Dr. Alan DunnDr. Alan J. Dunn

A biblical pastor is called to hold fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict (Tit 1:9). In this brief series we will consider how the New Covenant fulfills the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:31-34 to identify and refute certain popular beliefs found among many whom we would yet call our brothers and sisters in Christ. We need humility to be Berean-spirited to search the Scriptures (Acts 17:11) to mature in doctrinal accuracy while not compromising Christ’s commandment that we love all His true disciples (Eph 4:13-16).

Our touch-stone text is Jeremiah 31:31-34.

“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 “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will 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.”2

The Lord tells us that the New Covenant will differ from the Old in that it will not be broken. It will be an eternal covenant. The people of the New Covenant will have His law written into their hearts and all will know the Lord. Each member of the New Covenant will have their sin forgiven. The ancient promise I will be their God, and they shall be My people will be fulfilled for the people of the New Covenant.

Dispensationalists Deny That the New Covenant Pertains to the New Testament Church

While we readily acknowledge that many Dispensationalists are genuine Christians, we need to recognize that the theological system known as Dispensationalism is flawed in its understanding of the New Covenant people of God. A number of Dispensational tenets factor into this error. The first is a commitment to interpret Scripture “literally.” When a Dispensationalist reads I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah (Jer 31:31), he interprets Israel and Judah “literally” as the national, ethnic people of the Old Covenant and understands the prophecy to concern that nation. In other words, when this prophecy is fulfilled, it will pertain to national Israel as defined in Old Testament terms. We would interpret the Bible “literally” in the sense that Scripture is literature which interprets itself. How does the New Testament interpret these words Israel and Judah in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ? As we will see, the New Testament often uses Old Testament vocabulary to describe the New Covenant people of God: the church of Jesus Christ.

The second hermeneutical3 tenet of Dispensationalism is the commitment to a “literal” one-thousand year millennial4 reign of Jesus on earth after His second coming.5 The third tenet is the end-times re-constitution of national, ethnic Israel. The Dispensationalist expects that national, ethnic Israel will be reconstituted in the Millennium. This millennial Israel will include a rebuilt temple and its sacrificial cultus. It is this renewed Israel which is seen to be the beneficiary of Jeremiah’s prophesied New Covenant, not the Church. Dispensational theologians deny that the New Covenant is fulfilled in the Church. J. Dwight Pentecost says “… the new covenant of Jeremiah 31:31-34 must and can be fulfilled only by the nation of Israel and not by the Church…the covenant stands as yet unfulfilled and awaits a future, literal fulfillment.”6 Charles C. Ryrie states, “The New Covenant is not only future, but millennial.”7 Likewise John Walvoord tells us “…the premillennial position is that the new covenant is with Israel and the fulfillment in the millennial kingdom after the second coming of Christ.”8

The Dispensationalist reads Jeremiah 31:31-34 and understands house of Israel and house of Judah to mean the this-age, ethnic descendants of Abraham and expects the promises to be fulfilled in a yet future millennial kingdom in which the people of God will be reconstituted as national Israel. The New Covenant therefore is not the possession and privilege of the Church. The Dispensationalist separates the Church and Israel as two peoples of God, each with their own promises and destinies. According to Ryrie, “A dispensationalist keeps Israel and the Church distinct…a man who fails to distinguish Israel and the Church will inevitably not hold to dispensational distinctions.”9 “If the Church is fulfilling Israel’s promises as contained in the New Covenant or anywhere in the Scriptures, then premillennialism is condemned.”10 Does the New Testament identify the New Covenant with the Church and in fact, see the promises made to Israel fulfilled in the Church?

The New Covenant Pertains to the Church

Jeremiah 31:31-34 is the only Old Testament passage which explicitly uses New Covenant to speak of our present time in Redemptive History immediately preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ. Whenever we read of the New Covenant in the New Testament, we are right to have Jeremiah 31:31-34 in mind.

Do you observe the Lord’s Supper as disciples gathered together as the church of Christ? If so, you are participating in the New Covenant. Jesus tells us that the Supper is emblematic of the New Covenant. This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood (Luke 22:20; see 1 Cor 11:25). As the Old Covenant was based on the redemption of Israel from Egypt and celebrated in the Passover, the New Covenant is based on the redemption of the Church from death by the resurrection of Jesus and celebrated in the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 5:7). The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the New Covenant and all who are joined to Him by faith are members of the New Covenant community: the Church.

