What is the New Covenant?

What is the 'New Covenant', and what makes it better than the Old? As Christians how are we under the New Covenant (Heb. 8:8)?

Hebrews 8: 7-8 |"For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah..."

The English words "covenant" and "testament" are both used to translate the Greek word 'diatheke' which occurs 33 times in the NT. In the Hebrew Bible (OT), the Greek word 'diatheke' is over 300 times given as the equivalent of the Hebrew 'berith', always translated into English as "covenant."

First thing to understand: A "covenant" is simply an 'agreement' between two living parties (Exo.19:5 - 8). When the Old Covenant was broken, the epistle of Hebrews is clear as to what causes its failure. Its not because of difficult terms and obligations (laws/commandments), but because of the 'hardness of hearts' of the people, "..finding fault with them" (Heb.8:8; cf. Heb.3: 7-9; 4:5-7). The covenant is never about the law, it's the 'agreement' to do certain things (God's law is its pattern or 'tenor' of the agreement).

In the old covenant, the following words were the agreement (or 'vow') as affirmed by the children of Israel, "Then all the people answered together and said, 'All that the Lord has spoken WE WILL DO.' So Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord." (Exo.19:8)

Second thing to know: The prophet Jeremiah wrote about the new covenant that God is offering with these words, "The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah...(Jeremiah 31:31).

Always remember, the new covenant is with the 'house of Israel and Judah'. God never established the new covenant with any other nation or group--gentiles or even the church, as others have mistakenly assumed. If people want to be part of the new covenant, they should enter and must be "grafted-in" through Israel (Rom.11:11-31)!

Paul wrote, "And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God" (Gal.6:16).

The book of Hebrews tells us why the new covenant offered through Jesus Christ is better than the old one made in the Old Testament. Jesus Christ has obtained a supremely more excellent ministry, as much greater as the superior covenant of which He is also Mediator, which was established upon superior promises (Hebrews 8:6).

There are at least four superior reasons why the new covenant made by God is far better and greater than anything he previously proposed to His people. God promises with this new agreement that through the power and might of his Holy Spirit, he will personally write his laws and ways on man's mind.

"I will give My laws into their minds, and I will inscribe them upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people" (Hebrews 8:10, see also Romans 8:1).

Let's make this quite clear: The New Covenant, in no way, does away with or "waters down" even the letter of God's spiritual law. Rather, it empowers genuinely converted men and women by God's Spirit to obey that law in the letter AND in the spirit. It enables Jesus Christ--through the Spirit--to LIVE His life in the believers.

Another reason why the covenant Jesus Christ offered is greater than anything that came before it is that it promises ALL sins will be forgiven. In fact, the awesome promise He makes is that our sins, once he forgives them, will never, ever be recalled again!

"For I will be merciful toward their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawlessness I will not remember EVER AGAIN" (Hebrews 8:12).

It is only through the sacrifice and death of Jesus Christ the Savior that such an incredible offer of forgiveness can be extended to man (Matthew 26:27 - 28).

The proposed new covenant is far greater than anything else because those who love and obey God will receive an inheritance only HE can give.

And for this reason He is the Mediator of the New Covenant: in order that through His death . . . those who have been called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance (Hebrews 9:15)

God's proposal to live forever is being offered now but only few really understand and take it to heart. It soon will be proposed to ALL nations. It will ultimately be offered to all those who ever lived (Ezekiel 37, Jeremiah 31, Hebrews 8, etc.). Although only partially fulfilled during his first coming to earth, (with the ratification of the agreement through His own blood), the primary mission of Jesus' second coming will be to encourage man to accept God's will for them.

Under the rulership of Christ, the world will come to know, respect, and keep God's law under the new covenant that will be made to fully understand God and His righteousness.

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"None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them."--Hebrew 8:11