New Covenant, New Heart to Obey

Hebrews 8:7-13 

7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8 Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 9 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 did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”  13 In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

The Mosaic covenant had faults, primarily that it could not change hearts by obedience to commands (which also could never be followed without failing in many areas, even outwardly).  God therefore promised a new covenant to replace the old, making it obsolete with the surpassingly greater one to come.  He saw how they did not keep the old covenant from the day He delivered them out of bondage in Egypt, which disobedience continued from that time onward as well.  What God promised for the new covenant was a changed life, a new heart as a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).  He promised to take the rulebook off the stone tablets of Moses and write it personally on our hearts (Ezekiel 36:26, 2 Corinthians 3:3) and fill our minds with the desire to follow Him in them.  He did this to make a people for Himself who were holy in His sight (2 Corinthians 5:21), a people who would know Him personally and who would willingly desire to live as created and commanded.  These can know their God because of the covenant God makes in Christ which cannot be broken or taken away.  This is possible only by the mercy and grace to forgive sins through the reconciliation of justification in Christ alone apart from our efforts to earn salvation by the letter of the old demands of works we could never perfectly do (Romans 3:19-26).  This new covenant in Christ’s blood has made the old obsolete forever, and we stand by His work in it.