“For this is the covenant that I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and I will inscribe them on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will be my people” (Hebrews 8:10 NET).
Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul wrote the following words in the New Testament book of Galatians: “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24). This tells us that God’s intent for the Old Covenant (at least in part) was that it should point us toward the new and better agreement foretold through the prophet Jeremiah and quoted here in Hebrews 8:10-12.
The Living Bible paraphrase of God’s promise through Jeremiah is presented in a form that is very accessible for contemporary audiences…
“‘The day will come,’ says the Lord, ‘when I will make a new contract with the people of Israel and Judah. It won’t be like the one I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt– a contract they broke, forcing me to reject them,’ says the Lord.
‘But this is the new contract I will make with them: I will inscribe my laws upon their hearts, so that they shall want to honor me; then they shall truly be my people and I will be their God. At that time it will no longer be necessary to admonish one another to know the Lord. For everyone, both great and small, shall really know me then,’ says the Lord, ‘and I will forgive and forget their sins'” (Jeremiah 31:31-34 TLB).
This new contract (or New Covenant) was fulfilled through Jesus’ sacrificial death as detailed here in Hebrews chapter eight and again in chapter nine. One important aspect of the New Covenant is that it is not based on what people do for God. Instead, it is based upon what God has done for us in Christ.
The people of Old Testament Israel made several good-faith efforts to fulfill the Old Covenant as mentioned previously in Exodus 19:8, Exodus 24:7, Joshua 24:24, as well as Nehemiah 10:28-29. But unlike those well-intentioned efforts, this New Covenant will never fail, for it does not depend upon fallible human beings to fulfill its terms. As we were reminded earlier in Hebrews 7:25, “…(Jesus) is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them” (NIV).