Broken Covenant Restored (Lent 5B/Jer. 31:31-34)

In a previous post I mentioned that one problem we have with understanding forgiveness is that we tend to make excuses and to blame others rather than feel guilt on our own account.  Everything is OK, and we’re “not too bad.”

We also lose the impact of some of the richest texts about salvtion, because we lack that sense of inevitability in judgment and the results that are sure to follow sin.  Read 2 Kings 24 as Jehoiakim serves the king of Babylon for three years and then rebels.  Jehoiachin replaces him and escapes with his life because he surrenders himself to Babylon.

You might think this meant some sort of forgiveness, but no!  Look at the list of things that happen after this surrender.  Treasure is taken, people are taken, a new puppet king is put in Jehoiachin’s place.  There is, in effect, a new covenant.  This covenant is not like the old one–it is worse.  When Zedekiah rebels as well (see 2 Kings 25) the entire nation is taken into exile.

Again, there is a new covenant with the remnant, but again the new covenant is much worse.

The key fact here, one which would have been well known and expected throughout the Ancient Near East, is that a new covenant that replaced a broken one was bound to be worse.

So here comes God.  “I’m going to make a new covenant.  It won’t be like the old one.”  In our New Testament mentality in which all is better, we hear that as a prediction of good things–and indeed it was.  But to the hearers, hearing the “new covenant language” and then the accusation that they had broken the old one would have been a terrifying thing.  New covenants that replaced broken ones were not better–they were always worse.

But then we have the working of God’s grace.  The new covenant, even though it replaced a broken one, even though the old one made God Israel’s “lawful lord” (I prefer this to “husband” on grounds of context, although there are good linguistic arguments in favor of husband) and Israel had rebelled.  Thus the expectation could be darkness, destruction, and gloom.

But instead, we have a new covenant that is better than the old, that makes new people who will be obedient.  Instead of just punishment, we have grace, empowering grace, that makes each one know what is right and wrong.  Goodness is placed within.

Isn’t grace powerful?