Have you ever wondered why the Bible is broken into Old and New Testaments? What is a “testament“ anyway? The English word “testament” comes from the Latin word testamentum, which is a translation of the Hebrew word běrît, which means “covenant.” In other words, “Old Testament” and “New Testament” mean “old covenant” and “new covenant.” Broadly speaking, these are the two main movements or acts in the overarching story of God: The Sinai Covenant made with Israel and the New Covenant inaugurated by Christ.
So, how does the new covenant differ from the old? What exactly makes it new? We’re going to examine the historical and biblical contexts of these two covenants and discover at least five ways that the New Covenant differs from the old.
The Timeline of the Covenants
The Sinai Covenant was introduced just after God rescued the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai. There He declared:
You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, 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 19:4-6 (ESV)
If Israel kept the covenant by obeying God, He would bless them. God gave them a body of commandments that the Bible often refers to as the “Law of Moses” because Moses was God’s mediator at Sinai. The Law of Moses served as the terms of the Sinai Covenant. Yahweh told Israel:
See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today.
Deuteronomy 11:26-28
If Israel obeyed the law, they would keep the covenant and reap blessings. If they disobeyed it, they would break the covenant and inherit curses. The OT records how, despite Yahweh giving the Israelites countless chances, they were not able to keep the law and ultimately broke the covenant. God was faithful, Israel was not. However, in His infinite mercy and grace, Yahweh promised a new covenant centuries later through the prophet Jeremiah:
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
While specific language about this new covenant is found only in this beautiful passage in Jeremiah, the concept is spoken of in many other places, including Hosea 2:14–23, Jeremiah 32, 33, 50:5, Ezekiel 11:16–20; 16:60; 34, 36–37 and Isaiah 40–66. In fact, I would argue that God’s New Covenant is the one that all the other covenants anticipate and foreshadow. Not just the Sinai Covenant but His covenants with Abraham and David, as well. They all point to Jesus and the New Covenant. Biblical scholar Paul Williamson writes,
Old Testament expectations of a future, everlasting covenant find their ultimate fulfilment in the Christian gospel. Such a…reading does not necessarily deny that the reconstitution of the Israelite community is the primary focus of such Old Testament oracles; rather, taking its cue from Jesus, it redefines the ‘Israel’ that is reconstituted. While certainly including biological descendants of Abraham, this New Covenant community is not defined by biological ancestry but rather by spiritual descent.1
The new covenant passage above in Jeremiah 31:31–34 plays a significant role in the NT. In fact, the author of Hebrews cites it twice (Heb. 8:8–12, 10:16–17). It is crucial to our understanding of how the believer’s relationship to God has changed and improved in Christ. Jesus Himself explicitly invoked the New Covenant at the last supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (cf. Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). The apostle Paul teaches that God has made believers ministers of a new covenant (2 Cor. 3:6) and the concept of the new covenant is behind the contrasts he makes between the old and new in that chapter. Moreover, Hebrews twice describes Jesus as the mediator of a new covenant (Heb. 9:15, 12:24), and it is further alluded to in places like Acts 10:43 and Romans 11:27.
Because the new covenant as described in Jeremiah 31:31-34 is of such great importance to Jesus and the NT authors, it bears a close examination.
Historical and Biblical Context
Jeremiah’s New Covenant prophecy was given six hundred years before Jesus and cannot be divorced from the historical milieu in which it was declared. Israel had split into two kingdoms, Judah in the south and Israel in the north. These kingdoms struggled with rebellion and idolatry and were ruled by terrible kings. God sent prophets to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen. He ultimately punished the kingdom of Israel by allowing them to be conquered by Assyria and taken into captivity. The prophet Jeremiah, who lived in the final days of the crumbling southern kingdom of Judah, was sent to warn the remaining Israelites to repent and avoid a similar punishment.
The new covenant prophecy is found within a larger passage (Jer. 31:27–40), which is made up of three subsections, each of which begins with the words “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord” and talks about ways Yahweh will bless and restore in the new era. The first section starts at verse 27 and introduces the good news of God reversing the judgment against both humans and animals that He had announced earlier in Jeremiah 7:20 and 21:6.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. And it shall come to pass that as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 31:27–28
Rather than being cut down (as the previous judgements declared), man and beast will be fruitful and multiply. Yahweh promises to be as vigilant about the restoration of His people as He is about their punishment. The newly planted people of God will be free from the historical or ancestral guilt of their rebellion and idolatry and wickedness. That will be dealt with through the judgment of the exile.
