Jeremiah 31:31-37

I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.

The new covenant

The old and new covenants are placed in opposition to each other. The latter is represented as being--

I. More effective in its provisions.

1. Spiritual.

2. Loving.

3. Cheerful.

4. Diligent.

5. Persevering.

II. More comprehensive in its range.

1. An important truth implied. It is the duty of those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, to be zealous in instructing those around them.

2. A cheering assurance given. “They shall all know Me,” &c.

3. A striking reason adduced. “For I will forgive their iniquity,” &c. To know God savingly, is to know Him as a sin-forgiving God, and that the enjoyment of His pardoning mercy is an evidence of our interest in all the other blessings of the Gospel covenant.

III. More secure as regards its stability. “Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun,” &c. The carnal and hypocritical He would indeed cast off; but for the encouragement of the spiritual seed of Israel, the most stable things in the universe are referred to as a pledge of the immutability of His gracious purposes. (Expository Outlines.)

The new covenant

I. The Christian religion is described as a new covenant. This covenant would be new, for it had predecessors, and God is said to have made a covenant with Noah when He promised that a judgment like the flood should not be repeated, and with Abraham when He promised Canaan to his descendants for an everlasting possession, and imposed the condition of circumcision. But by the phrase “the old covenant” is meant especially the covenant which God made with Israel as a people when Moses descended from Mount Sinai. At later periods in Israel’s history this covenant was again and again renewed--as by Joshua, at Shechem; as by King Asa, at Jerusalem; as by Jehoida, the priest, in the temple, and by the priesthood and people together, under Hezekiah, and under the auspices of Ezra and Nehemiah in later days still, after the great captivity. It was renewed and it was continually broken. It was a Divine work, and yet, through man’s perverseness, it was a continuous failure. The new “covenant”: it is a phrase which sounds somewhat strange to the ears of Christians, who have been accustomed all their life to talk of the New “Testament.” A covenant is a compact or agreement, and it implies something like equal fights between those who are parties to it. Monarchs make covenants or treaties with monarchs, nations with nations. Even when, as sometimes happens, the government of a great Power enters into contracts with a house of business, or with an individual, this is because the firm or the person in question is for the purposes of the contract on terms of equality with the negotiating government, as having at disposal some means of rendering it a signal service, which, for the moment, throws all other considerations into the background. And this general equality between parties to a covenant may be further illustrated by the case of the most sacred of all possible human contracts, the marriage tie--that marriage tie which, by the law of God, once made, can be dissolved only by death, and in which it is the glory of the Christian law--I do not speak of human legislation in Christian times--to have secured to the contracting parties equal rights. It is, then, a little startling to find this same word employed to describe a relation between the infinite and eternal God and the creatures of His hand. He wants nothing when He has everything to give. Man needs everything, and can do nothing that will increase the blessedness that is already infinite, or enhance a power which, as it is, knows no bounds. But here are covenants between God and man, covenants in which there seems no place for reciprocity, covenants in which indulgence or endowment is all on one side, and acknowledgment, or, rather, failure, on the other; covenants in naming which language seems to forget its wonted meaning, and to betray us into misconceptions, which bring, to say the least, bewilderment and confusion; and yet, in reality, when God speaks of making a covenant with man, He is only giving one more instance of that law of condescension of which the highest results appeared when He, the Infinite, took on Him a human form, when He, the Eternal, entered as a man into fellowship with the children of time. A covenant, then, is a contract or compact, and the question cannot but occur to us, “Might the covenant which God makes with His people not come to be called, as it is called, a testament? for the words covenant and testament” represent in our English Bibles a single word in each of the original languages. The Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, who some 200 years or more before our Lord turned the Old Testament, bit by bit, from Hebrew into Greek, as it was wanted for use in the service of their synagogue, and then made of these fragments the great version which we to-day call the Septuagint, used the Greek word for “will” to translate the Hebrew word for “covenant,” because they observed that the old covenant of God with the patriarchs and with Israel did involve actual bequests such as was the possession of Canaan, which could only be inherited in a distant future. And thus the Hebrew word meaning a contract was strained, if you please, by its actual use to mean a testament, and the Greek word meaning primarily, although not exclusively, a will acquired by its associations the sense of a covenant or contract. He who by His providence controls the course of human events and the currents of human thought does also most assuredly take human speech so that it may do His work, and it is His doing and not any chance irregularity that the original word in the New Testament has thus come to mean both covenant and testament, for that which it was intended to describe answered to both meanings. Religion as such, and the religion of the Gospels especially, is at once a compact with God and a bequest from God. The Gospel, I say, is a compact or covenant, because its blessings are provisionally bestowed. They must be met by faith, hope, love, repentance. And it is also a will or testament more obviously than was the Mosaic covenant, for it was made by our Divine Lord when His death was in full view, and when He, who alone could use such words without folly or without blasphemy, took the cup into His blessed hands, and when He had given thanks He gave it to His followers, saying, “Drink ye all of this; for this is My blood of the New Testament, which is being poured out for you and for many for the remission of sins.” And yet this very testament is so conditioned as to be a covenant too, and the solemn words to which I have just referred were but an echo in an after age of the saying in the prophets, “Behold, I make a new covenant.”

