The Lord declares, "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jeremiah 31:34).

In Hebrews we read, "by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14).

This morning I breathe a sigh of relief in my soul and embrace the peace that passes all understanding as I meditate on these verses. In Jesus the Lord has forgiven all our iniquity, and He will remember our sin no more. In Jesus He has made us perfect forever. And the perfection He has declared and fully accomplished for us, He is also working to bring about in us; that is, He is even now transforming our sinful selves to be like Jesus, to present us holy and blameless, without spot or blemish, before God. Hallelujah! What a Savior!

AI-Expanded Reflection

The two verses the comment joins are joined in Hebrews itself. After stating that Christ "has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (10:14), the writer immediately quotes Jeremiah 31 as the Holy Spirit's own testimony, ending with, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more"; then he draws the conclusion: "Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin" (10:17–18). The old sacrifices were repeated endlessly because they could never finish the job; Christ's was offered once because it did.

The comment also captures the two tenses of the Christian life that Hebrews 10:14 holds in one sentence: believers are already "perfected for all time" in their standing before God, and are simultaneously "being sanctified" in their daily experience. Paul says the same thing differently: "he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion" (Philippians 1:6). Assurance rests on the first; growth is the work of the second. When God says He will remember our sins no more, it is not forgetfulness but a covenant commitment never to bring them against us again.

Thus says the Lord: "If the heavens above can be measured," and the foundations of the earth explored, then He will cast off all Israel's offspring for all they have done (Jeremiah 31:37).

Does this mean there will come a time when the heavens can be measured and the depths of the earth searched out? No. This lofty image is a rhetorical device affirming God's enduring commitment to His people Israel. God will never cast off His people completely.

There are two false conclusions one might draw from a passage like this. The first is that the promise is untrue, since God has cast off Israel 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 many to be destroyed by their enemies. He cast Israel off into exile under the Assyrians and Judah into exile under the Babylonians. After that came long centuries in which Israel was subject to various world empires.

But this misunderstands the nature of God's promise. His promise was not to preserve every individual life or even any particular generation, but to continue His relationship with the nation as a whole. Many ancient civilizations have come and gone, but the people of Israel have endured from the days of the patriarchs. They remain the people of God.

A second false conclusion is that this promise rules out any judgment by God — that even though Israelites were punished with temporal judgments, they would all finally be saved.

This conclusion confuses physical descent with spiritual belonging. When John the Baptist warned of judgment by eternal fire, the religious leaders claimed descent from Abraham as the basis of their hope. But John declared that God could raise up children for Abraham from stones, so their heritage gave them no special status. Later, Paul would declare that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, but those who share the faith of Abraham. So many Israelites who suffered God's temporal punishment would also, I believe, suffer eternal punishment because of their unbelief.

A right conclusion from God's promise is that God will never withdraw His covenant promise to His people. Israel will forever be the people of God. What is more, in spite of their continual rebellion and disobedience, God would bring about for them and through them the New Covenant promise of imputed righteousness and eternal life. I believe He promises these benefits not to every individual but to those He has chosen. So those He has chosen will all be saved, for He declared that "they shall all know me," for He will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more (Jeremiah 31:34).

Friends, those of us who 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 the faith of Abraham, we have been grafted into God's Israel, whose hearts have been permanently inscribed by the finger of God.

Although we have received the New Covenant, we have not yet fully experienced its benefits, which await the redemption of our bodies — the final removal of our sinful nature. Even so, we can labor with hope in this life, knowing that our labor is not in vain, for our efforts glorify the One who has saved us and assure our own hearts that we are His.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Jeremiah 31 contains the only Old Testament passage explicitly called "the new covenant" (31:31–34), and it is quoted at length in Hebrews 8:8–12 — the longest Old Testament quotation in the New Testament. Its promises are breathtaking: the law written on the heart, a personal knowledge of God for all, and full forgiveness. Jesus took up the language at the Last Supper: "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20). The comment is right that believers in Christ share in these promises.

Christians have understood the relationship between the church and ethnic Israel in several ways. Some, like the comment, emphasize that the true Israel consists of those who share Abraham's faith (Romans 2:28–29; 9:6–8; Galatians 3:7, 29), while affirming God's continuing commitment to the nation. Many also point to Romans 11, where Paul — using an olive tree image of Gentiles grafted in — anticipates a future turning of Israel to Christ: "and in this way all Israel will be saved" (11:26), because "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (11:29). Interpreters differ on exactly what that means, but Jeremiah 31:35–37 and Romans 11 together testify to God's unbreakable faithfulness to His promises.

