Knowing The Word in the Major Prophets: The New Covenant, Jeremiah 31:31-34

The problem with God’s people is that they are circumcised in body but not in heart. Here God promises to do something about this. God will provide the benefits of the knowledge of him and his forgiveness that are offered in the old covenant but rarely appropriated. There will be a new covenant that will not be broken because he will change his people, giving them his Spirit. All members of this covenant will know God and the promises that he will not remember their sins. All will be forgiven under the new covenant.

31 “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, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 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. 34 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.”

God our Father, you brought us into a new covenant through the blood of your Son shed upon the cross that brings us healing and forgiveness. Give us grateful hearts enlivened by your Spirit, helping us to forgive others as we have been forgiven by you.