Covenant renewal: what does it mean? God wants to make a new beginning with his people Israel. He does not want to make another covenant with his people as partners, but he is laying another foundation that underpins the relationship with his people.

The new covenant is a better arrangement:

But as it is, Christ has obtained a better ministry that is much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.Hebrews 8:6-7

Not that the covenant with Israel had failed, but in Hebrews 8:7, the quotation from Jeremiah 31:31-34 is presented as a rebuke to the people. The new arrangement that God makes is a better alternative than the Sinai covenant to accomplish the same goal. His relationship with Israel takes on greater legal force because the people's debt has been paid once and for all thanks to the only sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. After all, his dying day was incomprehensibly the moment of the promised covenant renewal.

The Scope of the New Covenant⤒🔗

The essence of the new covenant is that God intervenes with his own hands to restore the relationship with his people. The Torah, which structured the covenant in the old dispensation, is no longer imposed from without, as appears from Jeremiah 31:31-34, but is internalized in the heart and mind. Israel is inspired with the required obedience so that the love for God is from deep within and comes from the heart. And then the old covenant promise returns with renewed power: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” As a result, no one needs to be exhorted to know the Lord as it was in the past in the Old Covenant. The whole community of faith now lives in communion with him, from children to adults they will know the Lord from a personal experience. All of this is made possible by the renewing power of God's forgiveness:  “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.”

A repetition and application of the Jeremiah quotations are given in Hebrews 10: 15-17:

This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds.

Then he adds, 'I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.'

The new covenant is no longer a future time, the author assures his Jewish readers; our heavenly High Priest accomplished it by his one-time sacrifice. Forgiveness is now a fact.

But if God renews his old covenant with Israel, what is currently the position of Gentile believers concerning the new covenant? Nowhere in the New Testament is it said in so many words that they are incorporated into Israel. On the contrary, according to Peter, it is the Israelites who belong to the covenant that God made with their fathers:

You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring, all the families of the earth be blessed.’Acts 3:25

And Paul writes that the covenants belong to the Israelites: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises” (Romans 9:4). Compare this statement to Romans 11:26-27:

The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob; 'and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.'

Non-Jews were by nature foreign to the covenant promises: “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). However, Romans 9-11 shows, along with other passages, that non-Jews are also welcome to the God of Israel. He makes no distinction between people who call on the same Lord (Acts 15:9; Romans 3:22; 10:12). That is why Paul calls himself and his fellow workers "servants of a new covenant" in 2 Corinthians 3:6. As an apostle, he had been commissioned to carry out this new will of God, not only among the Jews, but also in the world of nations. About the old regulation, he writes that the written Torah was central in it: one had to adhere to the letter of the law:

But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ it is taken away. 2 Corinthians 3:14

But living by the Spirit is central to the new arrangement. Within the new covenant, there is the healing space of salvation for the nations to whom Paul and his co-workers Sosthenes and Timothy preach the gospel. They have been qualified to serve the new order that has entered into force on Good Friday. From now on the God of Israel wants to commit himself to everyone who bases his or her life on the death of his Son. Gentiles have the same privileges as Israel because of Jesus Christ; they are today just as much God's people:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once, you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received God’s mercy, but now you have received mercy.1 Peter 2:9-10

In this way, the new covenant has gained enormous scope in the world.

The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit←⤒🔗

Although the Old Testament always referred to God's covenant with Israel, we must observe that the new covenant announced by Jeremiah is not given a national designation, such as the Sinai, David, or Zion covenants. However, there was a certain openness in advance to the promise in the direction of the Gentile nations, apparent in the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:31-34. If the servant of Isaiah 53 must suffer for “many to be accounted righteous," most exegetes believe that his worldwide mission is addressed in part to the salvation of the Gentiles. How this would unfold is somewhat indicated in the Old Testament. In Ezekiel, God promises to give his people a new heart and a new spirit to ensure that his laws and rules are kept, with the core promise:

I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.Ezekiel 36:26-27

The Spirit is the beating heart in the new covenant. The outpouring of the Spirit on everyone, prophesied by Joel, was accomplished on the day of Pentecost among the Jews in Jerusalem, but also in the house of the Roman Cornelius at Caesarea, echoing Joel 3:1-2 in the Septuagint (Acts 2:17-18 and 10:45). And this “pouring out” of the Spirit parallels the blood of Jesus that is "poured out" for many: “‘For this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’” (Matthew 26:28). Compare this proclamation with Luke 22:20: “‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’” Shed Blood, shed Spirit. Pentecost has been made possible on Good Friday!

It is the very combination of prophecies from Jeremiah and Ezekiel that the apostle Paul uses centuries later to make it clear to the Corinthians that the promises of the new covenant also apply to them, as Gentiles who live through the Spirit: “You show that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3). Life by the Spirit is also an important theme in Paul's letters to the Romans and Galatians: that is, the Spirit of the new covenant.

The Cup of the Lord←⤒🔗

What Paul calls in his letter to the Corinthians “the cup of the Lord” was consumed by the believers in Christ in Greece (1 Corinthians 10:21; 11:26). Paul gave them instructions concerning the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, mentioned in the Gospels, which are given by the Lord Jesus himself: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” (1 Corinthians 11:23a). As with the disciples who sat at the table with the Lord Jesus Christ, eating and drinking together in remembrance of Christ emphasizes the spiritual communion of Christians. Christ is the head of the church, so the communion with one another is anchored in him. All drink of the cup of the new covenant in his blood. Mutual differences disappear because the Host, Jesus Christ, is all in all: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all in Christ” (Galatians 3:28), and “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). The death of the Lord, who shed his blood for the complete remission of all our sins, has binding power. In the sacrament of the Holy Supper, the wine is distributed, and together we drink from the same cup in remembrance of him. It is primarily a communal meal. The wine at communion is therefore a foretaste of the spiritual communion in the worldwide community of faith of all who are led by the Spirit.