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 responsibility 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 inviolability 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 substitutionary death of Christ on the cross. There is no 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 we benefit from what He accomplished 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.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Jeremiah 31:31–34 belongs to a sustained promise of restoration addressed to Israel and Judah. The covenant is new because it answers the failure of the covenant broken after the exodus. Its center is God's repeated commitment: he will place instruction within his people, establish their relationship with him, grant shared knowledge of him, and forgive their sin. The promise reaches both the guilt that alienates and the inward disposition that has repeatedly resisted God's word. Christian hope is therefore grounded in more than a fresh opportunity to attempt the same failed project through unaided resolve.

Hebrews makes the connection with Jesus explicit. In chapters 8–10, Jeremiah's promise explains the superiority of Christ's mediation and sacrifice. Hebrews 9:15 also addresses sins committed under the first covenant, showing why the saving significance of Christ's death is not confined to people born after it. The original's language of retroactive benefit expresses that theological point, though Scripture presents it through the unity of God's redemptive purpose rather than a detailed mechanism of backward chronology. The faithful of earlier generations were not saved by a rival means independent of Christ.

The contrast between stone and heart highlights internalization, but it should not imply that the earlier Scriptures never called for inward love or knew genuine faith. Deuteronomy 6:5–6 commands love from the heart and inward reception of God's words, and Deuteronomy 30:6 anticipates divine work upon the heart. Jeremiah promises a decisive fulfillment of the relationship God's instruction already sought. Similarly, “they shall all know me” concerns the covenant community's shared relationship with God; it does not eliminate teaching, since the New Testament continues to command instruction and growth.

The original's strongest overstatement concerns forgiveness under the Mosaic law. It is inaccurate to say that the law made no provision for forgiveness or that every deliberate sin fell entirely outside it. Leviticus 6:1–7 describes deception, theft, extortion, and false swearing, followed by restitution, a guilt offering, and forgiveness. These are not all accidental acts. Numbers 15:30–31 addresses defiant, high-handed rejection, a category that should not simply be equated with every sin involving conscious choice. The distinction matters because Christ's superiority does not require denying the grace actually announced in the earlier covenant.

Hebrews 10:4 nevertheless makes a decisive claim: animal blood cannot itself accomplish the final removal of sin. The repeated sacrifices anticipate the definitive offering of Christ, whose obedient self-giving establishes what they could not complete. Thus the old system's real covenantal provisions and its ultimate insufficiency can be affirmed together. Its efficacy is not an independent alternative to Christ; its pattern points toward him. The promise not to remember sins describes God's covenantal refusal to hold forgiven guilt against his people, not a literal loss of divine knowledge.

The letter-and-Spirit contrast in 2 Corinthians 3 is likewise covenantal. Paul is not authorizing disregard for a passage's wording in favor of an imaginative meaning. He contrasts the ministry associated with written condemnation and the life-giving work of the Spirit through Christ. Romans 7:6 develops a related account of new service. Christian freedom from the Mosaic covenant does not mean absence of moral instruction: Paul goes on to describe a life in which the Spirit enables the law's righteous purpose to be fulfilled (Romans 8:4). That fulfillment includes transformed living as well as release from condemnation; it should not be reduced solely to the payment of a death penalty.

The experience of continuing conflict also requires careful distinctions. Christians debate whether Romans 7:14–25 primarily describes Paul's Christian struggle, life under law, or a representative condition exposed by the law. Galatians 5:16–25 clearly addresses believers' conflict between flesh and Spirit, while Romans 8:23 anticipates bodily redemption. These texts give room to acknowledge unfinished sanctification without treating bondage to sin as the believer's only identity. Romans 6 insists that sin's dominion has been broken, even as believers must actively refuse its reign.

The new covenant therefore promises more than receiving the benefits of righteousness while remaining inwardly unchanged. God's instruction written on the heart, the Spirit's presence, and the call to walk in newness of life all point toward real transformation. That work is not yet complete, and its incompleteness is no reason to abandon assurance. Philippians 1:6 and Jude 24–25 direct confidence toward the God able to finish what he begins and present his people before him with joy.

The practical response is gratitude joined with participation. Confess sin without pretending that Christ's sacrifice must be repeated, receive forgiveness without excusing the habit that harmed another, and seek the Spirit's help in concrete obedience. The covenant's promise excludes boasting because God provides what we cannot establish. It also excludes passivity because the gift creates a people who know him and learn his ways. Hope rests in Christ's accomplished work and in the faithful God whose inward renewal will reach its completion.

