Only Jeremiah in the Old Testament uses the word “new covenant” (Jeremiah 31:31). A long and tragic story was fast approaching its climax; the prophet was in a state of expectancy, looking longingly toward a new beginning, a new creation. His preoccupation was apparent in his language. Significantly, the word bereshith (“in the beginning”), a technical term related to the story of Creation, is also found only in the book of Jeremiah (see chapters 26:1; 27:1; 49:34). By invoking memories of the Genesis account, the prophet expressed his great desire for a new world. Against this backdrop, Jeremiah developed his theology of the New Covenant.
The apostle Paul quotes Jeremiah 31:31–33 to explain what he considered to be the essence of Christianity (see Hebrews 8:10). It seems apparent that Jesus also referred to this text during the last supper (see Luke 22:20). Without question, the first Christians used Jeremiah’s reference to the New Covenant to establish a definition of what they really were. We now must discover what was understood by this “new covenant.” The traditional Christian concept is that a “new covenant” was to abolish the ancient one and install a new religious economy. “There was an abrogation of all that constituted the specificity of Judaism,” wrote Father Vincent. “That is what Christianity teaches: Jesus Christ abolished the Law.”1
Same Law
Yet the passage from Jeremiah, which the apostle Paul quotes in full, says just the contrary: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah... this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31–33). 2
The words “I will write it” are, of course, a direct allusion to the Decalogue, the only document that God wrote with His own hand. Verse 32 implies this when referring to the covenant made at Sinai with the fathers after their departure from Egypt. The law, says God, that I wrote on tables (Exodus 34:1) will henceforth be written in your heart. Then follows the formula that the Old Testament uses systematically to reinforce the covenant and ensure its success: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33; cf. Jeremiah 30:22; 31:1).
The New Covenant that Jeremiah foresees, far from abolishing the old, actually extends it. The imagery suggested by the prophet’s language clearly teaches this. The law until then appeared to the Israelite to be something outside him; now it was to be within—in his heart—to be an integral part of the most intimate secrets of his being. The law now was to be assimilated, lived, and accepted from within; its inner motivating power would supersede the outward character of constraint. This experience was to be personal, direct, and existential. In this light, one can understand what is said in the next verse: “No longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:34).
The New Covenant is a deepening internalizing of the Old. Jesus also understood it this way. “Do not suppose that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I did not come to abolish [katalusai], but to complete [pl r sai].3 I tell you this: so long as heaven and earth endure, not a letter, not a stroke, will disappear from the law until all that must happen has happened. If any man therefore sets aside even the least of the law’s demands and teaches others to do the same, he will have the lowest place in the kingdom of Heaven, whereas anyone who keeps the law and teaches others to do so will stand high in the kingdom of Heaven. I tell you, unless you show yourselves far better men than the Pharisees and the doctors of the law, you can never enter the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:17–20, NEB).
Do not stop at the halfway point in your obedience to God, said Jesus. Do not be satisfied with a legalistic observance. Go much further! And in the verses that follow, Jesus takes up the practical application of this attitude: “You have learned that our forefathers were told, ‘Do not commit murder; anyone who commits murder must be brought to judgment.' But what I tell you is this: Anyone who nurses anger against his brother must be brought to judgment. If he abuses his brother, he must answer for it to the court; if he sneers at him, he will have to answer for it in the fires of hell [Gehenna]."(Matthew 5:21, 22 NEB).
“You have learned that they were told, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But what I tell you is this: If a man looks on a woman with a lustful eye, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27, 28 NEB).
The law written in people’s hearts becomes much more demanding than the law written in stone. When the law is internalized, the whole person is involved, including the most intimate motivations—even the subconscious.
If the law is written in the heart, in harmony with the terms of the New Covenant, one will not observe it unwillingly, as if by outward, painful constraint.
Christianity has traditionally seen in Jesus a reformer bent on abolishing the Jewish law. But Jesus actually had no thought of casting aside the commandments of God.4
Not only was the law unchanged under the New Covenant, it called for a new spirit—for a profound, authentic obedience—for even greater willingness and happy submission.
Paul understood it this way: “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit” (Romans 7:6).
The examples of adultery and covetousness chosen by the apostle in Romans 7 (verses 3, 7) show that he was thinking of the Decalogue. He then goes on to explain the importance of the law and the role it plays in the redemptive process.
