Jeremiah foretells a new covenant, not the covenant of the Law made through the Ten Commandments, but a covenant wherein the Law will no longer exist as written word or be passed down orally by our forefathers. Instead, God tells us through Jeremiah that the Law will be written in flesh and taught by God himself. At the Passover meal before Jesus’s crucifixion, Jesus takes the third cup of the seder meal, the cup of Salvation, and says, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20, ESV).
The new covenant Jeremiah foretold, wherein the Law would become flesh and be taught from the lips of God himself, formed by Jesus through the cup of Salvation, the sacrifice of His blood. As the Jewish people of the old covenant look to the Law as a perfect example of God’s plan in their lives, we can look to Jesus, the fulfillment of that Law, as the perfect example of God’s plan for us. God, speaking through Jeremiah, continues: “For they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34, NKJV).
After Jesus takes the cup of Salvation during the Last Supper, an argument ensues (Luke 22:24-30) that reflects the rest of this prophecy. Who among us is the greatest and who the least? Jesus flips this paradigm on its head, saying that while He is the greatest among them, he has taken the lowest position, that of the servant. Lent is a time of preparation, a time of anticipatory waiting, a time of self-reflection, self-denial, and service to others.
This Lenten season, let us become more like “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8, ESV).
~Thomas Newell~