As an apostle to the church, Paul calls himself a servant of a new covenant (2 Cor 3:6). Paul certainly ministered to his fellow Jewish kinsmen but he was peculiarly the apostle of the Gentiles (Rom 11:13; 1 Tim 2:7). All who come to faith in Christ through the writings of Paul have received his ministry of the New Covenant. Therefore, believing Gentiles are in view when Jeremiah speaks of the house of Israel and the House of Judah. If the New Covenant pertained only to a future, millennial, reconstituted, national Israel, how could Paul be a servant of a new covenant and the apostle of the Gentiles at the same time?

The book of Hebrews was written to believers who had converted from Judaism. Earlier in their corporate experience, they had suffered opposition. Some had been imprisoned and others had their possessions confiscated (Heb 1:32-33), but some in the church began to contemplate a return to Judaism, in order to worship under the forms of the Old Covenant. The author equates this with apostasy. His purpose in writing is to compel the reader to understand that the Old Covenant has now given way to the New Covenant and the Lord is now known and worshiped only in Jesus Christ, the High Priest and King of the New Covenant people of God: the Church. In Hebrews 8:1-2, we read that the main point of the epistle is that Jesus, our High Priest and King, is now seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle. Jesus is not awaiting a future, literal millennium in order to be our enthroned King. He is exalted as Lord of lords and King of kings NOW (1 Tim 6:15). Consequently, Hebrews 8:6-7 speaks of Christ as the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises, in that the first covenant was faulty in that it could not effect what was promised in the New Covenant and accomplished by Jesus Christ. The first covenant could only point to Christ with its types and shadows while condemning men in sin, but it was unable to bring eschatological life which is given to us only by the Spirit of the resurrected Lord Jesus. The Spirit then inspired the writer to quote Jeremiah 31:31-34 (Heb 8:8-12) which defines and identifies this better covenant as our present covenant: the New Covenant. Then in verse 13, the author makes it clear that the first or Old Covenant is giving way to the New. Not only is it impossible, therefore, for his readers to return to the Old Covenant, but it is inconceivable that Old Covenant Israel would ever be reconstituted in the future. The New Covenant has made the Old Covenant obsolete and it has now disappeared.

In Hebrews 9:14-15, having contrasted the blood of animals sacrificed in the Old Covenant with the better blood of Christ, the writer again tells us that Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant. This New Covenant is effectual for the cleansing of our consciences and enables us to serve the living God. Then again in Hebrews 10, we are taught that the death of Jesus was the climatic fulfillment of all that was signified by the types and shadows of the Old Covenantal sacrificial system. The author cites Psalm 110 in verses 12-13 to prove that Jesus is the enthroned Messiah and then again cites Jeremiah 31:33-34 in verses 16-17 to explain our New Covenant blessings of new life and justification. In Hebrews 12, we learn that we no longer approach God in terms of the Old Covenant (vss 18-21) but on the basis of Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant (vss 22-24).

I asked the question earlier, “Does the New Testament identify the Church with the New Covenant and in fact, see the promises made to Israel fulfilled in the Church?” The person and work of Jesus, the ministry of Paul, and the book of Hebrews are three witnesses which compel us to answer, “Yes!”

