All covenants between God and man are for earth
and not heaven. The word
covenant is first mentioned in connection with Noah in Gen. 6:
18. What is said of that covenant in Gen. 9: 8–17 shows
that it concerned the earth.
God said “I set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be for a sign of
the covenant between me and
the earth” (v13, my emphasis). Seven times in this section
we have the word covenant
(vs 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17) and seven times the word
earth occurs (vs 10
(twice), 11, 13, 14, 16, 17), perfectly expressing the fact that
covenants have the earth as
their sphere. Subsequently, every covenant that God made
with man involved the nation of Israel for all of Israel’s
relationships with God and their blessings from Him have the earth
as their sphere (see Deut. 28: 1–14). They have nothing to do with
heaven and what is heavenly. The future new covenant is also to be
made with Israel (see Jer. 31: 31–34). In sharp contrast to Israel,
the Christian’s blessings are heavenly. We have been blessed “with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ” (Eph. 1: 3)
and “our commonwealth has
its existence in [the] heavens” (Phil. 3: 20).
The Hebrew Christians were Jews who had
believed on Christ but were in danger of going back to Judaism—a
religion whose relationships and blessings were earthly.
Accordingly, the writer presents the thought of heaven and what is
heavenly in Hebrews more than in any other epistle. The Jewish
believers are addressed as “partakers of [the] heavenly calling” who
“have tasted of the heavenly gift”, seek “a heavenly” (country) and
have come to “heavenly Jerusalem”
(Heb. 3: 1; 6: 4; 11: 16; 12: 22). Christ is presented to them as
high priest who if “then indeed he were upon earth, he would not
even be a priest” (Heb. 8: 4) but “who has passed through the
heavens”, become “higher that the heavens”, “has sat down on [the]
right hand of the throne of the greatness in the heavens” and has
entered “into heaven itself” (Heb. 4: 14; 7: 26; 8: 1; 9: 24).
The new covenant, prophesied in the OT
(see Jer. 31: 31–34) is only introduced in Hebrews to prove that the
conditional covenant of Sinai and the whole system connected with it
was imperfect (see Heb. 7: 11, 18, 19). God had said of Israel “my
covenant they broke” (Jer. 31: 32) and that “they
did not continue in my covenant” (Heb. 8: 9). The very fact that
there was to be a new covenant “made the first old; but that which
grows old and aged [is] near disappearing” so God “takes away the
first that he may establish the second” which is “eternal” (Heb. 8:
13; 10: 9; 13: 20).
Any idea that the new covenant had been
implemented when Hebrews was written is eliminated on its very first
mention in the epistle where we read “by so much Jesus became surety
of a better covenant” (Heb. 7: 22). The writer uses a word here that
is found nowhere else in the NT. It is
egguos, which means
surety,
pledge or
security. When a pledge
is given it means that what is pledged
has not yet been received. This verse shows that Jesus is
the
guarantee of the
future literal
implementation of the new covenant with Israel. This singular fact
is reinforced throughout by the writer’s careful use of pronouns
such as us and
them. Immediately before
his quotation from Jeremiah, he says “For finding fault, he says to
them” (Heb. 8: 8, my
emphasis), making a distinction and a difference between Christian
Jews (to which the epistle was written) and the nation. This
distinction is even more apparent prior to his second quotation of
Jer. 31 when he says the “Holy Spirit also bears
us witness [of it]”
(my emphasis) but in the quotation changes “the house of Israel”,
not to ‘us’, but to “them”.
(Heb. 10: 15, 16, my emphasis).
It is the intrinsic value of the “blood of the
Christ”
alone that makes Him
“mediator of a new covenant” (Heb. 9: 14, 15) generating the warning
to the Hebrews professing faith of their esteeming “the
blood of the
covenant, whereby he has been sanctified, common” (Heb. 10: 29, my
emphasis). It is the blood that sanctifies, not the covenant.
Finally, in the list of things the Jewish Christians had “come to”
(Heb. 12: 22–24) he does not say ‘we have come to a new covenant’
but “to Jesus, mediator of a new covenant; and to [the] blood of
sprinkling, speaking better than Abel” (v24), that is to a Person
and His blood. Features of the new covenant such as the remission of
sins, knowledge of God, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit,
Christians have now as individuals, but Israel must wait for the
return of Christ to enter into the fulness of the covenant
nationally when they will dwell as God’s people in the land that He
gave to their fathers (see Ezek. 36: 28).
