The heart of Hebrews’ message is that through Jesus, God has provided a new and better way to relate to Him than was possible during the Old Testament period. He calls this better way the “New Covenant.” The author is concerned that his Jewish Christian readers are missing this point and still relating to God through the Old Covenant way.
This is horrible, not only because they are missing out on a better way to relate to God, but also because they are misrepresenting Christianity to people who need Jesus! And this is still happening today! For the past 2000 years, most forms of Christianity have been stuck in this same mistake. I call this the “Old Covenant captivity of the church” — and it continues to be the number one problem in Christianity.
This is not only tragic — it is also ironic, since the Old Testament admitted that its way of relating to God was temporary and inferior. This is what the author of Hebrews explains in Hebrews 8:6-9. This passage is from Jeremiah, an Old Testament prophet who lived about 600 years before Jesus. Through him, God announces that He was never satisfied with the Old Covenant and that He would therefore bring in a new and better way of relating to Him. God then explains three ways that the New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant:
Read Hebrews 8:10a. When the Messiah comes, God will “write” His laws upon the minds and hearts of His people. This refers to the power to follow God that His people under the Old Covenant did not have.
Under the Old Covenant, God revealed His moral character and thoroughly explained what He expected His people to do through what is called the Law. This Law was distilled into 10 Commandments, which God inscribed on two stone tablets. The whole arrangement was external — God told them who He was and what He wanted, His people agreed, but they lacked the internal ability to truly follow His direction. This is why, as you read the Old Testament, the depressing theme of Israel’s disobedience sounds like a monotonous chord.
God rescues them from Egypt and makes them His nation under His law, but they spend the next 40 years wandering around in the wilderness ridiculing God. When He brings them into their land and promises to protect them from their enemies if they worship Him instead of false Gods, they spend the next 400 years lapsing into idolatry, experiencing God’s lack of protection from their enemies, calling out to God for help, God raising up a “judge” who delivers them, and then lapsing back into idolatry. Finally, God gives them a king and says that if the king stays out of idolatry, He will bless and protect them. But the vast majority of kings promote idolatry, so God allows them to be exiled into idolatrous kingdoms. The whole story is one long story of God saying “Just follow my directions!” and His people saying “We do not want to” and/or “We are unable to.” Many followers of Jesus are like this before we meet Christ: we vow to be good but it never really lasts.
But now that Jesus has come, He has brought a Helper that changes this situation. When you embrace Jesus as your Messiah, His Spirit comes to live inside your being and He internalizes God’s direction in your life. He actually imparts a new desire and motivation to follow God and He gives you a new power to follow God (see Philippians 2:13). This does not mean that you never disobey God; in fact, you begin to realize how much more you disobey God than you thought you did. But, things are different inside because now, there is Someone else working for God inside you!
Read Hebrews 8:10b-11. Jeremiah spoke of a day when the Messiah would make it possible for all of God’s people to enjoy personal intimacy with Him — something not available under the Old Covenant.
Under the Old Covenant, very few of God’s people were able to relate to Him in a personal way. Moses spoke with God “face to face” and David describes a personal love relationship with God that he wishes others could “taste and see.” But for the most part, God’s people could relate to Him only through priests and rituals. God’s tabernacle communicated His desire to be close to them, but the walls and curtains communicated that this was not possible, and the contents of the Ark explained why (see Hebrews 8:4-5 and Hebrews 9:1-12). The best they could do was have priests offer animal sacrifices to symbolically pay for their sins until the real Sacrifice came. In the meantime, relating to God was similar to how going to church services is for most of us — impersonal ritual observances which emphasized how distant we were from God.
But now that Jesus has come, all this has changed. Now, every single person who comes to God through Jesus, even the newest Christian, can experience personal loving intimacy with God. The same Holy Spirit that imparts new motivation and power to follow God’s leadership also enables us to experience God’s love and open our hearts up to Him (see Romans 8:15-16). Because of this, God goes from being an abstract, distant authority figure to a personal loving Father whose love we can learn to trust and treasure. This does not mean that you always feel close to God — many factors beyond the scope of this teaching may affect how close you feel to God — but it does mean that it is literally possible to experience God’s personal love on a daily basis. I never cease to marvel at this in my own life. I often begin the day feeling very far from God, and I often wander from relating to God through the day. But if I want to, I can spend quality time with God that gives me peace, hope, and even joy. I can go to bed every night with the satisfaction that I have known God today! And as the years go by, I have the satisfaction that I know God better and better!
