At the Last Supper, Jesus said that He would shed the blood of the covenant for His disciples. So, what is this covenant He was talking about?

At least in part, He was referring to today’s passage, which describes the new covenant that God would make with His people. As we see in verse 33, this new covenant is not so much outward and symbolic as it is inward and spiritual. With the coming of Christ, it is our faith in Him that matters most. And as verse 34 says, those who trust in Him not only have all our sins forgiven. We also know Him personally and intimately.

Moreover, in this new covenant, our relationship with God’s law also changes. Because Christ kept the Law of Moses perfectly on behalf of all His people, we are not saved by what we do or leave undone. Instead, once we are joined to Christ by faith, God writes His law on our hearts, as verse 33 says. God changes our desires so that we will follow His law of love not because we have to, but because we want to.

Yes, that’s really what it means to be the people of God. Is that the sort of relationship we want to have with Him today?

Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NASB)

31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
34 “And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”