| Passage: Jeremiah 30-31 On Tuesday, August 29, 2017 (Last Updated on 7/22/2023), Yujin wrote,
This morning I breathe a soul sigh of relief and embrace the peace that passes all understanding as I meditate on these verses. In Jesus the LORD has forgiven us all our iniquity, and He will remember our sin no more. In Jesus He has made us perfect forever. And that perfection He has declared and fully accomplished for us He is also working to conform us to it; that is, He is even now transforming our sinful selves to be like Jesus, to present us holy, blameless, without spot or blemish before God. Hellelujah! What a Savior! |
| Passage: Jeremiah 30-31 On Friday, August 29, 2014, Yujin wrote,
Does this mean that there will be a time when the heavens can be meeasured and the depths of the earth searched out? No. The lofty metaphor is a rhetorical device to affirm God's enduring commitment to His people Israel. God will never cast off His people completely. There are two false conclusions that may be made from a passage like this. First, there is the conclusion that this promise is untrue. God has cast off Israel, even many times, in the past. He cast off a whole generation in the desert over forty years. He cast them off again and again in the period of the judges, allowing swathes of them to be destroyed by their enemies. He cast Israel off to be exiled by the Assyrians. He cast Judah off to be exiled by the Babylonians. After this time, there would be thousands of years when Israel would be captive to various world empires. But this would be to misunderstand the nature of God's promise. His promise was not to preserve every individual life or even any given generation but to continue His relationship with the nation as a whole. Many ancient civilizations have come and gone, but the nation of Israel has remained intact from the days of the original Patriarchs. They remain still the people of God. A second false conclusion is that this promise precludes any judgment by God. Even though Israelites were punished with temporal judgments, they would all finally be saved. This conclusion confuses biological Israel from spiritual Israel. When John the Baptist warned of God's judgment by eternal fire, the religious leaders claimed biological connection to Abraham as the basis for their hope. But John declared that God could raise offspring for Abraham from stones; therefore, they had no special status from such a heritage. Later, Paul would declare that not all Israel was God's Israel but only those that shared in the faith of Abraham. Therefore, many Israelites, who suffered the temporal punishment by God, would also suffer the eternal punishment by God because of their unbelief. Now, a right conclusion from God's promise is that God will never retract His covenant promise to His people. Israel will forever be the people of God. What is more, in spite of their continuous rebellion and disobedience, God would bring about for them and through them the New Covenant promise of imputed righteousness and eternal life. He does not promise these benefits to every individual, but to those whom He has chosen. Consequently, those He has chosen will all be saved, for He declared, "They will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them... for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more" (Jeremiah 31:34). Friends, those of us that have put our hope in Jesus, through whom the New Covenant was ratified, share in the promises of knowing God, experiencing complete forgiveness and gaining eternal salvation. Our hope extends beyond some general affiliation with God's people. Because we share in that faith of Abraham, we are grafted into God's Israel, the Israel whose hearts have been permanently etched by the finger of God. Now, although we have received the New Covenant, we have not fully experienced the benefits of the New Covenant, which awaits the redemption of our bodies, that is, the doing away of our sinful natures. Even so, we can strive with hope in this life, knowing that our labor is not in vain, for our efforts serve to glorify the One who has saved us and assure our own hearts that we are His. |
| Passage: Jeremiah 30-31 On Wednesday, August 29, 2012, Yujin wrote, Jeremiah perhaps gives the clearest statement in the Old Testament of the New Covenant, which is the basis of the Gospel: "The days are coming," declares the Lord,"when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,"declares the Lord. "This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time," declares the Lord."I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor,or say to one another, 'Know the Lord,'because they will all know me,from the least of them to the greatest,"declares the Lord."For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (Jeremiah 31:31-34 NIV) To validate this connection between Jeremiah's conception of the New Covenant and the Gospel, you only need to go to Hebrews, where the connection is clearly made: For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: "This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds." Then he adds: "Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more." And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary. (Hebrews 10:14-18 NIV) Again, earlier in Hebrews the connection between jeremiah's New Covenant account is made to the mediatory work of Jesus Christ, even His displacing the Old Covenant with the New: But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises. For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said: "The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, 'Know the Lord, 'because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. (Hebrews 8:6-13 NIV) Now, let us return to Jeremiah's description of the New Covenant. Do you notice that it was a covenant promised but as yet unrealized. Therefore, the saints that died prior to the advent of this new covenant would have to receive the blessings of it retroactively, for it could only be fulfilled in Christ and ratified by His death: For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. (Hebrews 9:15 NIV) to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:24 NIV) Jesus announced this to his disciples at the Last Supper: In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. (Luke 22:20 NIV) What is more, we as Christians have been given the resposibility to be ministers of the New Covenant: He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! (2 