Musing – What’s the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant?

 Hebraic Musing – What’s the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant?

Or, what’s the difference between the first half and the second half of our beloved Bible?

Before God made the Old Covenant through Moses, he made a promise to his people through Abraham.  This promise was a prophecy in Genesis looking to the New Covenant where God concluded with - He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Genesis 15:5 NIV

Later in the Old Testament, long before Jesus was born, Jeremiah wrote a more direct prophecy about the new covenant as declarations from the LORD: “The time is coming, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.  It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them.  This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time.  I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Jeremiah 31:31–33 NIV

Key difference, because in the old covenant, God wrote his law on tablets of stone.  Now, under the new covenant, given through Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit writes His law on the hearts of His people.  Jesus instituted the new covenant at the Last Supper when he told his disciples - “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” Luke 22:20 NIV

The old covenant wasn’t defective, it just wasn’t meant to continue forever.  There was something greater coming, the new covenant through Christ’s redemptive work.  The old covenant was given for a limited time and purpose.

And I like Paul’s clarification.  “I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Galatians 3:2   So the purpose of the Old Covenant, or the law was to lead us to Christ.  It was like a schoolmaster, teaching God’s people to look ahead to Jesus and the promise of the gospel.  Now that we have the promise—the reality—in Christ and the new covenant, we are no longer dependent on the old covenant.

God’s moral law, summarized in the ten commandments, always binds people.  But the symbolic sacrifices, rituals and civil laws that were part of the old, mosaic covenant are gone.  We’re not under Moses; we’re under Jesus Christ.  That’s the beauty of what we were told to expect in Jeremiah 31:3-4 “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.  I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel.”  And it is fulfilled in the New Testament.

Jesus fulfilled the law in our place, so we are free from it.  The moral law guides our lives, but the gospel tells us that, through his perfect life and sacrificial death for us on the cross, Jesus fulfilled the law, He did everything the old covenant required.  Therefore, we are justified in Christ.  And we’re free from the condemnation of the law.  That’s what makes the new covenant new and better!

Hebrews 8:6-8 provides us with a clear description of the purposeful differences between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.  “But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises.  For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.  But God found fault with the people and said: ‘The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.’”  The problem was not with the old covenant; the problem was that God’s people broke the covenant and needed a superior covenant.

Points to ponder

How would we recognize our need for the New Covenant
if it were not for the understanding revealed while living under the Old Testament?

Whenever we take the Lord’s Supper, we participate in the renewal of the New Covenant.

♫  I'm just a sinner  Saved by grace. When I stood condemned to death, He took my place.  ♫

Yosef   a.k.a.  Joe Brusherd                                           March 25, 2025
Author: “Hebraic Insights – Messages exploring the Hebrew roots of our faith” 
“Biblical Marriage (by Yosef)”     Weekly “Hebraic Musings”