Question:
Please explain: “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” (Hebrews 8:7-13).
Answer:
The passage is essentially a quotation from the 31st chapter of Jeremiah. Jeremiah predicts the making of the new covenant. Hebrews records what has taken place in Christ Jesus. The first covenant was made at Mount Sinai, recorded in Exodus 19 and 24. That was a faulty covenant because it was no stronger than its weakest promise—the people’s promise. Note, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them…” (Hebrews 8:7-8). It was the people who were at fault. The new covenant, which was the everlasting covenant given to Abel, Noah, Abraham, and Israel, was based upon the promises of God. Man’s part was simply yielding to those promises and receiving them. And when men do that, God promises not to compel them to obey but to place His law in their hearts and minds so that they would have no other desire than to follow. They would love God and keep His Commandments. All this is comprised in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, it states God’s great plan of salvation through faith. The old covenant, apart from its national view, was man’s effort to save himself through promise; the new covenant carries us clear over into the new state when sin shall be forever banished, and the children of the covenant shall bask in the smiles of God forever. And note, too, that the law written in the heart is the same law of God which Jeremiah knew six hundred years before Christ. The law is eternal.
Galatians 4:24-31 also touches upon these two covenants: “Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.”
Hagar is the type of one covenant, Sarah is the type of the other; the child of Hagar, the type of those who are brought in through human scheming; the child of Sarah, a type of those who are brought in solely through the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hagar bore children to bondage, for she was a bondmaid, so all those endeavoring to save themselves by any scheme of man are in bondage. They never can break their bondage themselves, and all they convert to such a system as that are children of bondage. On the other hand, Sarah was free, and her children were free. She represents God’s order, and all those born again according to God’s order, with faith in the promises of the Lord Jesus, are children of freedom. Earthly Jerusalem and heavenly Jerusalem represent those two things. The earthly Jerusalem is representative of that kingdom Israel tried to establish in their own righteousness under constant rebellion against God. However, the New Jerusalem, to which the children have not yet come, is the Jerusalem that is made wholly after God’s order and is free and, therefore, called the “mother” of the children of freedom. Hence, Paul concludes that we who have believed in Christ are as Isaac was—the children of promise. Isaac was persecuted by Ishmael, the child of the bondservant, so God’s true children will meet persecution from those following the schemes of men. But in the glorious outcome, God will save His children and cast out those not of Him.
