“The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel ...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.”

Hebrews 8:8-12

Verses 8–12 contain the longest Old Testament quotation in the New, introduced and concluded with two remarkable statements. That God announced a new covenant implies that there is something lacking in the old one (v. 7) and, more starkly, by calling it ‘new,’ God has made the first one obsolete (v. 13).

The problem with the old covenant was that the people could not keep it – they did not remain faithful. The benefits of the new one include, first, God writing his laws not on stone but on our hearts and, second, God’s promise, ‘I … will remember their sins no more’ (v. 12). Forgetting is a human weakness to which God is not subject. God does not forget our sins; rather, he wills to remember them no more. Once forgiven, they will never be brought up again.

CLOSING PRAYER

Lord God, I am so grateful for all you have done for me, for the difference that knowing your Son makes for me each day, and for the hope that is mine in him now and for eternity.

(Edited from Encounter with God)