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Jeremiah 31:31–34
“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” (vv. 31–32).
Our study of the historia salutis—the history of salvation—has considered the various covenants that God has made with the human race. In the outworking of His plan in history, the Lord has made two major covenants. First, He made a covenant of works with Adam and his descendants. That covenant having been broken, placing Adam and these offspring under the curse of sin and death, God made another covenant with His elect people in Christ. This covenant of grace provides salvation, and it has been unfolded over the centuries in the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants. Each of these covenants builds on what came before, adding promises and blessings. Today we will look at the final covenant that is part of the one covenant of grace: the new covenant.
As noted a few days ago, the new covenant was anticipated during the life of Moses, whose covenant is also known as the old covenant (Deut. 30:1–10). Perhaps the clearest promise of the new covenant found in the Old Testament is Jeremiah 31:31–34. Much of Jeremiah’s ministry consisted in declaring to the people of Judah that the nation had broken the Mosaic covenant and would receive the harshest covenant curse of exile (e.g., Jer. 11:10; 22:9; 25:1–14). Yet Jeremiah also said that exile would not be the end of God’s people, announcing the new covenant to come after the exile (31:31–34).
Jeremiah announced that this new covenant would be unlike the old covenant that the people broke, which means that it would not be so violated as to pass away (vv. 31–32). Of course, this does not mean that there is no sense in which individuals cannot break the new covenant at all. Some members of the new covenant church have only a profession of faith and have not truly exercised saving faith. These members will one day savingly trust in Christ or they will break the new covenant by committing apostasy (1 John 2:19). Nevertheless, the new covenant will not be utterly broken by God’s visible covenant people as a whole as the old covenant was.
Reading Scripture, we find that the new covenant does not come all at once. Jesus inaugurated it during His first advent, continues it in the ministry of the new covenant church, and will consummate it at His return (e.g., see 1 Cor. 11:23–26; 15:12–58). Even so, Christ’s first coming was decisive, for then He gave Himself as the perfect, unrepeatable sacrifice to secure our redemption (Heb. 10:1–18).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The New Testament reveals that the new covenant is superior to the old, and Dr. R.C. Sproul writes in The Promises of God that “at the heart of the superiority of the new covenant is the superiority of our Great High Priest, who offers the perfect sacrifice that takes away our sins forever.” We can be sure that God will preserve us under His new covenant forever because of the work of Christ.
For further study
- Ezekiel 16:59–63
- Hebrews 8
The bible in a year
- Proverbs 21–22
- 2 Corinthians 5
- Proverbs 23–27
- 2 Corinthians 6–7