Jeremiah 31:31-34

​I've often had people respond to my desire to obey the Law Yahweh gave through Moses with something like this: “But Matthew, don’t you realize we are under the New Covenant?” The first time I ever heard that rebuttal it did make me pause, but I was a young commandment-keeper, still a teenager at that time, so I went back to my Bible and did some research.

What I found then, and through my adult life of studying, is that most people who mention the New Covenant do not have a clue what it actually is. I once had a discussion with a preacher of a local church here in my county where this came up. When I asked him what the Biblical definition of the New Covenant is, he responded, “It’s Jesus.” I asked him to be more specific. He said, “Well, it’s Matthew to Revelation.” It saddens me that some preachers don’t know more than this.

The New Covenant is first mentioned in Jeremiah chapters 31-33 and Ezekiel chapters 36-37. Some of the New Covenant promises are the resurrection from the dead, the restoration of the land Yahweh gave to father Abraham, the throne of David, and the Aaronic Priesthood. It’s all there in those prophetic books if we just take the time to read.
Another huge promise of the New Covenant is that the Law of Yahweh will be internalized on the Houses of Israel and Judah. The New Covenant is never said to be made with any other people but Israelites. So if you are a non-Israelite, you have to find a way to join to Israel in order to be a partaker of the New Covenant.

Imagine being an Israelite back in Jeremiah’s day and hearing the prophet Jeremiah relay the words of Yahweh to you about His New Covenant. Yahweh says (Jer. 31:33, LSB), “This is the covenant which I will cut with the house of Israel after those days, declares Yahweh. I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their [Mighty One], and they shall be My people.” What law would you think about as you stood there listening? There’s no other answer than the very Law Yahweh had already given you to obey.

It is important to understand here that the New Covenant promise is that Yahweh’s Law will be on a person’s mind and heart, NOT that a person’s mind and heart will all of a sudden be the law they go by. Many people get this twisted. They think the New Covenant is their current state of believing in Jesus and just following their conscience. No, that’s not the New Covenant promise. It’s rather that the same Law that was written on stones and in a book (The Ten Commandments and the Book of the Law) is now fully written on your heart and mind.

While believers do possess the down-payment or first-deposit of the Spirit (Eph. 1:14; 2 Cor. 1:22) we do not have the totality of the Spirit in our hearts. This is important to recognize because the giving of Yahweh’s Spirit is equal to His writing the Law on our hearts and minds in Ezekiel 36:26-27; it’s the same thing. At a person’s resurrection from the dead to immortality, the Spirit will be fully in their heart and so will the Law. At that point there will be no need for anyone to teach them anything, because they will know it perfectly, as Jeremiah 31:34 says.

So the New Covenant promise began at the first-coming of Christ, but just like we await the second (final) coming of Christ to the earth, we also await the full-deposit of the New Covenant, the remainder of the Spirit that was promised when we received the down-payment from Yahweh. It really is amazing to me that many Christians think the New Covenant means we don’t have to keep the Law anymore. It shows me that people do not genuinely read the Scriptures, they often just go by what they think or something they’ve heard.