according to that new creation man and no longer follow the dictates of the fleshly man.

The fleshly man, begotten by fleshly fathers, cannot help but sin, because it is mortal and corruptible. The spiritual man, begotten by the Holy Spirit, cannot help but be perfect, as we read in a proper translation of 1 John 3:9,

⁹ That which is begotten of God does not sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.

We have been begotten by holy seed that is incorruptible. The nature of that spiritual man is the same as the nature of his heavenly Father. All those who have Abrahamic faith are called to do that which the incorruptible, spiritual man instructs. As we follow his lead, the Holy Spirit writes the laws of God, one by one, on our hearts. As we do so, we mature spiritually through Pentecost until that great day at the feast of Tabernacles, when we are fully perfected.

Teaching Will Be Unnecessary

Jeremiah 31:34 concludes,

³⁴ “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will 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 present time, there is much need for teaching, because so few understand what God has done by taking an oath to make us His people and to be our God. Yet the day will come when “they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.” This will be in the day that Deuteronomy 29:15 is fulfilled, where God’s oath is fulfilled in all men, whether or not they stood before God in the plains of Moab.

All will know Him because their hearts will be changed. To know God is to have His nature, to know Him by experience. There will be no further need for correction.

The Fixed Order of the Cosmos

Jeremiah 31:35-37 says,

³⁵ 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. ³⁶ “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.” ³⁷ 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.

The fulfillment of God’s New Covenant oath is thus assured. Many have interpreted this to mean that the Jewish nation would remain as a nation. That carnal interpretation runs contrary to the New Covenant as explained in the New Testament. Romans 9:6-8 says,

⁶ … For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel, ⁷ nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but “through Isaac your descendants will be named.” ⁸ That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.

Just because one is biologically descended from Israelites does not make him an Israelite by God’s definition. Just because one can trace his genealogy back to Abraham does not make him a son of Abraham. Children of the flesh do not have the right to claim such status. Galatians 3:7 and 29 say,

⁷ Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham… ²⁹ And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.

Therefore, the promise of God, verified by the “fixed order” of the sun, moon, and stars, is not limited to any particular ethnicity. All must take on a new identity, that of the sons begotten by the Spirit. Jews and gentiles alike have all been born as children of the flesh. All must be begotten by God by the same Spirit in order to come under the New Covenant. And God has taken an immutable oath to turn the hearts of all men everywhere so that they may indeed be saved and delivered from this body of death.

This is the hope of creation, for we read in Romans 8:19-21,

¹⁹ For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly but because of Him who subjected it in hope ²¹ that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The last three verses of Jeremiah 31 begin a new topic and ought to be the first verses of Jeremiah 32. So we will end this study here.