The new covenant add the old.
I. THE LIGHT CAST ON THE OLD COVENANT. It would be a mistake to describe it as a covenant that failed. Paradoxical as the expression sounds, the very breaking of the covenant furnished the proof of its success. It made man's position clearer to him; it prepared the world for Christ. The old covenant had been broken in spite of all the teaching connected with it. "Know Jehovah" had been dinned into the ear, and doubtless many had a notion that they did know Jehovah, whereas all that they knew was a certain round of ritual observances. At all events, it was a knowledge that left iniquity unforgiven and sin still registered in the book of God's remembrance. It was such a knowledge as the wrong doer has of his judge. It was the knowledge of a force that thwarted all selfishness, and came with overwhelming completeness to ruin the plans of man. It was not the knowledge coming from trust and leading to greater trust—knowledge of God as a Guide, Director, and Provider. Yet some indeed knew. The man who said to his neighbour and his brother, "Know Jehovah," must have been, in some instances at least, one who himself had some real knowledge. As there were men of the reforming spirit before the Reformation, so there were Christians in essence before Christianity. The breaking of the old covenant shows the thing that was needed, namely, a new power in the hearts of men. The knowledge of God is not to be gained by mere teaching. Teaching has its place, and within its own limits is indispensable; but who could teach a child to eat, to see, to hear? If faculties are not inborn, we cannot do anything with them.
II. THE CONFIDENT PREDICTIONS ON THE NEW COVENANT, The old covenant starts with law; the new one springs out of life. Jeremiah 31:33 gives one of the Old Testament ways of expressing the doctrine of regeneration. God writes the laws of Spiritual life on the heart, just as he writes the laws of natural life on every natural germ; and then all the rest is a matter of unfolding, of growth, of encouragement, of culture. The old covenant was one long, exhaustive, thorough experiment by which the fact became clear that in the natural man there was nothing to unfold. The new covenant established within a very brief period that, given a new life principle working within him, man is indeed a being of glorious capabilities. The first man of the new covenant, in point of quality, is of course the Man Christ Jesus himself. God's Law was written in the heart of his Son. Here is one way in which the Law and the prophets are completed. The ark with its inscriptions vanishes; we hear nothing of it later than Jeremiah 3:15. And in its place there comes the loving heart trusted to the utmost liberty. Well might there be confidence in speaking of the new covenant. When good seed and good soil and favourable circumstances meet, then there is certainty of perfect and abundant fruit. The new covenant is above all things a covenant with the individual. It is made to depend upon individual susceptibility and individual fidelity. Also it is a knowledge that comes in repentance, forgiveness, and favour. And all this teaches us that a special meaning must be put into the term, "people of God." The true people of God are constituted by the aggregation of individual believers. They do not begin their journey to the heavenly land of promise marching as one constrained company through a miraculous Red Sea passage; they rather go, one by one, through a straitened entrance, even through a needle's eye, some of them.—Y.