Thanks to this law, man is provided with special discernment regarding good and evil. By coming into contact with the law, he can know what is good and what is evil and thus become conscious of his guilt and of the death sentence that hangs over him.
Like a mirror (James 1:23-25) that reflects one’s physical characteristics, the law is able to reflect one’s moral characteristics and thus the destiny that awaits lawbreakers.
With this awareness and, therefore, beset by legitimate despair, a human being can only then turn to God and ask for mercy. God’s answer can be interpreted only as an act of unmerited salvation, a free gift of life.
The law itself produces death, but, in another sense, the law brings life because it forces one to recognize his insufficiency. The law drives the lost one to cry to God for mercy and grace.
The same thought pattern is to be found at the end of Romans 7. Paul’s struggle to live in his human strength according to God’s law ended in total defeat, as he says: “I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:23, 24).
This stark realization of defeat became salutary because it permitted Paul to recognize his need for the grace of God: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!” (Romans 7:25). Just like a Greek tutor, a servant assigned the task of taking the pupil to the master teacher, the law’s function is to lead the believer to the Messiah, the Savior (see Galatians 3:23–24).
Far from suggesting the abrogation of the law, Paul demonstrates, on the contrary, the absolute necessity of the law. For Paul, the law remains precious and valid: “I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self. So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind” (Romans 7:22–25).
The apostle believes in a salvation that is freely bestowed. His experience striving for peace and righteousness on his own convinced him that salvation had to come from outside his feeble efforts. A man cannot save himself. But the good news of the gospel tells the world that God intervenes; He comes down to save mankind. “You are under grace,” Paul cries out exultantly (Romans 6:14).
But could this view of salvation possibly be dangerous? If salvation is a free gift, if it comes from God (Romans 3:24), it must be sure. If my effort is futile and useless, I am free to do as I please!
Not at all. In the preceding chapter, as a sort of precaution, Paul anticipates such reasoning in a tight presentation on grace and the law: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? By no means! What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” (Romans 6:1, 2, 15).
According to Paul, sin, which he equates with disobedience to the law (Romans 4:15), is much less justifiable within the framework of the New Covenant experience. The difference is that now submission and obedience are by man’s converted will and arise from the heart: “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed” (Romans 6:17).
To summarize, Paul’s experience was in three phases:
1. The law given at Sinai in the form of the Ten Commandments can evoke in the heart a feeling of personal failure and weakness, of sin and its condemnation. Eternal death becomes a stark reality.
2. Such awareness is favorable to the development of certain psychological conditions. Only when the human being understands that he is helpless in his relationship to his God. It is then that salvation appears to him as a free gift, not as something that is due him.
3. This manifestation of God’s love, far from becoming a pretext for unfettered disobedience, conveys a divine impulse to obey God. Henceforth, one who sees himself as the object of God’s love will serve Him in a new spirit—a spirit completely rescued from the tensions of fear and guilt or the desire to earn one’s own salvation. Now peaceful assurance and unbelievable gratitude prevail.
In other words, obedience to the law is the expression of our salvation and not the means by which it is attained.
Evidently, the apostle Paul applied these three principles in his own life. Regarding the Sabbath, particularly, we find him observing it regularly, in keeping with the manner outlined in the law: “Paul as usual introduced himself and for three consecutive sabbaths developed the arguments from scripture for them” (Acts 17:2, Jerusalem Bible).
How could he have done otherwise? The Sabbath commandment is an integral part of the law. In his defense of the law, Paul does not leave the slightest indication that the Christian religion relaxed the expectations of the law. The apostle James, in a passage devoted particularly to the Ten Commandments,5 gives this warning: “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10).
In any case, according to the same apostle, we are not to “judge the law,” for “there is one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy” (James 4:11, 12).
Under the New Covenant, the law remains. Only the attitude of the believer has changed. No longer is he a victim of or a believer in the efficacy of an empty gesture—an externalizing of religion. His service will grow in depth, in keeping with a more intelligent, self-authenticating obedience.
However, this spiritual revolution, this life of repentance, happens only when one grasps in his heart the fact that salvation is a free gift, an act of love. When one understands that one owes everything to God, then the mentality of a mercenary has been replaced by the mentality of a son, resulting in a psychological difference that all can see (see Romans 8:15–17). The mercenary obeys in order to get something; the son obeys because he already has it. For the mercenary, the law is external, like a government regulation that all must accept; for the son, the law is within the heart. He serves, not because of a painful obligation but as a loving response to God’s initiative.
