The object of the Holy Spirit is to prove the inferiority of the first covenant, to which Jewish unbelief was clinging, as pertinaciously as their fathers of old were prone to abandon it for any idol. Such alas! is the self will of man, from which no favors from God deliver, short of redemption and a new life in Christ. But as in Heb. 7. we had the Levitical priest set aside by One after the order of Melchizedek according to Psa. 110, so Heb. 8. with no less conclusiveness sets before us a new covenant promised in the unerring word.
“For, if that first had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second. For, finding fault, he saith to them, Behold, days come” &c., (Heb. 8:7-8).
It is in vain for men to reason in an abstract way against the word of God. It was He that inaugurated the covenant of Sinai, which confronted the self-confidence of fallen man, and, if he had used it aright, would have convicted him of his evil and compelled him to look to Christ, the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. But Israel, like other natural men, perverted the law to make out a spurious righteousness of their own, and to cloak their sins under the smoke of their sacrifices; the end of which things is death, as the Jews were soon to prove even outwardly.
God is free to set aside the old and bring in the new. This He never does arbitrarily, but in goodness, wisdom, and holiness worthy of Himself. But the idea of absolute law is a common delusion of Judaism which some even of their Rabbles repudiated and disproved from scripture, though Christian theologians, even such a man as Hooker, (Reel. Pol. i. 2, Keble's ed. i. 204), have not failed to defend and use it controversially. But it is false, the fruit of man's pride and perversity. God is sovereign: the blessed resource of His nature, to vindicate His name when wronged and insulted, no less than to deliver guilty man from his own evil and Satan's power. And never was absolute law more mischievously employed than now by skeptics who avail themselves of theological errors to promote their own darker and more deadly unbelief, while scorning the source from which they derived their poisoned shaft. For they reduce God to nature, and insist on absolute law to deny miracle, prophecy, and revelation generally in any true sense, whatever the fair words in which the milder men deceive themselves and the unwary. But the idea is really heathen (and so Hooker quotes Homer, Mere. Trismegistus, Plato, and the Stoics), however much it delighted Jews and Christians, to say nothing of free-thinkers. For God is light and love, not law, and whatever He may have imposed on the creature, He left Himself entire liberty to work in sovereign grace for good; as He could not but judge what was inconsistent with His nature and majesty, and what rebelled against Him. To send His only begotten Son to die is not law, any more than through the faith of Him to save sinners that deserve condemnation. It is grace.
Hence God, as He saw fit to bring in the first covenant, which condemned the sins of the first man, or more definitely of guilty Israel, is no less free to promise a new covenant, bringing out “Jehovah righteousness” in the Messiah, the Second man, by whom He can afford to pardon and give the knowledge of Himself to His people, however undeserving. How sad that those who need to the uttermost such saving mercy, should turn a deaf ear and prefer their own foolish reasonings to His word Who cannot lie, and Who is a Savior God no less than a judge! But the Jew objects, so long alas! the leader of the world's incredulity, that it is the gospel which so proclaims; and this they believe not. Nay, son of Abraham, hear your own acknowledged and inspired prophet. It is Jeremiah that speaks, full of sorrow over Judah's apostasy from Jehovah, on which he pronounced speedy and severe judgment. But he divinely comforts by the vision of the final and everlasting restoration in His grace, people and land blessed under the true Beloved their King. He Who had unsparingly chastised them for their iniquities, He will rejoice to bless both Israel's house and Judah's house, as never of old, and will assuredly plant them in the land, then truly glorious, with His whole heart and with His whole soul. “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will perform that good thing which I have promised unto the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely; and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The LORD our righteousness. For thus saith the LORD: David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel; neither shall the priests the Levites want a man before me to offer burnt offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to do sacrifice continually. And the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD, If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season, then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne; and with the Levites the priests, my ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me. Moreover the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying, Considerest thou not what this people have spoken, saying, The two families which “the LORD hath chosen, He hath even cast them off.” Thus they have despised my people, that they should be no more a nation before them. Thus saith the LORD, If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth, then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them” (Jer. 33:14-26). From a previous chapter (31) of this very portion our epistle quotes. Its bearing on the future and still unaccomplished blessing of all Israel that shall be spared in the latter day is direct, unambiguous, tender, and beautiful. “Behold, days are coming, saith the Lord, and (or, that) I will consummate a new covenant in respect of the house of Israel, and in respect of the house of Judah, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers in [the] day of My taking their hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt; for they continued not in My covenant, and I disregarded them, saith the Lord” (Heb. 8:8-9). Equally vain is the dream that the church, or the Christian, is here contemplated. On every sound principle of interpretation the same people, and in its divided houses, is reserved for future blessing whose iniquities the prophet bewailed and denounced. The truth always suffers by tampering with its integrity or by ignorance. Israel only had the first covenant; Israel by grace will have the second. Israel lost their privileges and land under the old; Israel will be restored and blessed more than ever and forever in their land under the new covenant. Meanwhile we, once Gentiles, who had neither the adoption, nor the glory, nor the covenants, nor the law-giving, nor the promises—we are called by sovereign grace in the gospel to privileges higher far as God's children, and members of Christ's body wherein is neither Jew nor Gentile, blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ, as Israel will be blessed in their land, when this age gives way to the new age of Christ displayed in power and glory. But the death of Christ, which laid the basis for the gospel and also for the church united to Him glorified on high, is the ground of the new covenant also; as the Lord emphatically shows in the institution of His Supper (Matt. 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, 1 Cor. 11:25), and as the apostle characterizes the ministry of the gospel in spirit, not in letter. Hence the application here and in Heb. 10 is as full of comfort to the believing Hebrew, as 1 Peter 2:10 in applying Hos. 2:23. The believer now anticipates all the blessing as far as the higher calling of Christianity admits of it. The earthly part awaits the earthly people; and the days are not yet come for the chosen nation as a whole to be blessed according to the strict and full terms of the prophecy in their own land. Heaven is to us what Palestine will be to Israel, and they will be seen there under Messiah; as the Christian Jews are now to walk as pilgrims and strangers, waiting for an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, reserved in heaven for them. Israel, not we, are to be sown to Jehovah in the earth; and this not before the day when Jehovah answers the heavens, and the heavens answer the earth.