"The New Covenant"

 

"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts." (verse 33)

 

            The Lord, who told the exiles in Babylon to plant and marry and settle down, now plants and builds in his people and watches over them. J.A. Thompson writes that "for Jeremiah, judgment was never an end in itself but the means the Lord used to bring Israel into a new and lasting relationship with himself." This prophecy of the New Covenant is fulfilled in Jesus' ministry, and especially in the cross and the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We look forward to the New Covenant fully realized in our hearts at the return of Christ.

            The Lord made a covenant with his people at the time of the Exodus, and especially in the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai. He offered his protection and care if they would obey the law and follow him only. But the history of Israel became one of persistent failure. Finally, Jeremiah realized that they were incapable of obedience. In chapter 13 we read, "Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil." So now it is the Lord himself who proposes to bring about the necessary change in the people's inner nature that will make them capable of obedience. He writes the New Covenant on their hearts. The need was for the covenant to touch the life of each person deeply and inwardly. Andrew Dearman writes that the newness of the New Covenant is this personal bond between God and his people.

            What makes the bond new and lasting is the promise of God that he will forgive their sin and remember it no more. In the Bible, the word "remember" often carries a special meaning. To remember is to bring a past event to mind so that it lives again, so it has power to influence your thinking and behavior. When God remembers our sin no more, it does not mean that he is forgetful, but that our sin no longer has power, no longer has a life that separates us from him. In the same way when we remember Christ in the Lord's Supper, we are not just having a history lesson, we are bringing to mind the reality of the living Christ who is in our midst to forgive, heal and fill us with his spirit.

            The New Covenant that Jeremiah speaks of finds fulfillment in Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, Jesus calls the Last Supper "the New Covenant in my blood." This helps us to realize that the New Covenant is not simply a word or a promise; it is a reality in the death and resurrection of Jesus. It comes at a price. We gain a new heart for God through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

            Paul picks up the New Covenant in II Corinthians chapter 3. Here he speaks of the Corinthian Christians as "a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." The transformed heart is the work of God's spirit in the lives of those who have received Christ in faith.

            An example of the reality of the New Covenant, the change in a person's thinking and will, is found in the incident with Jesus and the tax collector Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Here was a wealthy tax collector, a man understood by all to be a sinner; one who cheated people in collecting taxes in order to become wealthy. Here is one whose mind and heart was far from the Covenant of God. He did not keep the law. When Jesus went to have table fellowship with him, the people were astounded and muttered, "He has gone to be a guest of a sinner." They understood that sin is powerful and corrupting. They knew that to be righteous you had to stay away from sin and from sinners. But during the meal, Zacchaeus stood up and repented of his sin. Out of his own heart, with no prompting, he agrees to restore all he has taken wrongly, and also to care for the poor. How could this happen to such a person? Rather than corrupting Jesus with his sin, he gains in the presence of Jesus a new heart, a new understanding, a conviction of sin and a desire to live for God. The New Covenant in Jesus comes into his life and takes hold of him. He repents because the law is now written upon his heart. It is the presence of Jesus that changes his heart.

            It is at the cross that Jesus changes our hearts, and we come to life in the New Covenant. The author of Hebrews devotes two chapters to just this, quoting from Jeremiah 31, and showing in Hebrews 8 and 9 how the sacrifice of Christ cleanses our hearts. At the end of chapter 8 he gives the quotation from Jeremiah and then says, "By calling this covenant new, he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear." Then he talks about the regulations for worship and sacrifice in the tabernacle under the old covenant. In 9:13 he writes, "The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God."

            Here is what we must see in this passage. The death of Christ is a sacrifice offered to God, but the change it brings about is not in God. The change it brings is in us, "to cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death." The New Covenant written on hearts does not come without cost; it comes by the death and resurrection of Christ. But it changes us; it transforms our thinking, our believing and our actions. One day we will experience this New Covenant in completeness when Christ returns.

            It is Jesus Christ who brings us to the New Covenant. We do not earn it on our own or deserve this new heart. Only Christ and the cross can bring it into our lives. It is in the heart of God to forgive and to restore, and he does all that we need in Christ. The New Covenant comes as a gift of grace from God.

            The choice is given to us whether we will receive this gift of grace. Do you sincerely desire a genuine renewal of your heart and mind from God? Will you let go of your pride, and your striving, and seek with all humility the inward work of the spirit? Are you willing to change your thinking, to surrender your opinions, so that you might agree with God? Do you welcome the conviction of the Holy Spirit in your life? Do you desire the New Covenant in your heart? It is in trusting your life to Jesus that the gift is received.

            In reading through Jeremiah this fall, thinking about a renewal of our lives, about truly reconnecting with God and his will, about reconciling our differences with each other and committing ourselves to a stronger, closer fellowship with one another in Christ, we now see where God wants to take us. For now we see that reconnecting is not something that we do, it is God who reconnects our lives, first to himself and then to each other. It is God who remembers our sin no more. It is God who initiates a New Covenant when we could not carry the old one any longer. It is God who changes our hearts, cleansing our sin and filling us with his Spirit. We only have to invite his presence, seek his face, and wait in hope.

           Amen.