II. Of this new covenant in the gospels there were according to jeremiah to be three characteristics. We cannot suppose that he is giving us an exhaustive description. He selects these three points because they form a vivid and easily understood contrast between the new covenant and the old, between Christianity and Judaism.

1. In those who have a real part in the new covenant the law of God was not to be simply or chiefly an outward rule, it was to be an inward principle. The law was to be no longer an outward rule condemning the inward life or even rousing the spirit of rebellion: it was to be an inward operation, not running counter to the will, but shaping it and claiming obedience, not from fear but from love, and from love heightened to enthusiasm. It was to present itself, not as a summons from without the will, but as an impulse from within the soul; not as declaring that which has to be done or foregone, but as describing that which it was already a joy to forego or to do; in short, a new power, the Spirit of Christ, giving Christians s new nature; the nature of Christ would be within the soul and would effect a change.

2. The second token of a part in the new covenant is the growth of the soul in the knowledge of Divine truth. In ancient Israel, as now, men learned what they could learn about God from human teachers, but the truths which they learned, though inculcated with great industry, were, in the majority of cases, not really mastered, because there was no accompanying process of interpretation and readjustment from within. It was to be otherwise in the future. In the new covenant the Divine Teacher, without dispensing with such human instruments as we are, would do the most important part of the work Himself. He would make truth plain to the soul, and would enamour the soul with the beauty of truth by such instruction as is beyond the reach of human argument and human language, since it belongs altogether to the world of spirits. “Ye have an unction from the Holy One,” said St. John to his readers, “and ye know all things.” “Listen not,” cries St. Augustine, “too eagerly to the outward words: the true Master sits within.

3. A third characteristic of the new covenant was to be the forgiveness of sins. This, although stated last, is really a precedent condition of the other two. “This is a true saying., and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save stoners,” and this salvation of His must begin with pardon, and this pardon is the crowning triumph of the new covenant between God and man. (Canon Liddon.)

The new covenant

This particular portion of the chapter is the only clear evangelical declaration in the Book. It reads more like Isaiah than Jeremiah. It must have been a great gladness to that sad-hearted and sorrowful prophet to have this glimpse of coming restoration and grace for his sinful and sorely afflicted people. He was all the more glad to pour in this balsam because he had hitherto been giving them salt for their wounds and wormwood to drink.

I. The new plantation. Hitherto it had been his sad and sorrowful duty to declare to the people God’s purpose to “root out, to pull down, and to destroy and throw down”; but now the time has come to fulfil his task of declaring God’s purpose to “build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). The devastation of the lend of Israel end Judah had been complete, the slain of the people vast in numbers; the utter taking away and dispersing of the ten tribes had left but a remnant even before the captivity of Judah. The promise of a restoration of Judah to the land would be, even when fulfilled, but the return of a mere handful of people and cattle. So small, indeed, that the land would still seem to be desolate for want of inhabitants, and in poverty for want of cattle. In view of this very discouraging outlook the prophet speaks this most comforting promise.

