Of all the prophets, Jeremiah had perhaps the hardest task. All his words seemed to fail. He had one or two who helped him, but no one seemed to listen to him or be converted through his word. He must have been endowed by God with a very high measure of moral courage.

To the Israel of his day he had to say, "Thus says the Lord: 'Your affliction is incurable, your wound is severe.'" (Jeremiah 30:12). So there was no hope at all for them under the old covenant of law, and the armored fist of Nebuchadnezzar was about to sweep them away.

Yet in the very next chapter he is commissioned to utter words of hope. There is to be "a new covenant," which will stand upon a basis entirely different, indeed entirely opposite, to the old. Jeremiah 31:31-34 must be read to get its scope. To the old covenant there were two parties, God Himself and Israel. God demanded obedience, and if it were rendered in all particulars and all the time, the promised blessing would materialize. The preamble was, "Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice..." (Exodus 19:5). There was that fatal "if."

In Jeremiah's beautiful prophecy there is no "if." Rather the characteristic words are, "I will." Israel and Judah come into the picture, it is true, but as passive recipients and not as important actors.

The new covenant will come to pass when God acts in the sovereignty of His mercy upon the righteous basis laid down in the sacrifice of Christ. God will so put His law within them and so write it on their hearts that it will be as natural for them to keep it as formerly it was natural for them to break it. They will come into the light of the knowledge of God with all their sins forgiven and the very remembrance of them dismissed. And all by an act of God's sovereign mercy, as is made so plain in the closing verses of Romans 11.

Though this new covenant is to be made in a day yet to come with Israel, God's earthly people, the blessing of it is all ours today, as the epistle to the Hebrews shows us. All that we have has reached us on new covenant principles, for the blood of the new covenant has been shed at the cross.

The blessing that has come to us, however, is of a higher and heavenly character. It includes all predicted as marking the new covenant but goes a long way beyond it.