Thus, the New Covenant brings deeper, truer obedience. Such obedience, rather than abolishing the law, establishes it. Exclaimed the apostle Paul: “Do we then otherthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Romans 3:31).
The Two Laws
Yet the New Covenant, by the very nature of the theology of salvation that it implies, does result in the annulment of another category of laws. These laws had one purpose, and that was to symbolically announce the coming of salvation. They were “a type and shadow” of the “substance” (the Messiah) to come (see Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 8:5; 10:1). They were destined, therefore, to disappear with the arrival of the promised Messiah.
Had not the prophet Daniel predicted this development? The death of the Messiah was to cause sacrifices and offerings to cease (see Daniel 9:27).
The apostle Paul explains why: “For since the law has but a shadow of good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered? If the worshipers had once been cleansed, they would no longer have any consciousness of sin. But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sin, year after year. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins” (Hebrews 10:1–4).
Paul emphasizes the inefficacy of sacrifices that must be renewed unceasingly because their effect is temporary. His conclusion is clear. The law relating to these sacrifices was to disappear and be replaced by a more far-reaching sacrifice, the effect of which would last forever: “He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:9, 10).
The law that was abolished, then, was the law that related to the sacrifices. Paul says this again in different terms: “by abolishing in his [Christ’s] flesh the law of commandments and ordinances” (Ephesians 2:15).
Therefore, two very different sets of laws existed in Israel: the ceremonial law, with a transitory, relative character; and the moral law, with an abiding validity, serving as an absolute standard.
Thus, if in the writings of Paul one gathers the impression that at times the law is abolished and, at other times, the law is maintained, one is not to see a contradiction but rather the existence of two very distinct laws.6
In the Old Testament, the Israelites well understood this distinction since, on God’s orders, the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) was to be placed in the Ark while the laws concerning sacrifices were to be placed alongside the Ark,7suggesting thus a superiority of the first over the second. Also, the origin and the giving of these laws revealed a difference:
1. The Decalogue had been written by God (Deuteronomy 10:4), while the ceremonial law was outlined by Moses (Deuteronomy 31:9, 24).
2. The Decalogue was graven on tables of stone—an imperishable material (Deuteronomy 10:3), while the ceremonial law had been written in a book—a perishable material (Deuteronomy 31:24).
3. The Decalogue was entrusted by God to Moses, who himself placed it in the ark (Deuteronomy 10:5), while the ceremonial law was entrusted by Moses to the priests, who, in turn, placed it alongside the ark (Deuteronomy 31:26).
The ceremonial law, which was temporary and relative, was in contrast with the law of the Ten Commandments, which was eternal and absolute.
In spirit, therefore, nothing has changed. The covenant made in ancient times between God and Israel was not canceled in order to make way for a new one. The same people, the same God, and the same provisions remain. But the time had come for the set of laws concerning sacrifices and offerings to be superseded by the event they had announced for centuries.
At the same time, and by virtue of that event, the relationship between the two partners of the covenant was to be strengthened. On God’s level, love became more clearly manifest in free, unconditional salvation. On man’s level, worship took on a new dimension: rather than ritual performance, now heart worship.
The Ten Commandments of the ancient law continued to resound clearly with even deeper requirements. The New Covenant was, in no way, an evolution. On the contrary, it was a return to the source, to true repentance.8 The covenant was to have a new birth; the participants were to find again the love of a betrothal (cf. Hosea 2:16–20).
Jews and Christians
In fact, this renewal of the ancient covenant did not offend pious Jews in the first century C.E. Tradition and the Scriptures provided all the elements necessary to adopt the views of Paul the Pharisee without large-scale reservations. The Essenes and the Pharisees had no difficulty admitting the transient nature of ritual law as compared to moral law. They had been asking for a spiritualization of the sacrificial rites. And they were widely listened to. The only defenders of the Levitical worship were the priests, or the Sadducees, but they were a despised minority and without credibility in Jewish society on matters of religious dogma and authority.