1. The sowing--“I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast.” The same promise was made to Israel and Judah by Ezekiel 36:9, and by Hosea 2:23. This promise seems to include the gathering in of the Gentiles as well, just as the same covenant promise is made to them as to the returned Jews. The figure is one of the greatest encouragement. The remnant of the people and cattle are as the handful of seed for the ground, but God will so bless them that they shall increase like seed sown before s great harvest that shall fill the land. The same thought is expressed in Psalms 72:16. This prophecy was scarcely realised in the return from Babylon, but it had the beginning of its fulfilment then. There is a suggestion here of the method of multiplication of the people; as seed sown in the ground multiplies into a great harvest, so shall living Christians multiply themselves in those whom they are the means of converting to God. How Andrew multiplied himself when he found Peter, who after was the means of winning three thousand souls at one preaching! Stephen multiplied himself through Saul of Tarsus. In this latter case seed was literally sown in the ground, and out of the martyr blood sprung the apostle of the Gentiles.

2. The watching--“And it shall come to pass that like as I have watched over them to pluck up,” &c., “so will I watch over them to build and to plant, saith the Lord.” The growth of God’s kingdom in the earth among men is not a mere process of nature. It goes on in the power of God’s special and supernatural gifts of grace, and is carried forward under His watchful eye and fostering care. Not one least convert makes his appearance in the world but that God watches over him to protect and defend. His promise is that “ their soul shall be as a watered garden” (verse 12). It is comforting to know that God’s promise of grace and favour is as true as His threats have proved. If sin has abounded to our ruin, let us know that grace doth much more abound to our salvation.

3. The new individual relation between God and the people. The saying which the prophet alludes to: “The fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children’s teeth are set on edge,” shall no longer be in vogue when that day of grace of which the prophet speaks comes. He condemns the saying, as does Ezekiel 18:1. There was a certain truth in the saying, but it had been perverted, and the entire proverb had been quoted in such a way as to cast a reproach of injustice upon God. As a matter of fact, there is a law of heredity, both physical and moral, to which every one must submit. It is impossible to shut one s eyes to the fact; but then according to God’s law, and especially according to His grace, moral responsibility does not attach to this hereditary transmission of consequences unless the heir consents to the father’s sin and walks in his way. Any individual descendant may break the heredity at any point he pleases by turning to the Lord. It is also true that in former times God dealt with the nation as such, rather than with individuals. The nation’s sin brought their present calamities upon them, in which many individually righteous men suffered; but in the days to come the national will give place to the individual relation. This for two reasons. First, the nation as a whole will have learned righteousness in that day, and so it will come to pass that the individual transgressor will be so conspicuously by himself, that it will be seen at a glance that his suffering or judgment will rest upon the fact of his own sin. Hitherto the individually righteous man had been so rare in the nation that he was overlooked and swept away in the tide of the nation’s punishment, just as Caleb and Joshua were carried back into the wilderness for forty years with the whole unbelieving nation. But, second, there is s distinct advance in thought by the prophet in the direction of that individuality of relation which characterises the new covenant in distinction from that which was so apparent in the old. Under the law the oneness and entirety of the nation was maintained; under the Gospel the individual soul is brought before God. “Every one of us shall give an account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12). Nothing could more mark the great advance in thought than this prophetic declaration.

II. The new covenant. As if to explain and justify his new doctrine, he announces the fact of a new covenant. This is the first distinct announcement of the new dispensation under this title. This covenant is to differ radically in terms and contents from the old covenant which God made with the children of Israel when He brought them out of Egypt. Reference is clear to the New Testament dispensation, as may be seen from Hebrews 8:1. By a covenant is meant an appointment by God. We are not to understand that God entered into a contract with man. He appointed certain things, promised certain things, upon certain conditions which the people were to perform. But the covenant or agreement was wholly of His own making. The old covenant, so far as the blessings were concerned, had failed utterly because of the utter failure of the people to “do the things” which God commanded. Therefore He has taken it away and substituted another covenant, based upon better promises--one in which He not only proposes blessings, but undertakes to fulfil the conditions upon which they shall flow in to us.