The second subsection starts at verse 31 with the new covenant passage and continues through verse 37. In light of the exile, Jeremiah talks about how Yahweh will ultimately ensure the preservation of His people in the future. Don’t miss the unbreakable nature of the new covenant. God promises that the future of His people will be absolutely secure. As we so often see in the prophets, Jeremiah communicates this truth symbolically and poetically, using cosmic imagery. It reads almost like a hymn. Immediately after the new covenant passage we read above, Jeremiah writes,
Thus says the Lord,
Jeremiah 31:35–37
who gives the sun for light by day
and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—
the Lord of hosts is his name:
“If this fixed order departs
from before me, declares the Lord,
then shall the offspring of Israel cease
from being a nation before me forever.”
Thus says the Lord:
“If the heavens above can be measured,
and the foundations of the earth below can be explored,
then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel
for all that they have done,
declares the Lord.”
Jeremiah invokes the grand scope of the fixed order of creation to show how Yahweh’s sovereignty over all things ensures that His promised salvation will come to pass. He uses literary creativity to declare that heaven and earth would sooner pass away than God’s promise of a new covenant not be fulfilled. Jesus taught the same thing during His Sermon on the Mount: “Until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law and the prophets until all is accomplished” (Matt 5:18). Heaven and earth would sooner pass away than Jesus not accomplish His mission, which included the inauguration of the New Covenant.
The third subsection is found in verses 38–40. Here, God speaks about expanding the boundaries of the city of Jerusalem.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the city shall be rebuilt for the Lord from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. And the measuring line shall go out farther, straight to the hill Gareb, and shall then turn to Goah. The whole valley of the dead bodies and the ashes, and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be sacred to the Lord. It shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever.
Jeremiah 31:38–40
This passage further highlights the security of this future era by focusing on the rebuilding and consecration of Jerusalem. Williamson writes,
Areas that were formerly desecrated by dead bodies and sacrificial ashes would in the future be sacred to Yahweh, thus indicating that no area would be defiled as a consequence of sin in the rebuilt city. Hence ‘the city will never again be uprooted or demolished’ (Jer. 31:40 TNIV). Not only will God’s city be rebuilt; it will never again be uprooted or demolished.2
That phrase at the end of verse 40 throws a monkey wrench into the works for those who maintain that this prophecy applies only to the immediate exile and return of Israel and Judah in the 6th century BC. The city that Jeremiah speaks of “Shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever.” The NIV words it this way: “It will never again be uprooted or demolished.” Yet, the actual city of Jerusalem was uprooted, demolished, and overthrown in the first century. It wasn’t just the temple that was destroyed; the entire city was razed and ultimately renamed Aelia Capitolina by the Romans. Jews were prohibited from entering this city for the next 500 years. (It wasn’t renamed back to Jerusalem until the 4th century under Constantine.)
Therefore, the unbreakable city Jeremiah is prophesying about could not be the physical city of Jerusalem, which would be overthrown. The prophet is speaking of what the NT calls the New Jerusalem (Rev. 3:12, 21:2, 21:9), which will never be uprooted or destroyed. In its immediate context, Jeremiah’s new covenant prophecy offered a glowing promise of hope for the Israelites. It showed that God would maintain his relationship with His people in the future. And, as Williamson put it, “This clearly gives Jeremiah’s New Covenant oracle a climactic significance.”3 It pointed God’s people forward to a glorious future promise. A promise, by the way, that was not fulfilled by the end of the OT. In fact, the OT ends as a bit of a cliffhanger—neither the promised Messiah nor the promised New Covenant had yet arrived.
The Newness of the New Covenant
Jeremiah states that the new covenant will differ from the Sinai Covenant. The discontinuity is highlighted by the adjective he uses to describe it: chadash (“new”). Jeremiah not only labels it a “new” covenant, but he also specifically says it is “not like the covenant” (v. 32) God made with Israel at Sinai. Israel broke that covenant: “my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord” (v. 32). There is a clear contrast between the covenants.
Despite elements of discontinuity and contrast, the new covenant also shares a great deal of continuity with the old. It is addressed to the same people, involves the same standard of obedience to God’s Torah, and establishes the same relationship: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” This is the same covenant formula used in Exodus 19 at Sinai. So, how does this New Covenant differ from the old one? What exactly is “new” about the New Covenant? At least five significant differences are described in this short passage in Jeremiah.
Difference #1: Unconditional Terms
We saw above how the Israelites were given strong conditions for keeping the old covenant. There is not even a hint of mutual obligation in the new.
Some interpreters have rightly noticed the emphasis in the text on the divine initiative: this covenant’s unilateral nature is highlighted by the dominant use of the first person throughout these verses: ‘I will make … I will put … I will write … I will be … I will forgive … I will remember.’4
The Sinai Covenant was a conditional (or bilateral) contract in which both parties have an obligation. Conversely, the new covenant is an unconditional (or unilateral) covenant. This is the same type of agreement God entered into with Abraham (Gen. 15), who wasn’t required to do anything to keep up his end of the deal. God put no conditions on that covenant. Likewise, there is no “if” clause in the New Covenant. At Sinai, Yahweh told Israel that they would be blessed if they obeyed His commandments and kept the covenant. Conversely, if they disobeyed His law and broke the covenant, they would be cursed. That sort of conditional language is not attached to God’s new covenant because it is not based on the obedience or works of God’s people but on Christ’s perfect and completed work.
