A New and Better Covenant

(Jeremiah 31:31-34, Hebrews 8:6-13)

This meditation has been with me for years but is new and fresh every day.  I have said that I hoped for us as His people to come fully out of every shadow of the old covenant and fully enter the new.  And this I said out of a desire that we gain a revelation, an understanding of the eternal covenant.  This is fresh just as the manna was in the wilderness.  He makes all things new continually.  He never changes.  He is always the same.  He is eternal.

The new covenant is made in a relationship that requires following the Lamb.  Are you following?  Are you even now knowing the desire to be closer to Him than you have ever been?  Are you wanting Him for a newness?  He is always ready to give it.  I do not mean here to imply it is automatic.  It always includes a waiting, a seeking, a pressing on and a pressing in.  But He is faithful and a rewarder of all who diligently seek Him.  As we go on and have pressed through, we will find His response to us is quickened.  Didn’t He say, I come quickly?  If this seems contradictory, it is our analysis that often is our problem.  That’s part of growth, our processing of what is happening around us and in us.  So Lord, give us an eternal perspective, that is, Your perspective.

His desire is for this very thing, for a people who answer the call to come higher.  It includes leaving things behind just as He said it would be as we follow Him.  The higher call always has a cost.  The disciples did not know the end of this earthly life immediately when they responded to Him.  Abraham was not called to sacrifice his son on the first day he heard God call him.  He went on a journey, not fully comprehending where God was taking Him.  But he left Chaldea, his hometown behind.  He left the world, the riches, the comfort of this world, this present evil age behind.  So Jesus said to the religious of His day, if you say Abraham is your father, do what Abraham did.  But they had no hears to hear the voice of God, as Abraham heard and followed.

May the Lord tune our ears to His pitch, even a mature (that’s what His perfect is) hearing, a spiritual hearing, unmixed with our own desires.  I had been drawn to Jesus’ full discourse in John’s gospel.  It covers a few pages, all spoken at that table when the Passover was fulfilled.  All of the works of God are fulfilled in His Son, Jesus Christ.  And He shared that cup with them after the meal and plainly said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.  We become partakers of His life and of His sufferings as we sit at His table and share the cup with Him.

The name “Christian” has been so misused and applied that some of the Lord’s true followers don’t want to use it.  But Christ has not changed.  Jesus has been resurrected, and is now seated with all authority.  I could put the word “all” in caps.  No one has any true authority for life apart from Him.  Having written those words, I think much more must be considered.  A year or so ago, while praying I had a picture in my mind.  I saw a table and some were seated at it.  It quickly grew, and then it multiplied very strangely.  The message of it all is very simple.  True fellowship with the Lord Jesus is multiplying.  Many are being drawn to Him, to enter into this covenant, this new, eternal one that is based in and consists of His blood.   The phrase, “the blood of the eternal covenant,” resonates within me.  It motivates the passion.  His life is in the blood.

Read the passages I reference under the title.  The writer of Hebrews refers to the very words that God gave through Jeremiah.  This wonderful, new covenant is not to be a representation of some religious concept.  It brings us into a depth of spiritual relationship that is like marriage.  But earthly marriage is temporary and cannot touch the glory that is to be fully revealed after this life is done.  And it cannot be compared to what we can know of the Lord Himself as we journey here.

The word know as used by Jeremiah is the same Hebrew word that is used when Adam knew his wife Eve and she later gave birth.  Our spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus is an intimate union where we give birth to spiritual life in others.  It is all by His word.  As Jesus said, “My words are spirit and they are life.”  Feed on Him, the living word today.