1. Some contrasts. The old covenant was broken by the disobedience of the people, though in the administration thereof God had acted throughout as a forgiving husband who was constantly compounding the sins of an unfaithful wife. But this new covenant is kept and secured by the performance of all its conditions by God Himself, acting in and through Christ (Hebrews 8:6). The old covenant was a faulty one, never intended indeed to be the means of their salvation, but only to remind them of their sin and show them their helplessness. Not faulty in the thing it was intended to accomplish, but in its final ability to save; whereas the new covenant, made in and with Christ for our sakes, is a perfect covenant in terms and in fulfilment, and so does secure our salvation (Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 10:1; Romans 8:3). The old covenant had a complicated and elaborate ceremonial, which could not be understood or administered except by priests and ministers, and then but imperfectly; the new covenant is simply based on the one complete offering which Jesus Christ has made for all time and for all people; He being at once tabernacle, priest, altar, offering, and minister. We simply, as sinners, go to God by Him, confess that we are stoners, acknowledge that we are helpless either to get rid of sin or maintain righteousness, and call upon Him to save us. This He does fully, freely, and eternally by His grace, without any merit of our own. Under the old covenant the provisions for the cancelling of sins were not only imperfect but utterly futile, every offering made by man through the priests being in fact but a remembrance of sin, not a removal of it; whereas in this new covenant there is perfect provision (Hebrews 10:1.). Therefore on its basis the forgiveness of sins is freely proclaimed (verse 34; Hebrews 10:17).

2. Chief characteristics. The prophet mentions three--

(1) Inwardness. “I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.” The terms of the old covenant, indeed its whole contents, were written first on tables of stone and then all its detail in external laws, which the people were compelled to bind between their eyes, on their wrists, and fix them on the door-plates of their houses and the posts of their gates. The whole relation was as between an outward law and an outward obedience. The law commanded and the subject had to obey. The law of Moses did not take account of thoughts or motives, only of actions. The action was not that of faith, but of works. But this new covenant is not so proclaimed and written. Jesus shows in the Sermon on the Mount that true righteousness extends to thoughts and motives, and so the true life of God is not in externals, but in heart relation to God. Therefore we are God’s children, not by national or family relation, but by a new birth, by faith in Jesus Christ. We obey the law not because of outward pressure, but from inward conviction, not by the fear of external punishment, but by the constraint of an inward love. In the new creation which comes to believers under the new covenant (2 Corinthians 5:17), they are not bound by a multitude of statutes and minute rules, but constrained by a personal love to and for Jesus Christ. It is now an affectionate loyalty to a Divine Person; no longer a fearful obedience to an external, cold and pitiless law. An old writer says, in answer to an anxious inquiry as to what a Christian may and may not do: “Love God and do what you please.” That is, if the heart is controlled by the love of God, if the law is written in the heart, then the Christian will know what is right and wrong by the instinct of the law of righteousness in him, and will only desire to do that thing which heart and conscience teach him. Christ in us the hope of Glory is the best law a Christian can have. This is to walk with God, and to walk with God is certainly to walk in paths of righteousness.

(2) Knowledge. “And they shall teach no more every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.” I think the sense of this passage is that, under the new covenant with the law in the inward parts and written in the heart, the system shall not be dependent on intellectual training or culture. Philosophical or scientific knowledge must be painfully taught and more painfully learned. The young child is often as enlightened in the things of the Spirit as the aged scholar; the ignorant negro as intelligent in spiritual things as his cultured master. This knowledge is for the least as well as the greatest, and is dependent not so much upon teaching and learning as upon spiritual apprehension (1 Corinthians 1:13 -end, 2:1-10). So also John declares that, with this law in our hearts and the Spirit of God for a teacher, we are not dependent upon anyone to teach us the essential truth of the Gospel (1 John 2:27).

(3) Universality. “From the least to the greatest is an expression which carries with it the idea of universality as to the race. The old covenant was confined to the Jewish people, the new covenant, or the Gospel, is “for all people.” The terms of the covenant of grace are the same to all; the masses of heathendom are to be dealt with just as the so-called Christian nations. There is no difference” now, for as all have sinned, all have been brought under the provisions of grace. Let the covenant, then, be published abroad.

3. The contents of the Covenant. These are three--

(1) “I will be their God.” This was a promise under the old covenant; it shall be more than confirmed under the new. They had forfeited the right of having Him for their God by their breach of His covenant, but now that which could not be theirs by law comes to be theirs by Grace. After His resurrection, Jesus sent this message to His disciples (John 20:17). This is the relation now. He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the same close and blessed way He is our God and Father.