This does not mean God’s people have no obligations under the New Covenant. The obligation of obedience is clearly implied when God says, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33). Under the New Covenant, God’s people are still expected to obey His will and live as God’s set-apart people. However, the New Covenant is not contingent on their obedience.
Difference #2: Spirit-powered Obedience
The language in Jeremiah 31 makes it abundantly clear that Yahweh Himself will facilitate obedience. God will put His law (His torah, His instructions and direction) within His people. He will write His word on their hearts rather than on tablets of stone (cf. Exod. 31:18; 34:28–29; Deut. 4:13; 5:22). Walter Brueggemann puts it this way,
The commandments will not be an external rule which invites hostility, but will now be an embraced, internal identity-giving mark, so that obeying will be as normal and as readily accepted as breathing and eating.5
The apostle Paul described it this way: “We serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Rom. 7:6). Williamson writes,
So a major difference between the Old Covenant and the new is that the obligations of the covenant will be internalized in the New Covenant community (cf. Jer. 24:7; 32:39). Consequently, the primary objective of the earlier covenant (a permanent divine-human relationship) would now be attainable.6
Difference #3: Internalized Knowledge
Because God would write His torah on the hearts of His people, it would affect the entire covenant community, not just a few righteous people as we saw with Israel under the old covenant.
Internalization of the law was not a radically new concept (Deut. 11:18; cf. 30:14), nor was the associated idea of circumcision of the heart (Deut. 10:16; cf. 30:6). But such had certainly not been the collective experience of the covenant community. Rather, such had been the distinguishing mark of individuals in the community who constituted Israel’s righteous remnant.7
Prior to this new covenant passage in Jeremiah 31, the prophet had emphasized that God’s people as a whole were locked up under sin. “Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen; behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it” (Jer. 6:10). By contrast, under the New Covenant, God’s torah would be internalized by everyone who belongs to the covenant community.
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.
Jeremiah 31:34
The lack of knowledge of God and His law led to divine judgment for Israel, first for the northern kingdom and then, as Jeremiah warned, for Judah. The prophet proclaims that things will be very different in the New Covenant era. The entire covenant community will know Yahweh. In Hebrew categories, yada (“know”) is more than just factual knowledge. It is an intimate, experiential term. Genesis 4:1 says, “Adam knew (yada) Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain.” The New Covenant idea that they shall all know God speaks of an inward, experiential, personal relationship with Him. It’s the natural response of all who have come to faith in Jesus and been “born again.” Our minds have been renewed, and our hearts have been inscribed with God’s torah—His instruction and direction. Under the New Covenant, God’s covenant community is led by the Holy Spirit.
The NT says God has “made us sufficient to be ministers of a New Covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:6). The old covenant was a covenant of the letter, of tablets of stone, the written code. The New Covenant is the covenant of the Spirit. “The righteous requirement of the law (is) fulfilled in us, who walk … according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4). This is one of the most distinctive features of the New Covenant. It’s why, under the New Covenant, knowledge of God and a desire to obey Him is reflected across the entire body of believers, not just a righteous remnant. “For they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer. 31:34). This does not mean everyone is instantly turned into a perfect saint. Rather, when we come to faith in Jesus, the knowledge of God is written on our hearts. Romans 8:11 says the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in those who are in Christ. The apostle Paul wrote, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God” (1 Cor. 6:19).
Difference #4: Eternal Forgiveness
That brings us to the most glorious difference between the old and new covenants. The new covenant passage ends with God’s amazing statement, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34). Jeremiah does not explain the basis on which God will forgive the sins of His people. He simply tells us that is what God will do. We saw earlier the unilateral, unconditional language of the new covenant. God said, “I will make…I will put…I will write.” In this final statement, He also says, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” The new covenant will be carried by the grace of Yahweh himself. Indeed, God will even provide the necessary sacrifice Himself. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the basis on which God will forgive our iniquity and remember our sin no more.
The Hebrew word zakar (“remember”) means more than merely the mental recall of a fact or event. It’s not that God will no longer have a recollection of our sin, but that He will no longer hold it against us. This phrase uses a bit of Hebrew parallelism where the same idea is said twice in slightly different ways for emphasis: “Forgive their iniquity” means the same thing as “remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah is speaking of eternal forgiveness, the forgiveness we receive when we place our faith in Jesus.
