But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
For he finds fault with them when he says:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with 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.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts;
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more.”
In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Hebrews 8:6-13 ESV
As Israel gathered for the final time to hear Moses’ word before his death and their entrance into the Promised Land, the prophet set before them blessings and curses. If they were to obey the laws that God had given them at Sinai, their enemies would be defeated. They would be established firmly in the land. Their crops and livestock would produce in abundance. Yahweh, the one true and living God, would bless them as His chosen people, and He would be their God. But if they disobeyed His laws and commandments, the very opposite would happen. Their wombs would be barren, their crops and livestock would fail to give their proper yield, and they would be destroyed by their enemies and taken from the land of promise that God was giving them.
When Moses died, the Israelites took possession of the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua. At the end of Joshua’s rule over Israel, he too urged the people of God to obey Yahweh and so walk in His blessings and warned them against disobeying the LORD and so receive His curses.
In the hundreds of years that followed, God’s people rarely kept His commandments, and even when they did, it was never for long. After countless cycles of Israel committing idolatry, God punishing Israel, Israel repenting, and God delivering, a breaking point had been reached. The northern kingdom of Israel was decimated by the Assyrians, and the people were scattered throughout the empire. After Nebuchadnezzar led his Babylonian army in the destruction of the Assyrian’s capital, Nineveh, he also marched on Jerusalem, taking much of its gold and its most promising nobility (Daniel and his three friends among them).
Later, King Jehoiakim would rebel against Nebuchadnezzar, and the Babylonians returned to Jerusalem, taking “all the treasures of the house of the LORD… and all the mighty men of valor, 10,000 captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths. None remained, except the poorest people of the land” (2 Kings 24:13-14). The prophet Ezekiel was among this group of exiles.
But the worst was still to come. The Babylonians would come a third time, taking all the people and leaving both Jerusalem and the temple within its walls smoldering ruins. God revealed all of this to the Jeremiah ahead of time. He would watch with his own eyes as all of the curses of which Moses warned so long ago came to pass. Although Yahweh had never wavered in His faithfulness, the spiritual adultery of His people had finally come a point. He was going to cut His people off.
But not for good. Even before the great destruction of Jerusalem came, God promised a relatively quick return for some of His people. After a seventy-year exile, some of the old men who would return to rebuild Jerusalem remembered its former glory. Indeed, Jerusalem, its walls, and even the temple would be rebuilt. However, those with eyes to see and ears to hear understood the message of their captivity in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians were not the problem; the Creator of heaven and earth raises up kings and empires and dashes them to dust. Indeed, they were simply instruments in Yahweh’s hand. The LORD afflicted His people. As Jeremiah wrote to the exiles about those still living in Jerusalem:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, behold, I am sending on them sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like vile figs that are so rotten they cannot be eaten. I will purse them with sword, famine, and pestilence, and will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, a terror, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them, because they did not pay attention to my words, declares the LORD, that I persistently sent to you by my servants the prophets, but you would not listen, declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 29:17-19
The Babylonian Captivity simply highlighted Israel’s failure to hear and obey God as their greatest enemy and threat. A rebuilt temple could not fix the people’s wicked hearts. In a wonder of wonders, Yahweh promised to do exactly that.
MUCH MORE EXCELLENT THAN THE OLD // VERSES 6-9
After a start and lengthy pause for exhortation in chapters 5-6, chapter 7 marked the author’s full-steam-ahead discussion of Jesus as our great high priest. Most of that chapter focused upon Jesus’ legal qualifications for serving as our high priest, especially since He was born into the tribe of Judah (the tribe of King David) rather than Levi (the tribe of the priests). In the final verses of chapter 7, he then cited Jesus’ moral qualifications for being our high priest before beginning chapter 8 with the tremendous words: “we have such a high priest.” Finally, we ended our previous text with the author revealing that Christ’s priestly ministry is not worked in the earthly tabernacle or temple but within the true, heavenly tent of which the tabernacle and temple were simply copies and shadows. With that true and better tent and Jesus’ true and better priesthood still in our minds, the author now draws out a theme that he has already hinted toward: the true and better covenant that Christ inaugurates.