(2) “They shall be My people.” Not an outward and earthly people, but an heavenly and spiritual. Every one shall be born of the Spirit, and each one is so an offspring of God. This promise is often emphasised in the closing Book of Revelation (Revelation 21:3).

(3) The forgiveness of sin. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Matthew 26:28). This is the great promise which the apostle held out to the people: “Be it known unto you, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins” (Acts 13:38). We might multiply passages innumerable to show this great blessing, and how it glows in the forefront of all those of the new covenant. Not only does He forgive our iniquities, but He utterly forgets them (Psalms 32:1).

III. Assurances. The wonderful covenant promises are now guaranteed by such assurances as must satisfy any people or any soul. God appeals to the heavens, where He has set the sun, moon, and stars for lights by day and night, whose permanence is accepted; He appeals to the ocean, which obeys some mysterious power, and never fails. As long as they endure, so shall the terms of this covenant stand. When heaven and earth can be measured and searched out, and the ordinances of heaven and earth fail, then shall the seed of Israel fail, but not till then (verses 36, 37). (G. F. Pentecost, D. D.)

Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant

1. Of two things we may be sure beforehand.

(1) The prophet’s hope of permanent well-being in the future wilt not be based on any expectation of the people doing better, but rather on the faith that God in His grace will do more for them and in them. The action of Divine love may, nay, doubtless will, transform human nature so as to make the people of the new covenant veritable sons of God; but the initiative will lie with God, not with men; and just on that account the new covenant will be stable as the ordinances of the sun and moon and stars.

(2) Since the new constitution is to be introduced on the express ground of dissatisfaction with the old, its provisions will be found to have a pointed reference to those of the latter, and to be of such a character as to supply the needful remedy for their defects.

2. Looking now into the prophecy itself, we find that the description which it gives of the peculiarities of the new covenant exactly answers to these expectations.

(1) God appears most conspicuously throughout as the agent. He is the doer, man is the passive subject of His gracious action. He is the giver, man is but the receiver. The old covenant ran, “Now therefore, if ye will obey,” &c. (Exodus 19:5). In the new covenant there is no “if,” suspending Divine blessing and favour on man’s good behaviour. God promises absolutely to be their God, and to regard them as His people, and to insure the relation against all risk of rupture by Himself making the people what He wishes them to be.

(2) There is an obvious reference to the defects of the old covenant in the provisions of the new. Whereas, in the case of the old, the law of duty was written on tables of stone; in the case of the new, the law is to be written on the heart; whereas, under the old, owing to the ritual character of the worship, the knowledge of God and His will was a complicated affair in which men generally were helplessly dependent on a professional class, under the new, the worship of God would be reduced to the simplest spiritual elements, and it would be in every man’s power to know God at first hand, the sole requisite for such knowledge as would then be required being a pure heart.

(3) Whereas, under the old, the provisions for the cancelling of sin were very unsatisfactory, and utterly unfit to perfect the worshipper as to conscience, by dealing thoroughly with the problem of guilt--of which no bettor evidence could be desired than the institution of the great day of atonement, in which a remembrance of sin was made once a your, and by which nothing more than an annual and putative forgiveness was procured--under the new, on the contrary, God would grant to His people a real, absolute, and perennial forgiveness, so that the abiding relation between I-lira and them should be as if sin had never existed.

3. We must enter a little into detail by way of further explanation.

(1) That the contrast is rightly taken in the first of the three conditions will be disputed by few, if any. One cannot read the words, “I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts,” without thinking of the tables of stone which occupy so prominent a place in the history of the Sinaitic covenant. And the writing on the heart suggests very forcibly the defects of the ancient covenant, in so far as it had the fundamental laws of life. The slabs on which the ten words are inscribed may abide as a lasting monument, proclaiming what God requires of man, saying to successive generations, Remember to do this and to avoid doing that. But while the stone slabs may avail to keep men in mind of their duty, they are utterly impotent to dispose them to perform it; in witness whereof we need only refer to Israel’s behaviour at the foot of the mount of lawgiving. Manifestly the writing on the heart is sorely wanted in order that the law may be kept, not merely in the ark, but in human conduct. And that, accordingly, is what Jeremiah puts in the forefront in his account of the new covenant, on which restored Israel is to be constituted. How the mystic writing is to be achieved he does not say, perhaps he does not know; but he believes that God can and will achieve it somehow; and he understands full well its aim and its certain result in a holy life.

