Exegetica

Better Promises, Better Covenant
Hebrews 8:7-13

Jim Nance

covenant is a mutually binding relationship between God and man, sovereignly administered by God upon certain conditions, and accompanied by promised blessings and cursings. From the beginning the Lord made a covenant with Adam, promising him life upon the condition that he not eat the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2:16-17, cf. Hos. 6:7 NIV). But Adam broke this covenant of creation, disobeying God's command and receiving upon himself, his wife, and their descendants the due curses (Gen. 3:16-19, cf. Rom. 5:12). But even in the midst of those curses, the Lord began to unfold a gracious new covenant, declaring to the serpent, " I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel " (Gen. 3:15). Throughout biblical history the Lord continually unfolded this covenant of grace to His people through men like Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, each anticipating in new ways its complete fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

The covenant as it was administered through Abraham is especially significant. At that time the Lord began distinguishing in a visible way His covenant people from the other peoples of the world, to the blessing of the world: "In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Gen. 12:3). The Lord was establishing an everlasting covenant with Abraham (Gen. 17:7) which the New Testament clearly portrays as being fulfilled in the gospel of Christ (Rom. 4:13-16; Gal. 3:8). This covenant of grace is still in effect to the consolation of believers in Christ (cf. Heb. 6:13-18). It is called "new" in that no longer is it merely anticipating or foreshadowing Christ, but it is now fulfilled in Christ in the shedding of His blood on the cross. "For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins" (Matt. 26:28). Thus, in the New Covenant the world is blessed through the Seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:16).

Given this understanding, we can turn to Hebrews to learn how the New Covenant is contrasted with the Old.

"For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second" (Heb. 8:7). The Old Covenant was faulty, the fault being found, not primarily in the nature of the covenant, but in the covenant members, "because finding fault with them, He says: Behold, the days are coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord" (Heb. 8:8-9). Here the Old Covenant is identified as the covenant administered through Moses at Mt. Sinai. The author of Hebrews particularly emphasizes the types and shadows established by that covenant: the tabernacle worship with its animal sacrifices and the mediatorial work of the Levitical priests. This covenant was broken by the Israelites, initially in their worship of the golden calf (Ex. 32:8), but more importantly in their refusal to believe that they could by God's power enter into Canaan and conquer it, as we have seen (Heb. 3:16-19, cf. Num. 14).

Now the Old Covenant was itself established on many gracious promises which God made to Israel. "For I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful, multiply you and confirm My covenant with you . . . . I will set My tabernacle among you, and My soul shall not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people " (Lev. 26:9-12). But these promises, though glorious, were powerless to save. The Old Covenant was a ministry of death compared to the New Covenant (2 Cor. 3:7-9). The glory of the New Covenant is that it is a ministry of righteousness, ushering in the promised blessings of the covenant of grace, the reality of which the Old Covenant made at Sinai was but the shadow.

Those promised blessings, the better promises , are spelled out in the next few verses. "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more" (Heb. 8:10-12). We see that the heart of the promises between the two covenants is identical: I will be their God, and they shall be My people . The main difference is that the salvation which was merely foreshadowed in the Old Covenant by means of the sacrificial, Levitical system has now been gloriously manifested in the New. The laws which were read by the priests of the Old Covenant are now placed in the hearts of God's people by the Lord Himself. This fact, combined with the full and open revelation of salvation in Christ, means that all of His covenant people without distinction will fellowship with Him. And the mercy and forgiveness of sins which were only pictured in the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant are now gloriously and freely granted to His people in the New, "for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance" (Heb. 9:15).

"In that He says, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete. Now what is obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away" (Heb. 8:13). The New Covenant has fulfilled the Old, which having completed its foreshadowing function was then removed by God in the destruction of the Jewish temple and its system of worship. The glory of the Old Covenant gave way to the surpassing glory of the New; the stars of night faded before the Sun of Righteousness, who rose with healing in His wings.