The Church is the New Covenant Israel of God

We must understand that there were two kinds of Israelites who heard Jeremiah’s prophecy. The prophets prophesied to the nation of Israel, but not every Israelite believed what was preached. Within the national, ethnic community, there was a believing remnant characterized by faith. This doctrine of the remnant is crucial to understanding the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. The doctrine of the remnant is rooted in Genesis 3:15. Since the Fall of Adam, mankind has ever been comprised of two kinds of people: the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Fallen Adam gives birth to fallen, depraved and guilty sinners (the seed of the serpent). But in grace, the Lord transformed some of Adam’s descendants into the seed of the woman¸ a remnant who would triumph over Satan in that one promised Seed, even Jesus Christ. These two kinds of spiritual lineages are then found in Abraham’s descendants, as Paul argues in Romans 9 where he contrasts Isaac with Ishmael and Jacob with Esau (Rom 9: 7-13). This duality characterized the people in the Mosaic, Old Covenant. Extensively Old Covenant Israel was comprised of the unbelieving seed of the serpent and refused to believe Yahweh. Consequently, they broke that national covenant, even though the Lord was a faithful husband to them (Jer 31:32. Yet, there continued to be a believing remnant within that apostate nation who heard and obeyed the Lord’s word. We see the same duality among the seed of David within the Davidic Covenant: apostate kings and believing kings. In the fullness of time, it was John the Baptist’s job to summon this believing remnant, this seed of the woman, to the waters of baptism. He rejected those who claimed covenantal privilege on the basis of physical lineage with Abraham (Luke 3:8) and looked for repenters to whom he introduced Jesus (John 1:29). Jesus identified with these believers in His baptism and called His disciples out from that remnant. He directed the faith of His disciples to Himself as the Messiah. Now, as the resurrected Lord, He has given His disciples His Spirit and through their New Testament witness, Jesus is now enlarging that believing remnant as He builds His church. As Christians, we see our spiritual ancestry in this lineage of faith. Hebrews 11 presents us with our “family tree’ of faith in which we see the seed of the woman represented throughout the course of Redemptive History.

Paul, in Romans 9-11, refutes the charge that God has not been faithful to His promises. This charge was being made because most of the Jews of Paul’s day were rejecting the gospel. If Paul was a servant of a new covenant, and that New Covenant was promised to the house of Israel, then how could God be seen as being faithful when so many Jews were rejecting Christ and the New Covenant? Paul argues that God is being faithful to His believing remnant. His argument can be hard to follow because he uses the term Israel in two different ways: to describe God’s elect, saved people and to describe the people of the Old Covenant nation. We read in Romans 9:6 for they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel. Paul refers to the duality of the two seeds of Genesis 3:15 and uses the word Israel in two different senses. When Paul speaks of those people who the Lord saves by sovereign grace, he identifies them as Israel in a redemptive sense. Yet, he also speaks of his kinsmen according to the flesh (Rom 9:3-4; 10:1-3; 11:1ff) as ethnic Israel. In other words, in the Old Covenant, there was a remnant of true, believers (all Israel), within the larger unbelieving nation of Israel.

The focus of Paul’s argument in Romans 9-11 concerns this believing remnant, this all Israel (Rom 9:6 and 11:26). He tells us that the number of this remnant will be full, or complete according to God’s purposes. In Romans 11:5-7, Paul identifies the believing Jews of his day as a remnant according to God’s gracious choice who have been taken from ethnic Israel. The salvation of this Jewish remnant will be complete and in 11:12 he speaks of their fulfillment. God is not unfaithful but He will fulfill His purposes of election in the fulfillment of a Jewish remnant. The acceptance of believing Jews is likened to a resurrection: life from the dead (Rom 11:15). Paul is not speaking of a physical resurrection, but of regeneration, of being made spiritually alive as in Romans 6:13, present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead. So too Paul speaks of the fullness of the Gentiles (Rom 11:25), that is, the full number of the remnant of elect believers taken by grace from the nations. In electing grace, the Lord is calling the full remnant of elect Jews along with the full remnant of elect Gentiles, and is grafting them onto the one olive tree, a symbol of “Israel” (Rom 11:16-24). In verse 25, we read that Israel; national, Old Covenant Israel, experiences a partial hardening until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. The word until can convey a sequential idea,11 but the Greek grammar indicates that Paul is speaking about coincidental, not sequential, action. In other words, while ethnic Jews are experiencing both a hardening and the saving of an elect remnant, so too God is calling forth a believing remnant from among the Gentiles who are coming in, being joined to the olive tree which symbolizes God’s saved Israel. When the believing remnant of the Jews and the believing remnant of the Gentiles are united in the one olive tree, we then read verse 26: and so all Israel will be saved. Here all Israel is defined in terms of salvation, not ethnicity or nationality. The little word so does not mean “then,” but “in this manner.” Paul is telling us how all Israel is formed, not when. The all Israel (which in Romans 9:6 pointed to the believing Jewish remnant) is formed by divine electing grace whereby God combines the full remnant of believing Jews with the full remnant of believing Gentiles who together constitute His olive tree, His true Israel. This saved Israel composed of believing Jews and Gentiles, and is the fulfillment of Isaiah 59:20-21 and Jeremiah 31:33-34, which Paul conflates and cites in Romans 11:26-28. The promise, This is My covenant with them when I take away their sins, is fulfilled in New Covenant Israel, Paul’s all Israel. If you believe in Jesus and have your sins forgiven in His blood, regardless of whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, you are part of that full number of God’s elect which is His true Israel. The salvation of every sinner occasions the glory of our God in Jesus Christ (Rom 11:33-36).