Corinthians 3:6-9 NIV) This passage has been often misinterpreted to justify spiritualizing and allegorizing Scripture; however, as you can see from the whole context, what Paul is contrasting is the New Covenant over against the Old Covenant. The New Covenant is based on the new birth in the Spirit whereas the Old Covenant was based on the Law of Moses. This is also the meaning of another misinterpreted passage: But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:6 NIV) The new way of the Spirit is simply another way of expressing the New Covenant in the Spirit. This text clearly indicates that Christians are no longer bound by the written provisions of the Law of Moses. I hope by these Scriptures you can understand the connection between Christ and the New Covenant and that through Christ we have become the beneficiaries of the New Covenant. Now, let us consider the nature of this New Covenant from Jeremiah 31. I will try not to repeat comments made last year (read below this posting). Notice the distinction God makes between the New Covenant and the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai ("the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt"). He said that Israel and Judah broke the former covenant. But in the New Covenant God says, "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts." Remember, the Old Covenant was written on tablets of stone (i.e. the Ten Commandments). What is the significance of this? God explains, "No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, 'Know the Lord, ' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest." And to know God in the Old Testament always means to have an intimate relationship with Him. Thus, God prefaces this explanation with the declaration, "I will be their God, and they will be my people." In other words, God will unilaterally and sovereignly forge the relationship that He desires with His people. It will not be dependent on their obedience to the Law, which countless generations have shown only repeated rebellion and failure. To those that believe in the invioability of "free will" in salvation, you must contend with God's assessment here of Israel and Judah, which is simply that their free will has failed them. Another important distinction between the New Covenant and the Sinai covenant was this. There was no provision for the forgiveness of willful sins in the Law of Moses. Every willful sin was punishable by either restitution, punishment or death. Where sacrifices were made for atonement, these were only for non-willful (i.e. unintentional) sins. As Hebrews would later explain: It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Hebrews 10:4 NIV) The sacrificial system of the Old Testament was only a foreshadowing of Christ, who would sacrifice His body, which alone had that power to take away sins: Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them"—though they were offered in accordance with the law. Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:5, 6, 8-10 NIV) Now, while the Old Covenant made no provision for forgiveness, the New Covenant did. As God says, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." Thus, God not only unconditionally and sovereignly establishes a relationship with us, He also completely forgives and forgets about all our sins. We only get a glimpse of this in the Old Testament in passages like Isaiah 53, which talks about the Servant of God suffering for the sins of God's people. But the New Testament really fleshes this out, revealing how God accomplishes forgiveness through the subsitutionary death of Christ on the cross. There is no more clearer explanation of this than in Romans: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4 NIV) This passage teaches us that the Law of Moses was powerless to make us holy because of our "flesh" (i.e. our inborn sinful nature). But what the Law could not do, the Spirit accomplished through Christ. How? He became a sin offering for us, so that the righteous requirement of God, which was the death penalty for sin, could be fulfilled for us through the death of Christ. And what He accomplished we benefit from it through the Spirit. Paul gives another expression of this in his second letter to the Corinthians: God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV) Through the New Covenant in Christ, we are the righteousness of God. We are free from the condemnation the Law requires for sin. We have been brought into an enduring relationship with God. This is the hope of every Christian and the reason there is no place of any kind of boasting. God has accomplished it. What we believe and receive, God has enabled by writing His Law upon our minds and hearts. The benefit that we gain, God has accomplished it through Christ's sacrifice for our sins on the cross. The Christian living this life faces the dilemma of a dual nature. On the one hand, they are a prisoner to sin. On the other hand, they have been made free in Christ: So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:21-25 NIV) The Christian will never be free from this conflict while he remains alive in this world, for the sinful nature is only eradicated in death. Thus, there is a continuing groaning for final redemption, that while we are set free spiritually, we might also be set free bodily as well. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. (Galatians 5:17 NIV) Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:23 NIV) Jeremiah's description of the New Covenant does not promise sinlessness but only the benefits of it in Christ. Yet, many other Scriptures reveal that God will complete what He has begun in us: being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6 NIV) To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. (Jude 1:24, 25 NIV) Friends, God's New Covenant with Israel, into which we have been adopted, so that we are coheirs in Christ, is the basis of our hope for eternal life. I hope you can appreciate the magnitude of what Jeremiah has written here. It speaks of our sinful neediness and God's glorious grace, for which we ought to give daily Hallelujahs to the LORD. |
| Passage: Jeremiah 30-31 On Monday, August 29, 2011, Yujin wrote, Friends, there are three things that I want to bring to your attention from today's reading: 1. While God is love, He does not love everyone equally. For example, as evident in His perspective on the nations, His love for the Elect is different from His love for the surrounding nations.
