Covenant

“I will put my laws in their hearts and write them on their minds.”

Hebrews 10:16

 Covenantal agreements were a part of Jewish life. These formal agreements could be agreements between God and people, or between people themselves.  But one important feature of a covenant was that it had a relational aspect. 

In Hebrews 10, the Apostle Paul quotes Jeremiah 31:31, in which God makes a promise of the future to Israel, “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.” 

He goes on to say that this covenant will not be like the one He made with their fathers when he brought them out of Egypt.  He says in verses 33-34, “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.”

Paul makes the case in Hebrews that the old sacrificial system can never remove sins, and “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (v.10).

A new covenant through the blood of Jesus.  Forgiveness of sin because of his sacrifice, offered for everyone. 

But it began in Bethlehem. 

In the quietness of a stable. 

In the stillness of the night.

The perfect Lamb of God. 

A new covenant has come.