Jesus' Blood Seals The New Covenant

“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. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jeremiah 31:31–34).

This is one of the most significant passages in Jeremiah. It is quoted (Heb. 8:8–13; 10:15–17) and alluded to a number of times in the New Testament (see Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:23–26; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6; Heb. 7:22).

When Jesus, at the Last Supper, refers to the “new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20), he picks up the theme of Exodus 24:8, where Moses seals the covenant of Sinai in sacrificial blood. It is this Sinai covenant, written on stone, that Jeremiah indicates needs to be renewed by being written on people’s hearts—not merely presumed to be in effect on the basis of the external practices of the Mosaic economy. This corresponds to the regeneration by the Spirit that is spoken of in Ezekiel 36:25–28.

Jesus’ own sacrificial blood seals the new covenant of our salvation (Heb. 8:6; 9:11–12). The internalizing of the law on the hearts of the people is the transformation by which the covenant promise will be fulfilled (Jer. 31:33; see 2 Cor. 6:16). God himself asserts that the people “shall all know me” (Jer. 31:34). This is not only an intellectual knowing about God but a relational knowing made possible by regeneration. It means believing in him, trusting him, and obeying him in gratitude for salvation. Those to whom the new covenant applies will have their sins forgiven (“remembered no more”; see v. 34). This perfectly describes the glorious situation of Christians, who know God internally through regeneration and who have had their sins wiped away by his gracious provision.

Adapted from the Gospel Transformation Bible