Though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, Sometimes we take a too simplistic view of God's love. Unfortunately, this happens because rather than seeing the various facets of that love, we just simply call it "the Father's love" or make emotional appeals of "how God loves you so much," and we are led to think that it equally applies to unbelievers as believers. While it is true that "God is love," it is not true that God loves everyone equally. So we read even in Malachi 1:2-3 , "Jacob have I loved; But Esau I have hated" (see also Romans 9:13). Also, we tend to thrust our personal understanding of love into our conception of God's love. This appeals to us like a good movie, because it tugs at our heartstrings. However, the Biblical emphasis with respect to God's love is not in the "touchy feely" aspect of that love but rather God's commitment and faithfulness in keeping with His sovereignly-made covenant. This is why in 1 John 1:9 we don't read that the reason God forgives us is because of some kind of emotional attachment to us but rather because He is "faithful and just" to keep His promises to those, who believe. That is the essence of the Hebrew term hesed (often translated "love" or "lovingkindness"), which perhaps gives the clearest expression of God's love and is always connected to His faithfulness to keep His covenant promises. Do you think that Jesus died for us because He had a personal longing to be with us forever? Not so. As Jesus prayed in the Garden, "Not my will, but Yours be done." When He did not defend Himself from capture, He told Peter, "How else will Scripture be fulfilled that says it must be this way." As the Father, so Jesus' love was also very much connected to God's Word. John 3:16 is often translated, "God so loved the world..." This is unfortunate because it gives the impression that the meaning here is that God loved the world "so much." However, the sense of the word "so" is not "so much" but rather "in such a way." If taken in the first way, it gives great worth to the one loved. which is opposite of what Scripture teaches. When taken in the latter way, it gives great worth to the One, who is loving. And the latter way is the proper way to understand the love of God. God loved the world "in such a way as this," namely, that He gave His One-and-only Son. 2. Generational curses are broken through the New Covenant in Christ. I still hear today, most recently at a pastor's conference at Gateway Church in Southlake, that God still curses the children for their fathers' sins. Yet, we read in the New Covenant passage of Jeremiah 31:29-31,
In those days they shall say no more: It is true that generational curses were a part of the Law of Moses, for we read as part of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:5, "For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me..." However, as I argued in a previous post, with the death of Christ, the Ten Commandments, along with the rest of the Law of Moses, have become obsolete. It has been made obsolete by the New Covenant, which was ratified by the blood of Christ (as argued in Hebrews 9:11-17 and Romans 7:4). Therefore, as the end of generational curses was prophesied by Jeremiah (and Ezekiel) as part of the New Covenant, so we as inheritors of that covenant are no longer threatened by such curses. Therefore, in the present day, the diagnosis of certain Christians as being under "generational curses" is false and the presumptuous "deliverance" from such curses is also false. Who knows about such people? Perhaps those that do not understand that they are set free from the Law put themselves back under Law and so back under the curse (Galatians 3:10). Therefore, for them, the curse still applies. 3. The New Covenant was originally given to Israel, and we as Gentiles have been adopted into it. Some have a mistaken notion that the Old Covenant was given to the Jews while the New Covenant was given to the Gentiles. Not so. our present text clearly identifies "the house of Israel" (Jeremiah 31:31, 33) as the recipients of this New Covenant. What we need to understand is that we, as Gentiles that were far off, have been "brought near" into the family of God through Christ (Ephesians 2:11-22). We have been "grafted in" to the New Covenant, so that we can enjoy its benefits. This was still a mystery in the Old Testament but was revealed in Christ and proclaimed by the apostles: Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:2-6). Therefore, just as we have nothing to boast of regarding our personal salvation, we have nothing to boast of with respect to our reception of the New Covenant promises. In fact, Romans 11 argues that we were grafted into this covenant not because of our righteousness or worthiness because of the disobedience and rebellion of Israel. And just as we have received this place of favor, we can just as easily lose it. Therefore, each of us and all of us are called to "work out our salvation" in obedience to God "in fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12), understanding both "the kindness and sternness of God" with His respect to His salvific blessings (Romans 11:22). |