You may have heard of “Replacement Theology:” the teaching that the Church “replaces” Israel. The idea of “replacement” assumes the Dispensational tenet that there are two people of God: Israel and the Church. The Church does not “replace” Israel but is rather the New Covenant manifestation of God’s true people who were only a remnant within national Israel in the Old Covenant. Now, in the New Covenant, we see God’s saved people, His Israel, has matured and developed in keeping with God’s redemptive purposes. His true people are now the New Covenant, Christian Israel. The term Israel is, as many Old Testament terms, redefined in Christ’s death and resurrection and employed in the New Testament to speak of the Church.

As “Israel” is an Old Testament term used to describe the New Testament Church, so too the phrase “seed of Abraham.” God promised to give Abraham a seed which, through Isaac, became the twelve tribes of Old Covenant Israel. But as Isaac was the specific son given to Abraham, so too Jesus is the ultimate specific son promised to Abraham (Gal 3:16). All God’s promises (see 2 Cor 2:20) are now given to any who belong to Christ who, in Christ, are Abraham’s descendants (seed), heirs according to promise (Gal 3:29). In Galatians, Paul refutes the Judaizers who were requiring believers to be physically circumcised in order to become recipients of God’s covenant promises. In Galatians 4, Paul gives us an allegory in which he identifies national Old Covenant Israel with Ishmael the son of Hagar, who was born according to the flesh. But he identifies Christians, the Church, with Isaac, the son of Sarah, who was born according to promise (Gal 4:23). Here again are the two seeds according to their respective births. One has only the life of this age. But the other is the fulfillment of God’s promise. Christians are like Isaac who was miraculously birthed from the dead womb of Sarah (Rom 4:16-21), and typologically resurrected from the dead (Heb 11:19). This is crucial: the New Covenant people are a regenerated people who are alive with the life of the age to come. This is why Paul goes on in Galatians to tell us that physical circumcision is now irrelevant. Physical circumcision was emblematic of the Abrahamic Covenant as it was administered under the Old Covenant and signified membership in national Israel. Now, in the New Covenant, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love (Gal 5:6). The only circumcision Paul is interested in is heart circumcision which means regeneration, the new birth. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God (Rom 2:28-29). When the Spirit circumcises a dead sinner’s heart, that sinner comes alive as a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, even12 upon the Israel of God (Gal 6:15-16). A man’s natural birth is irrelevant. The question is whether or not the man is born again: is he a new creation, regenerated by the Spirit and believing in Jesus? That man, supernaturally born and now believing, is thus made a member of the Israel of God and an heir of all the promises of God, including those of Jeremiah 31:31-34.

Ephesians 2:11-22 is our final passage. Here Paul tells us again of the irrelevance of fleshly circumcision which was the insignia of the Abrahamic and Old Covenants. Gentiles during the time of the Old Covenant were, by and large, separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Eph 2:12) – but no longer. Now, all who are in Christ, constitute the commonwealth of Israel because the blood of Christ has removed the dividing wall13 erected in the Old Covenant to separate Jews from Gentiles. Now Christ has made the two into one new man, that is, a new humanity.14 We, believing Jews and Gentiles, the one new people of God, now have access into the Holy of Holies in the heavenly temple through Christ in one Spirit to the Father. We together form God’s house, His temple, His dwelling place on earth: His Church. We are God’s holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession (1 Pet 2:5, 9).15

The New Testament takes the vocabulary of the Old Covenant and employs it to define the New Covenant Church. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come (2 Cor 5:17). What makes all things new? The resurrection of Jesus. With the resurrection of Jesus, the new creation has commenced. His resurrection transforms everything and gives new meaning to the vocabulary of Scripture. The New Testament still speaks of the temple, sacrifices, priesthood, the nation, the land, and the seed, but these terms are now transposed into the New Covenant by the reality of the resurrection. Therefore, when we read of the house of Israel in Jeremiah 31:31, we understand those words as they are now illuminated by the light of the resurrection. The Israel in which these promises are fulfilled is the Israel of God, Christ’s New Covenant Israel.

