But God found fault with the people and said : "The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. (Heb 8:8 NIV)
"Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah---not according to the covenant I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts: and I will be their God, and they will be my people. (Jeremiah 31:31-33 NKJV)
By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear. (Heb 8:13 NIV)
By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear. (Heb 8:13 NIV)
Believers in Christ are saved by the eternal Covenant of Redemption. It was agreed upon amongst the Godhead before the foundation of the world. It was sealed by God the Son, the Son of Man, the Man who was God, Jesus Christ. It was sealed in His Blood. It was sealed in eternity, and it was sealed in human history too.
This Covenant would be 'New' for the Jews whom Jeremiah was addressing. It would be 'New' for many of the Hebrews addressed in the epistle of that name; but not for God, who had arranged it from before the foundation of the world.
The New Covenant does not dispense with the behavioral requirements of God. Instead it meets them using a different approach- that of a changed heart, indeed a new heart. The old covenant asked us to keep rules. The New (but eternal) Covenant is different. Instead of striving to meet God's rules, we surrender to Him at the deepest level and allow him to plant a new life, and a new heart, within us. The Word of God, Jesus Christ, sows a seed into our hearts. We allow it to bring forth a new birth within us. Allowing the Word, the very Life of God, into our heart is the only way for us to be eternally acceptable in God's sight. God knows that only that seed will produce the fruit He requires.
"Unless the Lord of Sabaoth (Hosts) had left us a seed, We would have become like Sodom. And we would have been made like Gomorrah." (Romans 9:29)
We need the seed!
This Covenant would be 'New' for the Jews whom Jeremiah was addressing. It would be 'New' for many of the Hebrews addressed in the epistle of that name; but not for God, who had arranged it from before the foundation of the world.
The New Covenant does not dispense with the behavioral requirements of God. Instead it meets them using a different approach- that of a changed heart, indeed a new heart. The old covenant asked us to keep rules. The New (but eternal) Covenant is different. Instead of striving to meet God's rules, we surrender to Him at the deepest level and allow him to plant a new life, and a new heart, within us. The Word of God, Jesus Christ, sows a seed into our hearts. We allow it to bring forth a new birth within us. Allowing the Word, the very Life of God, into our heart is the only way for us to be eternally acceptable in God's sight. God knows that only that seed will produce the fruit He requires.
"Unless the Lord of Sabaoth (Hosts) had left us a seed, We would have become like Sodom. And we would have been made like Gomorrah." (Romans 9:29)
We need the seed!
