Another Look At Why Jesus Is So Important

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord:  I will put my law into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  And they shall not teach, each one to his neighbor and each one to his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.  For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

Hebrews 8:10-12 (quoted from Jeremiah 31:31-34)

I continue to be blessed in my study of the Book of Hebrews.  The author is making the case that Jesus is the only High Priest that we need, that His blood has secured an eternal redemption, and that the covenant He established by His blood proves the old covenant to be merely a shadow and copy with no power to forgive sins. 

Chapter 8 is all about proving that Jesus ushers in this New Covenant, and by doing so, makes the old one obsolete.  We see in the previous two verses that a new covenant will be established because the old one failed, not due to its imperfections, but because Israel disobeyed and broke it.  So we come to the above verses, this really, really Good News about what God will do and now has done in Christ for His covenant people. 

We can see three things from this text that are really, really Good News for all of us who are in Christ. 

I.              I will put my law into their minds, and write them on their hearts…

In the old covenant, God writes His law on stone tablets and tells Moses to speak to Israel all that He commands.  In the new covenant, God writes the law on our hearts, not simply that we might remember it, but that we might love it and eagerly obey it out of gratitude.  God goes one step further in Ezekiel 36 when He promises us new hearts to replace the stone, hard hearts that we all have before God causes us to be born again.  God gives us the ability to know His Word and lovingly obey it.  Amazing!

II.           I will be their God, and they shall be my people…for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.

This isn’t the abstract knowledge that we might get from a book.  And it wasn’t the same knowledge that Israel had as God revealed Himself on Mt. Sinai.  We know that Israel still forgot God even after He came as a pillar of fire to guide them in the wilderness.  What the new covenant promises is that we will have a personal, intimate knowledge of God.  We won’t need anyone to tell us about knowing God because He will reveal Himself to us in a personal way.  And this promises is for each and every one of God’s people from the least to the greatest.  (Just so we don’t forget, John 17:3 tells us that knowing God is synonymous with eternal life.)  

And like with any relationship, to truly know God, one must spend time with Him, not simply read about Him in a book or listen to a sermon about Him.  To spend time with God is to be in His presence.  In His presence there is fullness of joy.  (Psalm 16:11)  Just think about what it might look like for more of God’s people to enjoy His presence on a daily basis!  What might this world start looking like if we made more of an effort to intimately know God? 

III.         For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.

Now, we know that while God is a God of love and forgiveness, He is also a God of justice.  In the same way that crimes demand punishment, sin demands justice.  God would not be loving if He failed to deal with sin.  To be unjust is to be unloving.  So God must deal with sin. 

What is this verse telling us then?  If we have sinned and God must exact judgment on our sin, how can He remember our sins no more?  This is where Jesus comes in and why He is the most important person EVER. 

The One who created the Heavens and the Earth, the Word of God, Jesus, God’s Son, became flesh and dwelt among us.  He came to establish this New Covenant.  He came to set captives free and restore peace and health and make the blind see and the lame walk and the dead rise. 

But before ultimate restoration and redemption could happen, He had to deal with our sin.  So Jesus came to earth and became fully man without surrendering any of His deity so that He could take our sin and our judgment upon Himself and die in our place to satisfy God’s justice.  He did this so that God’s people would be able to declare, “We know God!”  And He did it because there was no other way that our sins might be remembered no more by a just and holy God.  

Hebrews tells us that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.  Jesus had to pour out His own blood for our sins.  And He did, the perfect One trading places with guilty rebels.  That was what His death accomplished.  And we can be confident that He was successful because God raised Him from the dead and He is alive. 

If your heart loves God and wants to obey God’s commands, praise Jesus Christ.

If you know God personally and intimately, praise Jesus Christ.

If you are confident of your forgiveness and right standing before God, praise Jesus Christ. 

Isn’t a God like that worth surrendering everything for? 

I think so. 

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

Hebrews 9:11-12