Our Dispensational brethren who believe in Jesus are indeed one with us in Christ. But we cannot concur with certain details of their eschatology which keeps the Church and Israel separated as two different peoples of God. We desire to learn how Scripture interprets Scripture. We see that the New Testament uses the vocabulary of the Old Testament, having redefined its terms in union with Christ and the salvation wrought by His resurrection. The term Israel, used in the Old Testament to describe the people of God in the Old Covenant, is employed in a New Covenant sense in the New Testament to speak of God’s people in Christ, His Church. We are compelled to conclude that the Church of Jesus Christ is the New Covenant people of God, described prophetically in Jeremiah 31:31-34. We will continue to examine the New Covenant people of God in light of Jeremiah 31:31-34 in this series. May the Lord give us wisdom and discernment in the truth along with the grace and meekness to speak that truth in love unto the edification of all Christ’s people (Eph 4:15).

Notes:

1 This four-part series follows the main outline of A Reformed Baptist Manifesto: The New Covenant Constitution of the Church by Dr. Sam Waldron (Palmdale, CA: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2004). Although I follow Dr. Waldron’s main outline, I have reshaped the substance of the arguments presented in these articles.
2 I am using the New American Standard Bible. For the sake of space, quotes from Scripture will be limited, but I encourage you to read the passages referenced in your Bible so as to benefit from our study together. Let us be Berean-spirited and examine the Scriptures to see whether these things are so (Acts 11:11).
3 “Hermeneutics” concerns the exegesis and interpretation of Scripture.
4 “Millennium” (Latin mill: thousand) is derived from Rev 20:6, where a thousand years is interpreted “literally.”
5 Space limitations preclude a detailed explanation of the eschatological schema of Dispensationalism. It may be that you are familiar with Dispensational teachings on “the rapture,” and “the Great Tribulation” in relation to the Second Coming of Jesus.
6 J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1964, 1979), 124-125.
7 Charles C. Ryrie, The Basis of the Premillennial Faith (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1975), 112.
8 John Walvoord, The Millennial Kingdom (Findlay, OH: Dunham, 1958), 209.
9 Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today (Chicago: Moody Press, 1965), 44-48.
10 Charles C. Ryrie, The Basis of the Premillennial Faith, 106-106.
11 Our Dispensational friends interpret until sequentially. They understand Paul to say that the Gentile Church will first be saved, then raptured, and then national Israel will be reconstituted and saved. But Paul is not speaking of the second coming in this passage. He is explaining how God is being faithful to His promises to save His people.
12 The Greek word καὶ is translated as a conjunction and but can also be translated epexegetically as explaining and identifying those who will walk by this rule, that is the “rule” in which circumcision is irrelevant but the issue is whether or not one is a new creation, regenerated and alive in Christ. “Paul declares that the ‘new creation’ – the new community within humanity brought into existence by the cross of Christ in its uniting of Jews and Gentiles into one new people of God – is the community that may be designated as ‘the Israel of God.’” O. Palmer Robertson, The Israel of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2000), 43.
13 Many see this as a reference to the wall which separated the court of the Gentiles from the court of the Jews in the temple.
14 Christ is the second Adam (see Rom 5:12-21; I Cor 15:21-22, 44-49). We are the people destined to populate the new heavens and the new earth.
15 Peter here quotes passages from Deuteronomy which defined Old Covenant Israel but now are taken up to describe the New Covenant people of God: the Church.

More articles in this series:

The New Covenant People of God and Antinomianism
The New Covenant People of God and Arminianism Part 1
The New Covenant People of God and Arminianism Part 2

© 2014 Dr. Alan J. Dunn, used with permission.