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Jeremiah 31:33-34  “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD.  “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God, and they will be my people.  No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD.  “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” 

Among his God-given messages of judgement and doom, speaking of the sovereign LORD’s righteous discipline, not only of the surrounding nations but of his own disobedient people, Jeremiah, in Chapters 30-31, brings a promise of comfort and hope.  However, even here, the word of encouragement is not without serious warning because God is holy, and he knows the utter sinfulness of man’s heart: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?” (17:9).

But the core, the essential ingredient, of this ray of hope is stated clearly and succinctly in 31:31-34; so much so that the writer of Hebrews quotes these verses in full to clinch his argument about the failure of the ‘old’ covenant to produce the required results, and the contrasting power of the ‘new’ covenant to do so (Hebrews 8:8-12).  As Hebrews points out, there is a radical difference between the two: one is based on the success of man’s efforts to please God; the other is based on God’s finished work – a forgiveness that is (a) possible, because Christ has died to pay the debt, and (b) guaranteed, because the Holy Spirit doesn’t wait for a person to change his heart/mind but actually takes the initiative and does it for him! 

This way of understanding God’s gracious Plan of redemption runs through the whole of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, through the OT as well as the NT, which is why the writer of Hebrews is able to recognise the fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prophecy in the finished work of Christ on the cross and the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit to bring us to faith (‘irresistible grace’ – “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. … … For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God”, Ephesians 2:4, 8), and to enable us to persevere to the end (‘perseverence of the saints’ – “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6)

What a comfort it is to see this Covenant theology worked out in our own lives and in the lives of others as we teach and pray and admonish and cajole and encourage one another in the work of God’s Kingdom.  And how encouraging it is to reflect on how the Trinity works in complete harmomy in saving us, as the Canons of Dort so clearly and helpfully set us on the right path in understanding our Salvation: God the Father chooses those who are to be his (Total Depravity and Unconditional Election), God the Son dies for those whom the Father has chosen (Limited Atonement), and God the Holy Spirit makes sure that those whom the Father has chosen and for whom the Son has died come to faith (Irresistible grace and Perseverance of the Saints) – TULIP!  It is on this Basis that Jesus could cry out from the cross as he ‘breathed his last’ and died, “It is finished” (John 19:30).  He did not have to be thinking, ‘Well, I hope this sin-sacrifice I am making might work for at least for some people’!  As the Second Person of the Trinity, he knew exactly what he had come to do, and how it would play out in human history!

– Bruce Christian