8 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. 9 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. 10 This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 11 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. 12 For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” 13 By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear. (NIV)
The word for “new” is kainos, which means a thing is new is quality (“new and improved,”) and not merely new in time (“a new thing”). There are three points our author makes about this newness in verse 10:
This new covenant is the forgiveness of sins. The first covenant is now obsolete. The Greek verb tense tells us that its obsolescence is enduring: the first covenant is now obsolete and will always be obsolete; it will never return.
The quotation in verses 8-12 is from Jeremiah 31:31-34. Jeremiah tells us that the work of Christ is a covenant that is far better than the covenants of the Old Testament. In Jeremiah’s time, the prophet’s message comforted the people because the old covenant had been violated (even forgotten), and a reform under King Josiah had come and gone, and his sons were bringing on the disaster that would soon destroy Judah and cause the exile into Babylon. Jeremiah showed the people that another kind of covenant was coming. When the Messiah came, the law would be within the hearts of mankind, God would have an intimate fellowship with his people (a promise realized in the sacraments), ignorance of God’s plan, God’s will and God’s word would be removed, and God would forgive the sins of mankind once and for all.
All of these things were accomplished for us by Jesus. He has made what was obsolete, and what is, is forever.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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