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The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make with the House of Israel and the House of Judah a New Covenant…I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.

᛭ INI ᛭

When Jeremiah penned these Words from the LORD, there’s really only one place for us to go. Those after Jeremiah and before Christ came had to wait for those days to come, when the LORD would establish that new covenant. But now that Christ has come, it’s 100% appropriate to go to those days, in fact, to go to the very day, to the exact night when the LORD Himself repeats these words. “This Cup is the New Testament in My Blood.”

We’ll get into why we must translate the Words of Institution with “Testament” in just a bit, but simply put it’s the logical end of what the Lord’s been up to since the Garden of Eden. It’s what He was hinting at through all the prophets, even in His promise to David. The Lord’s Promises all hinge on this move from “covenant” to “testament.” “Covenant” may be appropriate for some of the LORD’s promises before Christ’s time, but after His birth, death, and resurrection, it’s “meet, right, and salutary” to speak of Testament. In fact, the Testament was hinted at all along, and it all hangs on the death of Christ—the very reason for His coming.

Simply put:

THE NEW COVENANT IS THE NEW TESTAMENT OF CHRIST’S BLOOD.

The Lord’s covenants were always geared this way, even though everyone since Adam and Eve is lawyered up in our own hearts. We really are! We hear a Word from the LORD, and twist it to our advantage. If it’s a promise of forgiveness, we twist it to allow for sin. If it’s a command, it applies more rigorously to others. We’re almost as bad as divorce lawyers! Depending on the person of course, we have granular detail of every misstep they’ve ever done, and especially of everything they’ve done to wrong us.

So it was that Adam and Eve had their excuses before the LORD. “Have you eaten, Adam?” “Well, you see, God, if you hadn’t given me the woman none of this would’ve happened.” “Woman, what have you done?” “It’s not my fault; the serpent tricked me!” Every disobedience has its excuse. It’s God’s fault. It’s her fault. It’s his fault. It’s never “by my fault, by my own fault, by my own most grievous fault.” Such true confession must be put into our mouths and hearts…

To such lawyers the Lord made promise. It was a free promise. Nothing contingent on Adam and Eve, or you or me. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed, O serpent, and her Seed. He will strike you on the head, and you will strike Him on His heal.” A free promise, no finagling allowed! But what a promise it was! The very first preaching of Gospel—that the Seed would come, conquer the serpent, and set right what he made wrong. It was a free covenant, but it hints at what Jeremiah heard from the Lord. That something new and strange would happen, that the Seed wouldn’t be unscathed in His snake-stomping victory. He would die and the covenant as we’ll see, was always intended to be a testament—the TESTAMENT OF CHRIST’S BLOOD.

The Lord kept making the promise, setting up covenants, as well. Contracts that were based on the performance, the behavior, the faithfulness of the people of Israel. They’d inherit the Land of Canaan and keep it if they had no false gods. David, also, would have a dynasty, if only his sons would remain faithful to the LORD alone. It didn’t even last through Solomon! “Among many nations there was no king like him, who was beloved of his God; and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless pagan women caused even him to sin.” (Neh 13) Solomon built temples for his many wives.

Oh sure, for Solomon and for the Israelites, the LORD was their primary God but not their only god. They worshiped other gods besides. They worshiped Baal, god of strength, power, success. The god who would by strength win victory over his opponents. His temples, high places, and altars dotted the country-side of Israel. They worshiped Asherah—the goddess of fertility. Their unseemly temples also were all over Israel, places that would’ve been in red-light districts or blacked out windows. They worshiped Molech, the god of death, to whom they’d sacrifice their children for their continued prosperity and success, ancient planned parenthood. We’ve removed the spiritual aspect of all these things—stadiums, hall of famers, stats and records, we know better than our Scriptures; no Asherah temples, but movies, TV, the internet full of unseemly things; and Molech’s death cult still alive and well…

Due to the sinfulness of our flesh, we keep falling into the sins of our fathers, to the sins of the Israelites. We have all sorts of excuses about why we’re different, about how we really haven’t broken any Law, any promise we’ve made, or any contract the Lord set up. We are no better than Israel. The Lord’s Law consigns us all to disobedience. He condemns all mankind as guilty in His sight. “There is no one who does good, no not even one.”

What’s to be done? The Lord admits tonight that something new must be done. “Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.” No matter how much the Lord says, “You shall not” we don’t and can’t…

The scourges for Solomon, the injuries for Israel, the punishment for all people—the final punishment the Lord promised David—didn’t fall on David, or Solomon, or you, or me! “The chastisement for our peace was upon [Christ], and by His wounds we are healed,” forgiven. This, too, hints that a covenant wouldn’t always be a covenant, that something would change, that it would instead become a testament. In fact, THE NEW COVENANT IS THE NEW TESTAMENT OF CHRIST’S BLOOD.

Hebrews lays it all out for us. Christ “is the Mediator of the new testament [διαθήκης καινῆς], by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant [τῇ πρώτῃ διαθήκῃ], that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.” “For where there is a testament [διαθήκη], there must also of necessity be the death of the testator [τοῦ διαθεμένου]. For a testament [διαθήκη] is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator [ὁ διαθέμενος] lives.” The Lord doesn’t just set up a free promise. He doesn’t just set up a one-sided covenant or contract. The LORD uses most legally binding one-sided contract possible—a last will and testament, which requires His own death.

Wills don’t stop us from playing legal shenanigans, though. So many families try to goad their relatives to change their will, to include them in some better, more advantageous way. People finagle their way into the hearts and minds of their loved ones for gain, to get the house, the insurance policy, the furniture, the knick-knacks, whatever it is! Why? Because there’s no changing the will it once grandma dies.

The Lord Himself sets up this sort of covenant—a last will and testament. THE NEW COVENANT IS THE NEW TESTAMENT OF CHRIST’S BLOOD. Christ Himself dies, the Son of God dies, and so His Last Will and Testament, the Supper of His body and blood, is in effect for the forgiveness of your sins until the end of time. In fact, all the salvation covenants always required the death of the Testator, God Himself, the Son of God, who was making these promises. Whether it was to Adam and Eve, to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, to David, to Jeremiah, His death was a foregone conclusion—planned from before the creation of the World, to redeem you and me from sin and death.

And on the night He was betrayed, the very Day He was delivered over to death, He established the thing that Christians throughout history have tried to decrease or shift or change or hide or even redefine! Gospel is faithful He causes it to endure for you! The eternal, ever-living God established it the Day of His Death for you. The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make with the House of Israel and the House of Judah a New Testament…I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. That’s what you have in His Supper.

He would have this NEW TESTAMENT OF His BLOOD be within you, yours by faith, written upon your heart. The very thing from which you ought to fear, love, and trust in Him above all things. He places it there. “I will put My Word within them, and I will write it upon their hearts.” This New Testament, whereby He forgives our iniquity and remembers our sin no more—“My blood given and shed for you” (“the New Testament in My blood”)—He places into your mouth, to be received into your heart by faith. And so then, since THE NEW COVENANT IS THE NEW TESTAMENT OF CHRIST’S BLOOD, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, our bodies also washed with pure water.”

᛭ INI ᛭