Verse 6 expresses the author’s transition of thought: But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. Again, Jesus’ great priestly ministry has been the focus and will continue to be the focus in chapter 9. However, as the author noted, almost in passing, back in 7:12, “For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well.” As well as in 7:18-19, “For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness (for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.” Finally, in 7:22, he made it clear that this better hope was indeed “a better covenant.” About this subject before us, T. Desmond Alexander writes:
The Greek term for covenant, diatheke, comes thirty-three times in the New Testament. Of these, seventeen are found in the letter to the Hebrews. This reflects the author’s special interest in this concept. Most of these occurrences come in chapters 8-9, although the first reference is found in Hebrews 7:22, where the author states that Jesus is “the guarantor of a better covenant.” This statement comes immediately after a quotation from Psalm 110:4: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever’” (Heb. 7:21). The author of Hebrews then adds: “Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantor of a better covenant” (Heb 7:22). The juxtaposition of these statements forms a strong connection between priesthood and covenant. Jesus can guarantee the covenant because God has given him the status of priest.[1]
Indeed, a covenant is a legally binding agreement between two parties. Two kings might make a covenant with one another to be allies. A man and woman make a covenant with one another whenever they marry. In these sorts of covenants, a mediator is often used as a witness, lest one of the parties would later claim to have never made the covenant at all. However, when God made a covenant with Israel, a mediator was necessary since the people could not bear God speaking directly to them; therefore, Moses mediated the old covenant, ascending Sinai to hear from God and descending to speak to Israel. And the great promise of that covenant was: “if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6). Sadly, we know how that promise went. Israel did not obey God’s voice, nor did they keep His covenant.
Therefore, as great as that covenant promise was, better promises were needed, which the author himself notes in verse 7: for if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. Put another way: if the covenant at Sinai had been the best possible agreement between God and sinful man, then it would have been impossible for another covenant to have been better. But the former covenant at Sinai was far from perfect, since time and time again Israel proved to be wholly unable to keep their end. Interestingly, rather than the author himself making that point, he goes on to cite Jeremiah 31:31-34, which is the lengthiest citation in Hebrews. After introducing Jeremiah’s great prophecy by saying, for he finds fault with them when he says, the author then lays these marvelous verses before us and expects us to read them not only in light of their original context (which we established in the introduction above) but now in light of Jesus’ superior priesthood.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with 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.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
Fault with the old covenant is indeed found in these verses. The first description of the new covenant is that it will be unlike the old. Although God led them like a shepherd out of their slavery in Egypt, the covenant and laws that He delivered at Sinai did not remove the sin from their hearts that kept them in spiritual bondage. As we have said throughout our study of Exodus, God took them out of Egypt, but Egypt had not been taken out of them. That was the fault of the old covenant. It held out the possibility of having communion with God; however, that possibility was somewhat like trying to swim across the Pacific. Although perhaps technically possible, it is humanly impossible because of our corruption from the Fall.
Indeed, Jerry Hwang calls us pay special attention to exactly where the fault of the old covenant lay:
It is crucial in this respect that the author of Hebrews introduces the Jeremiah quotation with the editorial phrase, “He finds fault with them when he says: ‘Behold, the days are coming…’” (Heb. 8:8). That is, the fault of the old covenant (8:7) lay in how the people themselves were faulty and prone to breaking it (Heb. 8:8a), thus incurring the need for the “new covenant,” which follows in the passage (Heb. 8:8b-12). Indeed, the writer to the Hebrews explains that Yahweh instituted the better promises of the new covenant for this reason: “They did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them” (Heb. 8:9).[2]
Just like my inability to swim across the Pacific Ocean is a fault in me rather than in the ocean itself, so it was the old covenant. Or, as Robert Martin notes:
The defect of the old covenant was that it made no provision of will or ability to obey God’s law (no provision was made for the people’s native hardness of heart and moral inability), nor did it provide full or final atonement for transgressions. But, in our text (Heb. 8:10-12), the writer sets out the better promises of the new (and better) covenant.[3]
THIS IS THE COVENANT // VERSES 10-13
Verse 10 begins the description of this new covenant by saying explicitly: For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. The new covenant is then described in four parts, which are the better promises that verse 6 alluded to. And these are, in fact, promises, for we should particularly note that God is explicitly telling us what He will do, not what we must do. These are promises for how the LORD will take it upon Himself to ensure our obedience to His commandments.
First, I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts. We should begin by noting that the new covenant in Christ does not abolish the law. Of course, Jesus told us that directly. But we also see that truth here. God’s law itself is good. How else could the psalmist exclaim: “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97). Lest we argue, “well, the psalmist there is speaking about Scripture as God’s law, not about the laws themselves” (which would be an absurd distinction in the first place), consider the following verse: “Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me” (Psalm 119:98). Again, the fault is with our own inability to keep the law, not with the goodness of the law itself. We testify to this in the answer to Question 15 of the New City Catechism:
Q. Since no one can keep the law, what is its purpose?
A. That we may know the holy nature and will of God, and the sinful nature and disobedience of our hearts; and thus our need of a Savior.
