Jeremiah 31:31 – The New Covenant
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.” With these words, Jeremiah announced the most significant development in redemptive history since Sinai. God Himself declared that the Mosaic covenant—the law given at the mountain, written on tablets of stone—would be replaced by something new. Not patched, not modified, but fundamentally reconstituted on better promises with better provisions. This new covenant would be established through Jesus Christ’s blood, transforming the relationship between God and His people forever.
Jeremiah’s Prophetic Context
Jeremiah ministered during Judah’s final decades before the Babylonian exile. He watched the nation spiral toward destruction, persistently calling for repentance while knowing judgment was inevitable. His message was largely one of doom: Jerusalem would fall; the temple would be destroyed; the people would be carried captive. He is remembered as the weeping prophet, lamenting the coming devastation.
Yet within Jeremiah’s prophecy runs a current of hope. Chapters 30-33, sometimes called the “Book of Consolation,” promise restoration beyond judgment. God would not abandon His people forever. After exile would come return. After scattering would come regathering. And most remarkably, after the old covenant would come a new one.
“Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:32). The Sinai covenant had been broken. Israel proved unable to keep God’s law. The problem was not with the law—it was holy, just, and good—but with the human heart’s inability to obey.
The new covenant addresses this fundamental problem: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). External law carved on stone would become internal law written on hearts. The relationship would be secured not by human performance but by divine transformation.
What Made the Old Covenant Old?
The Sinai covenant was bilateral, requiring faithfulness from both parties. God pledged blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience. Israel agreed: “All that the LORD hath spoken we will do” (Exodus 19:8). But they did not do it. The golden calf incident occurred before Moses descended from the mountain with the tablets. Centuries of history demonstrated that human beings under law consistently fail to keep it.
The law itself was not flawed. “The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12). It revealed God’s character and standards. It exposed sin by defining it. But it could not empower obedience. It could command but not enable. It could condemn but not transform. The law was like a mirror showing dirt—useful for diagnosis but powerless for cleansing.
Israel’s history under the old covenant was a chronicle of repeated failure. Judges describes a cycle of sin, suffering, crying out, and deliverance—repeated endlessly because hearts remained unchanged. Kings and Chronicles trace the monarchy’s decline into idolatry despite prophetic warnings. The covenant was repeatedly broken because the covenant depended on human faithfulness, and human hearts are “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9).
Something fundamentally different was needed—not a revised law but a new heart; not more commands but internal transformation; not external regulation but internal renovation. This is precisely what Jeremiah announced. The new covenant would address the old covenant’s limitation by changing the people, not just the requirements.
Christ Establishes the New Covenant
On the night of His betrayal, Jesus took the cup at the Passover meal and declared: “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). The Greek word for “testament” is the same as “covenant.” Jesus announced that His death would establish what Jeremiah prophesied. The new covenant was being ratified not with animal blood but with the blood of God’s own Son.
The writer of Hebrews extensively expounds this fulfillment. “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second” (Hebrews 8:7). The old covenant’s inadequacy necessitated a new one. “But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). Jesus is the mediator; His ministry is more excellent; the promises are better.
What makes the promises better? The old covenant promised blessing for obedience—conditional upon human performance. The new covenant promises forgiveness of sins—”For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:34, quoted in Hebrews 8:12). God Himself forgives. God Himself forgets. The promise rests on what God does, not what we achieve.
The Heart Transformation
The distinctive feature of the new covenant is internal transformation. Under the old covenant, the law was external—written on stone tablets, read from scrolls, taught by priests. Under the new covenant, the law is internal—written on hearts by the Holy Spirit. This is regeneration, the new birth, being born of the Spirit.
When someone comes to faith in Christ, God does what He promised through Jeremiah. He writes His law on their heart. This does not mean believers have the Ten Commandments memorized automatically; it means they have new desires, new inclinations, new loves. The stony heart is replaced with a heart of flesh. The Spirit who regenerates also indwells and empowers obedience that was impossible under the old covenant.
“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:3-4). Christ accomplished what the law demanded but we could not provide. And now, through the Spirit, the law’s righteous requirement is fulfilled in those united to Christ.
This transformation creates personal knowledge of God: “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:34). Under the old covenant, mediators taught people about God. Under the new covenant, every believer knows God directly. The Spirit gives experiential knowledge of God—intimate, personal, unmediated access to the Father through the Son.
The Better Covenant for You
Jeremiah 31:31 announces what Christ accomplished for all who believe. You do not approach God through an external law you cannot keep. You approach Him through a mediator who kept the law perfectly and whose righteousness is credited to your account. You do not strive for transformation through willpower. You receive transformation through the Spirit’s regenerating and sanctifying work.
The new covenant is unconditional in its essence. God declares what He will do: “I will put my law… I will be their God… I will forgive their iniquity… I will remember their sin no more.” These are divine commitments, not human achievements. Salvation rests on God’s faithfulness, not ours. We broke the old covenant repeatedly; God keeps the new covenant eternally.
If you are trusting in your own performance—your moral achievements, religious observances, or good intentions—you are living under old covenant principles that can only condemn. The law shows you fall short; it cannot bridge the gap. But Christ has mediated a better covenant. His blood has been shed. His Spirit has been given. New hearts are being created.
Come to the new covenant. Stop trying to earn what can only be received. Stop performing for a God who offers transformation. The law written on stone pointed to your failure; the law written on hearts evidences God’s grace. Jeremiah foresaw it. Christ established it. The Spirit applies it. And it is offered to you—forgiveness for your sins, the law written on your heart, direct knowledge of God, and eternal relationship with your Creator. This is the new covenant. Enter it through faith in Jesus Christ.