(2) Dispute is most likely to arise in connection with the second condition, referred to in the words, “They shall teach no more every man his neighbour,” &c. The primary lesson we take to be, that spiritual knowledge in the new time will take the place occupied by ritual under the old. Spiritual knowledge is a kind of knowledge which can be communicated to each man at first hand, and which indeed can be communicated in no other way. God, as a Spirit, reveals Himself to each human spirit, to each individual man who has a pure heart and who worships in spirit and in truth. On the other hand, the knowledge of positive precepts, such as those contained in the ritual system, can be only obtained at second hand. One man, who has himself been taught, must teach others. The reason, the conscience, or the heart could never reveal God’s will as embodied in such carnal ordinances. And only on supposition that a tacit reference to the ritual system is intended can the full force of the words “They shall teach no more every man his neighbour” be perceived. For what was it in the Sinaitic covenant that made men dependent on their neighbour for the knowledge of God? Surely it was the ritual system. The priest s lips kept knowledge, and men had to seek the Torah, the needful instruction in religious ritual, at his mouth. And it was a grievous bondage, a sure index that the old covenant could not be the final form of God’s relation with men, but was destined one day to be antiquated and replaced by a better covenant with better promises. For these reasons, we find in this part of the oracle concerning the new covenant the prediction that the ritual law would form no part of the final covenant between God and His people, and that in the good time coming men should not be kept dependent on priests and far from God by an elaborate ceremonial; but, taught of the Spirit, should worship God as Father, offering unto Him the spiritual rational service of devout thoughts and gracious affections. So it was understood by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who gives prominence to the ritual of the old covenant as one of the things most urgently demanding antiquation (Hebrews 9:1).

(3) The third blessing of the new covenant, the complete and perpetual forgiveness of sin, is so clearly defined that no dispute can arise as to its nature; the only point open to debate is the feature of the old covenant, to which it contains a tacit reference. We assumed that the mental reference is to the provision in the Levitical system for the cancelling of sin, especially the great day of atonement. Jeremiah evidently speaks as one who feels that the old Sinaitic covenant, at this point as at others, was seriously defective. It made elaborate arrangements for cancelling the sins of ignorance and precipitancy committed by the people, so that these might not interrupt their fellowship with God; and yet there was no real effective forgiveness. For many of the more grievous offences there was not even an atonement of any kind provided. The Levitical forgiveness was thus both partial and shadowy; the problem of human sin was not thoroughly grappled with. All this Jeremiah felt; and therefore, in his picture of the ideally perfect covenant, he assigns a place to a forgiveness worthy of the name--a forgiveness covering the whole of Israel’s sins: her iniquities as well as her errors; and not merely covering them, but blotting them out of the very memory of heaven.

4. But on what does this free, full, and absolute forgiveness of the new covenant rest? The Levitical forgiveness was founded on Levitical sacrifices. Is the forgiveness of the new covenant to be founded on the sacrifice “of nobler name”? That is a question which the student familiar with his New Testament will very naturally answer in the affirmative; and we all know the answer given in the Epistle to the Hebrews. But if it be asked, What is Jeremiah’s answer to the question? we must reply, None. The glorious thought that the ideals of priesthood and of sacrifice can then only be realised when priest and victim meet in one person, does not seem as yet to have risen above the horizon. And yet one may well hesitate to make an assertion when he reads Isaiah 53:1, or even those significant words of Jeremiah himself, “I was like a lamb that is brought to the slaughter.” The idea that a man, and not a beast, is the true sin-bearer is struggling into the prophetic consciousness. If the sun of this great doctrine is not yet risen, its dawn may be discerned on the eastern sky. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.)

A new covenant

I. The blessings of the new covenant.

1. God undertakes to write His law in our hearts.

2. God undertakes to establish a relation between Himself and us.

3. God undertakes to give us the knowledge of Himself.

4. God undertakes to pardon all our iniquities.

II. The difference between the old and new covenants.

1. In the freeness of their grants.

2. In the extent of their provisions.

3. In the duration of their benefits. (G. Brooks.)