There are three things worth highlighting from today's reading. First, while God is love, He doesn't love everyone in exactly the same way. His perspective on the nations shows this — His love for His chosen people differs from His love for the surrounding nations: though He'll make a full end of all the nations where He's scattered Israel, He won't make a complete end of Israel itself (a paraphrase of Jeremiah 30:11). We sometimes take too simplistic a view of God's love, reducing it to emotional appeals about how much "the Father loves you," as though that applies identically to believers and unbelievers alike. While it's true that God is love, it isn't quite true that He loves everyone identically — Malachi even records God saying He loved Jacob but hated Esau (a reference to Malachi 1:2–3; Romans 9:13). We also tend to project our own culturally shaped idea of love onto God's love, which appeals to us emotionally the way a good movie does. But Scripture's emphasis regarding God's love isn't primarily on its emotional, sentimental quality — it's on God's covenant faithfulness and commitment. That's why 1 John 1:9 doesn't say God forgives us out of some emotional attachment, but because He's "faithful and just" to keep His promises to those who believe. That's close to the sense of the Hebrew word often translated "lovingkindness," which is always tied to God's covenant faithfulness rather than sentiment alone. Jesus's own love was similarly bound to obedience to God's word and plan rather than pure personal longing — in Gethsemane He prayed "not my will, but yours be done," and when arrested, He told Peter this had to happen so that Scripture would be fulfilled. Even John 3:16, often translated "God so loved the world," is sometimes misread — the Greek sense of "so" there means "in this way," not "so much," meaning the emphasis falls on the nature of God's love (giving His only Son) rather than on the surpassing worth of the ones being loved.

Second, generational curses have been broken through the New Covenant in Christ. I've heard it taught even recently, at a pastors' conference, that God still curses children for their fathers' sins. But Jeremiah's New Covenant passage says otherwise: people will no longer say "the parents ate sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge" — instead, each person will die for their own sin (a paraphrase of Jeremiah 31:29–30). It's true that generational consequences were part of the Law of Moses, including the Ten Commandments themselves (Exodus 20:5), but with Christ's death, the entire Law of Moses, moral commandments included, has been rendered obsolete, replaced by the New Covenant ratified in Christ's blood (see Hebrews 9:11–17; Romans 7:4). Since Jeremiah and Ezekiel both prophesied the end of generational curses as part of that New Covenant, believers today aren't threatened by them. Whatever people mean by diagnosing modern Christians as being "under generational curses" and needing deliverance from them isn't something this text supports.

Third, though the New Covenant was originally given to Israel, we as Gentiles have been adopted into it. Some mistakenly assume the Old Covenant belonged to the Jews and the New Covenant to Gentiles — but the text clearly identifies "the house of Israel" as the New Covenant's original recipients (Jeremiah 31:31, 33). We Gentiles, once far off, have been brought near into God's family through Christ, grafted into a covenant that wasn't originally made with us — a mystery hidden in the Old Testament but revealed through Christ and the apostles: that through the gospel, Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members of one body, sharing together in the promise (a paraphrase of Ephesians 3:2–6). Just as we have nothing to boast of regarding our own salvation, we have nothing to boast of regarding our inclusion in this covenant either — Romans 11 argues we were grafted in not because of our own righteousness, but through Israel's own disobedience creating the opportunity. And just as we've received this place of favor, it's not something to take for granted — we're called to work out our salvation in obedience, with appropriate reverence, understanding both the kindness and the severity of God's dealings with His people (a paraphrase of Philippians 2:12; Romans 11:22).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The claim that God doesn't love everyone identically touches one of the most debated texts in the whole election/predestination discussion — Malachi's "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated," which Paul cites again in Romans 9. It's worth noting this comment's reading (God holding genuinely different dispositions toward different individuals or groups) is one serious position among others held by faithful Christians: many interpreters, across a range of theological traditions, read "hated" in its original context as a Hebrew idiom for "loved less" or "not chosen for this particular role," and read Paul's application in Romans 9 as primarily about the corporate, historical roles of nations (Israel and Edom) rather than the eternal individual destinies of Jacob and Esau themselves. Both readings agree completely on this comment's actual larger point, though — that God's love, however it's best characterized, is never merely sentimental, but bound up with His covenant faithfulness, which is precisely why it can be trusted regardless of how any individual currently feels about their own relationship with Him.