Scripture Daily

Context No. 3611 of 4322 · Hebrews

Context · Reflection

Hebrews 8:7-13: in context

7For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8For finding fault with them, he said, “Behold, the days are coming”, says the Lord, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; 9not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they didn’t continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them,” says the Lord. 10“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 into their mind; I will also write them on their heart. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 11They will not teach every man his fellow citizen and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all will know me, from their least to their greatest. 12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more.” 13In that he says, “A new covenant”, he has made the first obsolete. But that which is becoming obsolete and grows aged is near to vanishing away.

The writer to the Hebrews quotes Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant, and it is glorious. God says, I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Where the old covenant was written on tablets of stone, external and demanding, the new is written on the heart, internal and transforming.

God does not merely command from the outside; he changes the heart within. All his people, he says, will know him personally. And the covenant reaches its climax in a stunning promise of mercy: I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. God chooses to remember our sins no more, to blot them out completely and forever. This is the heart of the new covenant sealed by Christ's blood: not external rules but a law written on the heart, a personal knowledge of God, and sins fully and finally forgiven and put out of mind.

Do I live under the new covenant's promises, God's law written on my heart, and my sins remembered no more, receiving the transforming mercy sealed by Christ's blood?

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