In any case, the future seemed to justify the majority, since, with the destruction of the temple, Judaism was obliged to adapt its worship forms to changed circumstances. For instance, a prayer could correspond to the sacrifice of an animal. 9
It must be stated clearly: original Christianity never sought, under any pretense, to bring into question traditional Judaism. Whether it was the identity of the Messiah in the person of Yeshua of Nazareth or the conception of the law as structured in the writings of Paul, everything in the so-called new religion seemed to fit naturally into the mold of tradition.
Claude Tresmntant was right when he lifted his voice against the serious misrepresentation of the facts that Christian circles too often accept and practice: “Often in manuals and elsewhere, Christianity is presented as a softening down of Judaism. Christianity sets itself against Judaism as the religion of charity and forgiveness versus that of rigor and justice. Sometimes Jesus and the God of the New Testament are contrasted with the God of Israel, with Yahweh, the God of battle, and with the God of the Jews. Really, this procedure dates from Marcion. The same violent contrast is to be found, though set to a different music, in the writings of Luther. The Lutheran doctrine of the Jewish law in opposition to ‘Christian grace’ rests on a misunderstanding of what the Torah really is in Judaism. This opposition between Judaism and Christianity, which has developed since the theoreticians of dualism began their work and continued through the so-called 'de-Judaization of Christianity’ by the German theologians and philosophers, is scientifically false on a number of counts.”10
Jules Isaac, in his outstanding work Jesus and Israel, called the attention of believers, whatever their denomination, to the facts: “Nothing would be more futile than to try to separate from Judaism the Gospel that Jesus preached in the synagogues and in the temple. The truth is that the Gospel and its entire tradition are deeply rooted in Jewish tradition and in the attempts at renovation and purification that have been manifested for almost two centuries in Palestine.” 11
1Epstein, Le Judaïsme (Paris: Payot, 1959), p. 74.
2All biblical texts are from the Revised Standard Version unless noted otherwise.
3The Greek verb pl r sai is the opposite of katalusai, to unloose, to destroy, to overthrow; and it comes from the root pl r s, full, which justifies Jules Isaac’s translation, “to give fullness” (cf. Jules Isaac, Jesus and Israel [New York: 1971], pp. 65, 66). The Today’s English Version brings out another nuance.
4“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat,” affirmed Jesus, “so practice and observe whatever they tell you!” This he said to his disciples (Matthew 23:2, 3).
5The examples chosen to illustrate this thesis are taken from the Decalogue: “Thou shalt not commit adultery . . . thou shalt not kill” (see James 2:11).
6The American Catholic theologian Gregory Baum has been struck by this seeming contradiction in the epistles of Paul concerning the law. “One of the most difficult theological notions in the letters of St. Paul,” he tells us, “is that of the Law. It is obscure and puzzling because it seems to contain certain contradictions, attitudes opposed to one another to such a degree that they apparently defy an attempt at reconciliation. On the one hand we hear that the Law is good. . . . While quotations from Paul confirming the holiness of the Law could be multiplied, there exists also a sizeable set of passages which manifest a negative evaluation of the Law” (The Jews and the Gospel [London, 1961], p. 186).
7Deuteronomy 10:1-5 and 31:25, 26. The first passage mentions tablets of stone (cf. also Exodus 25:16; 40:20; and 1 Kings 8:9); the second, a book. As it happens, it was a book which was rediscovered in the Temple some 900 years later in the time of King Josiah (cf. 2 Chronicles 34:15, 31). The book deposited at the side of the ark dealt with the sacrifices. It is of further interest that it was to those who officiated at the sacrifices that the book was entrusted (cf. Deuteronomy 31:9).
8The Hebrew word Teshubah, which translates the idea of repentance, literally means “a turning back.”
9“What can be substituted for the oxen which we used to offer unto Thee? Our lips, with the prayer which we offer unto Thee” (Pesiqta 165b; cf. Hebrews 13:15).
10L’enseignement de Ieschoua de Nazareth (Paris: Seuil, 1970), pp. 137, 183. Cf. also F. Lovsky, La déchirure de l’absence (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1971).
11Isaac, p. 74. On the Jewish side, note especially the works of Sch. Ben Chorin, Bruder Jesus: Der Nazarener in jüdischer Sicht (München: Paul List Verlag, 1967); David Flusser, Jesus (Paris: Seuil, 1970); and other authors such as Joseph Klausner, Salomon Asch, R. Aron, etc.
Image: Jeremiah on the ruins of Jerusalem (1844). Horace Vernet. Public Domain