Why is it now possible to know God personally and have new motivation and power to follow Him? Because God’s Spirit now lives inside us. And why can the Holy Spirit live inside us, even though we are just as guilty and undeserving as God’s people under the Old Covenant? Read Hebrews 8:11 and translate “for” as “because” — because through Jesus’ sacrifice, we have complete forgiveness by God. “I will remember their sins no more” does not mean that God has become an amnesiac. It means that Jesus’ payment for our sins is so complete that God will never again remember them against us — they will never again be a barrier between us and God.
Under the Old Covenant, God’s forgiveness was never actually given — only glimpses of it were given through the animal sacrifices. And because the sacrifices were only glimpses, they had to be offered over and over again. Read Hebrews 10:1-4. God’s people kept going through the same depressing cycle: From sin to ritual defilement to sacrifice and ritual cleansing, over and over and over again. And the priests were never finished (see Hebrews 10:11) — they had to keep “standing” and offering sacrifices because the sin problem was never dealt with.
But now that Jesus has come, all this has changed. Read Hebrews 10:12,14, and 17. While the Levitical priests had to keep standing and offering new animal sacrifices for sins, Jesus has “sat down” because His one perfect sacrifice has paid for all our sins forever! Even though we still sin every day, we are already completely forgiven and completely acceptable to God. And this means that we no longer have to make any offering to God for our sins (see Hebrews 10:18)! This has huge implications for how we relate to God.
For the original audience — Jewish Christians — this means that they were no longer to have priests offer animals for their continuing sins. They would catch criticism for this from their non-Christian Jewish friends and family members; but to give into this pressure and make sin-offerings was to say “I do not believe Jesus’ death really did the job. I need to add to what He did to make sure that God will forgive me.” This is the whole reason why the author wrote this letter!
We think: “How stupid could they be?”
Of course Jesus’ sacrifice fulfilled and replaced those animal sin offerings.
Of course they should not relate to God that way any longer.
Of course this was preventing them from enjoying what Jesus died to give them!”
Most Christians are making this same mistake — not by offering animals, but through a variety of other sin-offerings. Some of these sin-offerings are formally taught by their church, while others are self-taught; some of these sin-offerings are very obvious, while others are more subtle. But regardless of the differences, they are all sin-offerings and they all distort and impede the way God wants to relate to us.
How different this is from relating to God under the New Covenant. It may surprise you to know that in the New Testament after Jesus’ death, Christians are never told to ask God for forgiveness. We are told to agree with God when we sin, which is a lot easier to do when you know you are still forgiven, and we are urged to thank God for forgiving us for our present and future sins, as well as for our past sins. But for the Christian who understands the New Covenant, hearing other Christians ask for forgiveness is a heartbreaking and horrible sound — it shows that the person doing this does not understand or believe that Jesus paid for all of his or her sins.
How different this is from relating to God under the New Covenant. Even the worst of sinners are completely forgiven and accepted the moment they turn to Christ; examples of this in Scripture are the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable as well as Saul (later, Paul) when he meets Jesus on the road to Damascus. And this amazing gift of forgiveness motivates people to love God and do good to others in a way that penance can never produce (see Luke 7:47).
How different this is from relating to God under the New Covenant. Read Hebrews 9:14. Because Jesus has completely paid for all of my sins, I can agree with God about this sin — and then agree with Him that Jesus’ death fully forgave this sin as well, and then choose to resume relating to God and serving Him immediately. When I do this, my conscience is cleansed and I can move forward with God.
Does relating to God in this way sound totally foreign to you? If so, you may have never actually entered into the New Covenant. Why not make sure by telling God you want to relate to Him this way, and by asking Him to give you this gift through Jesus.