What is the New Testament? It was a New Covenant between God and His chosen people—this time including the Gentiles as well as the Jews. It is a new agreement God has made with mankind, based on the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God first spoke of a New Covenant through the prophet Jeremiah. By inspiration of the Spirit, Jeremiah foretold that God would accomplish for His people what the Old Covenant had failed to do (Jer. 31:31). Under this New Covenant, God would write His law on human hearts. This promised action suggested a new level of obedience (Matt. 5:20-48), a new knowledge of the Lord, as well as forgiveness of sin (Jer. 31:34).
The term “New Testament” means “New Covenant,” and it was part of Jesus Christ’s work on earth to bring this promised New Covenant into being. In Luke 22:20, when Jesus ate the Passover meal with His disciples, He spoke of the cup as “the new covenant in my blood.” When the apostle Paul rebuked the Corinthian brethren for their misuse of the Lord’s Supper, he quoted these words of Jesus about the cup as “the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25). See also: Matt. 26:28 and Mark 14:24.
But the Epistle to the Hebrews gives the New Covenant more attention than any other book in the New Testament. It includes a quotation of the entire passage from Jer 31:31-34 (Heb. 8:8-12; also Heb. 10:16-17). Jesus is also referred to by the Hebrew writer as “the mediator of the new covenant” (Heb. 9:15; 12:24). The New Covenant, a “better covenant…established on better promises” (Heb. 8:6), rests directly on the sacrificial work of Christ. The new covenant accomplished what the old could not—showing a way to remove sin and thus cleanse the conscience (Heb. 10:2,22). The work of Jesus Christ on the cross makes the old covenant “obsolete” (Heb. 8:13) and fulfills the promise of God through the prophet Jeremiah.
-Beth Johnson