What is new covenant theology?

The apostle speaks in these chapters of the new covenant as the glad tidings preached in the world, and declares that “If our gospel be veiled it is veiled in them that are lost.” The new covenant is the disposition of God toward man, and this disposition is expressed in Christ. It is helpful to get out of our minds the idea of the covenant as an agreement between two parties, and to see that it means the disposition of God made known to us in Christ. It has been pointed out that a testament is the expression of the disposition of the testator toward those named in the testament.

The apostle speaks of the new covenant as glad tidings. He says, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." The covenant will actually be made with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, but it is the principle upon which God addresses Himself to all men to-day. There is no covenant made with any one upon earth in this dispensation, but the disposition of God toward man is declared in the gospel, and this is what the covenant means; it is a disposition on the part of God manward. It is what God is toward man in Christ. It is not made with man, it will be made with Israel, but the terms, fixed and sure, upon which God will be with Israel, are now held out to all men in the name of Christ. Men may refuse to welcome and submit to the disposition of God, or they may gladly accept it, but the disposition is declared in the power of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.

And the Greek word for “New” here is not that which signifies repaired, or even renovated, as it may be possible to renew an article that has run out of repair, but it signifies what is absolutely and radically new, something which had not existed before. It is the same word as we find in Colossians 3:10, the “new man.”

Now this attaches great importance to the character of the “New Covenant.” It is one of a distinctly different kind and order from the old. An amalgamation or infusion of the two is not allowed. They are essentially distinct. The old may have furnished types and shadows of the new, but in nature they stand apart. The old was legal, and dealt with man on the ground of responsibility; the new is of grace, and takes up the cause of man as he is—guilty, and without strength. It is therefore a better covenant, and is established on better promises. As to its letter, it is to be made with Israel and Judah after those days—that is, with the nation when Christianity as such, and the Church, have run the course of their testimony here; but as to the spirit of it Paul could write—“Has made us able ministers of the new covenant” (2 Cor. 3), “not of the letter, but of the spirit.” And, seeing that the blood of Christ is called “the blood of the new covenant” we (Christians) have thereby the remission of our sins. Hence we read, in Hebrews 10, “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” That is, although the new covenant is not de facto made with Christians, yet the old covenant—as a covenant or compact—has passed away, and we stand before God on the ground of the new—that is, on the ground of grace.

Although the new covenant will be made with Israel, as foretold in Jeremiah 31:31–34, the spirit of the new covenant is brought to believers now in the Gospel, as Paul clearly states in 2 Corinthians 3:6. In the new covenant we learn of God’s disposition towards His people, and it is in marked contrast to the demands made upon Israel by the old covenant. Under the old covenant the demands were “Thou shalt,” and “Thou shalt not,” but under the new covenant God says “I will.” The old covenant had two parties to it, and blessing from God depended on Israel fulfilling the conditions to which they had bound themselves in a covenant of death, but the new covenant is the expression of the sovereign goodness of God.

There are three distinct parts of this new covenant: (1) "I will put my law in their inward parts and write it on their hearts" — that implies a new nature, new birth; (2) "They shall no more teach every man his neighbour, … but they shall all know me." In Hebrews 8 (New Translation) it is "know me in themselves" — that is conscious knowledge: we cannot get beyond that; and (3) "For I will forgive their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more" — that is the knowledge of God revealed in grace. The law in our hearts, the knowledge of God who is love, and "no more conscience of sins," — such are the terms of the new covenant. Are not all these blessings ours to-day by the Spirit? If you believe, however little you may enter into them, they are yours. None can say he knows them perfectly; how can you know God perfectly? But many can say they know enough to see how little they really do know, or they know enough to want to know more.

Verses 27-34. In the preceding verse we read that Jeremiah awoke, so that this message must have come to him in a vision by night, and sweet was his sleep. How refreshing must have been to his troubled soul this wonderful prophecy! The great prediction in these verses is the one concerning the new covenant. This covenant is not made with Gentiles, nor even with the church as so often erroneously stated. It is the new covenant to be made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. This is fully confirmed in the Epistle to Hebrews (Hebrews 8:8-13). The old covenant is the law-covenant, which the Lord did not make with Gentiles, but with Israel exclusively. The new covenant is of grace. The ground of this new covenant is the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ, His blood, as we learn from His own words when He instituted the supper. He died for that nation, and therefore all Israel will yet receive the promised blessing of this new covenant. This prophecy is therefore still unfulfilled, for Israel does not enjoy this new covenant now. In the meantime, while Israel has not yet the blessings of this new covenant, Gentiles, who by nature are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, believing in Christ, possess the blessings of this new covenant to the full. In that coming day of Israel's return, the nation, Israel and Judah, will be born again, know the Lord, and their sins will be remembered no more.

First, then, we will adduce the new covenant as superseding the old. In chapter 8 the apostle says that the Lord has "obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also He is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises"; and then, after pointing out that this better covenant with its better promises has for ever set aside the former one, he sums it all up in the words, "In that He saith, A new covenant, He hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away." This new covenant, equally with the old, is doubtless made with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah (see v. 8), and contains the terms upon which God, according to His own grace, will maintain His relationships with them in a future day; but as we are reminded every week when partaking of the Lord's supper, we have already come into the possession of its blessings. And how we should rejoice that it is a new covenant! for the old was a ministry of death and condemnation, and the new a ministry of righteousness and the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3.) In a word, the former was law, requirement; the latter is grace and gift. And yet such is the perversity of the flesh, that even professed Christians are ever going back to the ground of that old covenant which has been superseded - to their own condemnation. According to the words already referred to, "No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better."

It could hardly be said that the old covenant of law was established upon promises at all, though there were certain promises connected with it. It was established rather upon a bargain, in which Israel undertook in all things to obey, and God guaranteed certain blessings conditional upon their obedience. The bargain was hardly concluded before it was broken by Israel making the golden calf. The fact that the new covenant is established upon promises, that those promises are God's, and that they are better than anything proposed under the law, at once differentiates it sharply from the old. To gain some idea of these better promises you must read the latter part of our chapter, which is quoted from the passage in Jeremiah 31 — where the new covenant itself is promised — verses 31 to 34. God's "I will," is the characteristic feature of it. All is a question of what God is going to do, and of what consequently Israel is going to be and have.

The words of Jeremiah 31:31–34 must have puzzled the prophet and his hearers alike: what was the basis for this covenant, for God’s ‘I will pardon’ and ‘their sin will I remember no more’? How could He remain righteous and yet ‘remember no more’? Centuries later, this question was answered by the Lord Jesus Himself when He said, ‘this is my blood, that of the new covenant’ (Matt. 26:28). He was about to accomplish the work of redemption and thereby lay the basis for the new covenant: His own blood.

Here you have the new covenant, and there are two characteristics. The old covenant was upon the condition of obedience. What is the new covenant upon condition of? No condition on their part whatever. Israel will have no glory in connection with the new covenant, but there are two features of it that go together. First, it is the writing of God's law in the heart, instead of writing it upon the tables of stone. That is new birth, as you have it in Ezekiel; as our Lord said to Nicodemus, "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?" — the need of regeneration, of a new heart, which delights in the law of God, had been spoken of already.