Unfortunately, the children’s version of the catechism cuts the answer short right there, and even more unfortunately, so do many Christians. We tend to only think of God’s law today as teaching us about our sin and showing us our need for Christ, which it certainly does! But there is also more: “The law also teaches and exhorts us to live a life worthy of our Savior.” The law teaches us the path of blessedness and wisdom, that path that our heavenly Father has loving ordained for us to walk upon. But we need Christ as our Savior precisely because we are unable to obey God’s law perfectly.
But in the new covenant God’s law would not be etched upon tablets of stone but upon the minds and hearts of God’s people. Because Christ has rescued us once for all from our justly deserved punishment for breaking God’s law, we no longer under the law; rather, the law can now be written within us. We can truly look at the law of God with love rather than fear, knowing that Christ has perfectly fulfilled the law in our place and now upholds us as He summons us to follow after Him. Indeed, the writing of God’s law upon our hearts goes hand-in-hand with Ezekiel 36:26-27’s promise:
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
As the 1689 wonderfully expresses: “The Spirit of Christ subdues and enables the will of man to do freely and cheerfully all that which the will of God, as revealed in the law, requires to be done.” He will both will and work within us the obedience that He has required.
Second, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. To help with understanding the nature of this promise, Hwang writes:
In the oral cultures around Israel, similar vows were typically used to confirm the new familial relationships created by weddings (e.g., “I will be your husband, and you will be my wife”) or adoptions (e.g., “I will be your son, and you will be my father”). But uniquely for Israel at Sinai, Yahweh used a covenant formula (“I will be your God, and you will be my people”) to mark an entire people as his own.[4]
This was one of the formula expressions of the goal of the old covenant. God’s word to Israel through Moses was, “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God” (Exodus 6:7). The Old Testament echoes this repeatedly, though it was only fulfilled in some of the hearers. But this is perfectly fulfilled in all who partake of the new covenant, in which believers actually become God’s possession and possess God.[5]
Indeed, this covenant akin to being wedded to God and adopted by God is the goal of our salvation. God has not rescued and redeemed us for anything less than Himself. He is the ultimate Treasure. He is everything heavenly about heaven. Revelation 21:2-3 displays this by using the same expression:
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
Third, And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. This promise goes alongside the previous one. In order to have a proper relationship with God, we must first know Him. In fact, the very reason that our eternal life of being with God will be so joyous is that we will spend all eternity knowing Him more and more.
Again, this was the goal of the old covenant. Throughout Exodus, God repeatedly states that His deliverance, provision, and covenant with Israel is that they and all the nations around them will know that He is Yahweh. But it was incapable of accomplishing that goal. Certainly, God is made known through the old covenant, but as the author of Hebrews has already pointed out, He has perfectly revealed Himself through His Son, who is the exact imprint of His nature. Thus, in Christ, we have a perfect image of God set before us, but we also have God’s own Spirit dwelling within us, making Himself known to us through the Scriptures.
Fourth, For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. This is the promise that makes the first three promises possible. It is our iniquities and sins that blind us from being able to know God (and to even see the delight of knowing Him). It is our sin that keeps us separated from Him since His perfect goodness can tolerate no wickedness. It is our sin that makes God’s law a terror and a burden, for by it we see our sin more clearly. It is our sin that makes us incapable of receiving the blessings of the old covenant but only storing up its curses. And as the coming text in 9:1-10:18 will emphasize, it is our sin that the old covenant was insufficient in dealing with, and it is Christ’s once for all atoning for our sin that forms the very heart of the new covenant.
In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. This vanishing away, which we could argue happened fully with the destruction of the temple in AD 70, is good news because while the old covenant gave us a glimpse of God’s goodness and glory; it also put to death those who came too near. But it is replaced by a new and better covenant, over which Jesus is not only the mediator but the guarantor. He Himself reveals to us the full radiance of the glory of God, yet He does not command us to stay back. Instead, He summons us to draw near, bringing us as adopted sons and daughters into the most holy place. He has done this by once for all putting “away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (9:26).
Therefore, as we come to the meal of remembrance set before us by our King, we set our eyes upon Jesus, the Captain of our salvation, the founder and perfecter of our faith, the apostle and high priest of our confession. From first to last, our salvation is of Him. Indeed, Jesus’ death in our place, to pay the penalty of our sins and grant us His own righteousness, the promise made in Jeremiah 32:40 has come to pass: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn away from me.” He has guaranteed our salvation by taking our end of the covenant upon Himself, giving us new hearts that will not turn away from Him.
[1] T. Desmond Alexander, Face to Face with God, 109.
[2] ESV Expository Commentary Vol. 6, 660.
[3] Robert Paul Martin, Hebrews, 401.
[4] ESV Expository Commentary Vol. 6, 558.
B. C. Newton 