In fact, the author of Hebrews will later quote this passage in Jeremiah to make that exact point:
And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,
“This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,”then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
Hebrews 10:15–18
This passage signals a major shift between the old and new covenants. Under the New Covenant, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary (v. 18). Why? A few verses earlier, the author wrote, “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:10). Jesus is how God has forgiven our iniquity, and He is why He remembers our sins no more under the new covenant. We serve a God of infinite grace and mercy!
This notion of eternal forgiveness introduced a paradigm shift for the ancient Israelites, for the first-century Jewish believers in Jesus. By saying that sins would no longer be remembered, Jeremiah prophesied the end of the old covenant’s sacrificial system. This means that the torah God writes on the hearts of His people in the New Covenant era is not identical to the torah He gave with the Sinai Covenant.
Difference #5: Unbreakable Covenant
Because the New Covenant is unilateral and carried entirely by Yahweh, and because He promises eternal forgiveness, there is no possibility of breaking the New Covenant. Andrew Dearman puts it this way, speaking of the covenantal relationship between God and His people:
The ability of sin to disrupt the relationship is made obsolete by the astounding announcement that God will not remember sins and their effects on the relationship.8
From here, Jeremiah goes on to use cosmic imagery to show that God’s New Covenant is assured and eternal. Think about what this would have meant to the Israelites who struggled for centuries and whose sins resulted in the breaking of the Old Covenant and their exile and punishment by God. Unlike the Old Covenant, the New Covenant is unbreakable.
Sin cannot imperil the divine-human relationship guaranteed by this New Covenant, for sin will not be brought into account: God ‘will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more’ (Jer. 31:34 TNIV).9
The very essence and nature of the bond between God and His covenant people radically changed under the promised New Covenant. Let’s next take a look at who those covenant people are.
The New Covenant People
In Jeremiah 31:31–34, the prophet explicitly tells us with whom God will make his New Covenant. “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jer 31:31). The language Jeremiah uses has led some Internet theologians to conclude that the New Covenant must not be for Gentiles, that it’s only for Israelites. And, of course, that interpretation flies in the face of not just what the NT teaches but also what the OT prophesied.
Put yourselves in the sandals of the prophet Jeremiah in the sixth century BC. What was he trying to communicate to his readers by using the phrase “the house of Israel and the house of Judah”? We saw how this prophecy was given after the kingdom had split; the ten tribes of Israel in the north had been captured and exiled, and the kingdom of Judah in the South was about to fall. Amid this chaos and disunity, God speaks an incredible word of future restoration and hope through the prophet Jeremiah: “I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah” (Jer. 30:3). Here in Chapter 31, Yahweh promises that His New Covenant will be made with the houses of Israel and Judah. By mentioning both Israel and Judah, Jeremiah is communicating that God’s new covenant will include the entire people of God. It will not be a fractured kingdom.
Jeremiah knew that going all the way back to Abraham, God had promised to bless the entire world, not just the nation of Israel. He promised Abraham that through him, all the families of the Earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3), and the OT often speaks of God blessing the nations. Of course, Jeremiah wasn’t privy to exactly how or when that would happen. He knew God had promised a Messiah, but he didn’t know it would be a man named Jesus of Nazareth in the first century or that it was through faith in Jesus that the Gentiles would be grafted in. When Jeremiah wants to speak of the entirety of God’s people, he has to use language that his contemporary readers would understand. In his day, the way to refer to the entirety of God’s covenant people was the phrase “the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”
When we get to the NT and the revelation of Jesus, we discover that the definition of God’s people has been expanded. It is no longer based on physical ancestry but rather spiritual lineage. The NT is full of language that refers to believers as “adopted” into the family of God and as His “children:” “It is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham” (Gal. 3:7). “The [gospel] is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile” (Rom 1:16). “Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also” (Rom. 3:29). “There is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him” (Rom. 10:12). Indeed, Jesus prophesied that He would bring in the Gentiles (John 10:16), and after His resurrection He commanded His followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19).
The NT terminology for referring to God’s people is the “body of Christ” or “the kingdom of God.” It includes everyone who has placed their faith in Jesus, whether from the house of Israel, the house of Judah, or the Gentile nations. Conversely, being from the house of Israel or Judah no longer means that one is automatically part of God’s New Covenant community. The new requirement for entry is faith in Jesus. In Jeremiah 31:34, God is saying that He would make His New Covenant with the entire people of God. And because of Jesus, the definition of the God’s “covenant people” changed.
1 Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God’s Unfolding Purpose, ed. D. A. Carson, vol. 23, New Studies in Biblical Theology (England; Downers Grove, IL: Apollos; InterVarsity Press, 2007), 146.
2 Ibid., 147.
3 Ibid., 149.
4 Ibid.
5 Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 293.
6 Williamson, 150.
7 Ibid.
8 J. A. Dearman, Jeremiah and Lamentations, NIVAC (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 287.
9 Williamson, 151.
