A New Covenant with the House of Israel

Q: “Pastor, what do we do with the reality that the New Covenant (NC) you keep talking about was promised to ‘the house of Israel’ and ‘the house of Judah’ in Jeremiah 31:31, and not the Gentile church? How can you say it applies to us when it refers to the house of Israel”?

Let me answer that question with ten points over the next four weeks. We will break this up over the month of January, tackling a few points each week. We will start with Christ, move to the apostles, and end with Christ. Berean, this matters because it clarifies our identity and unity as a church, as well as the basis for our confidence in God’s promises.

So, let’s get started on our January journey.

1. Jesus Himself established the NC at the first Lord’s Supper with eleven Jews—not Gentiles. These were the apostles of the Church, not ethnic, national, territorial (ENT) Israel. When Jeremiah prophesied about the NC, it was a future event. When Christ rose from the dead, the NC became a present-tense reality. Jesus did not say, “This will be.” He said, “This cup that is poured [present-tense verb] out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Some suggest the church receives the blessings of the covenant without being in the covenant, but that is contrary to everything we know about covenants in the OT. No covenant in Scripture ever distributes its blessings to those who are not covenant participants. One must be in the covenant to inherit what the covenant promises.
2. In Acts 2, where we see the church being formed in all its glory, it is comprised of people from the house of Israel and Judah. Read v. 5: “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.” Jews. Let that sink in. And on that day, 3,000 Jews were added to the church. In v. 36, Peter addresses the assembly as the “house of Israel.” Then, in v. 38, he connects baptism in the name of Jesus Christ to the forgiveness of sins.

Only in the New Covenant that Christ inaugurated with His own blood can Peter offer forgiveness to the very ones who crucified their Messiah. Joel 2 says nothing of forgiveness. In Acts 6:7, “A great many of the [Jewish] priests became obedient to the faith.” Gentiles are not included in the church until the events of Acts 10. In chapter 11, the apostles rejoice that God is granting repentance to Gentiles. Prior to that, He had been saving Jews in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.

3. Lest there be any doubt concerning how Jewish the early church is in Acts, read chapter 15. Circumcision is still such a norm that Gentiles are expected to be circumcised according to the law of Moses. But much more than that, look at Acts 15:15–18 (a quote from Amos 9). In v. 14, James says Yahweh visited the Gentiles to take for himself a people, and then, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, James says, “with this the words of the prophets agree.” That is an example of how the NT tells us how to read the prophets. James does not say the prophets describe these events; he says the prophetic word agrees with what is happening. James links the present rebuilding of “David’s fallen tent” to the growth of the Jewish-Gentile church. According to James, the OT prophecy in Amos is being fulfilled—not postponed.
4. In Romans 1:16, Paul states that the gospel was for “the Jew first and also the Greek.” Fourteen times in Romans, Paul addresses Jews. In Romans 2, he describes inward and outward Jews. In 9:6, he says that “…not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.” In Romans 11, Paul describes the inclusion of Gentiles into the Israel of God using the illustration of a cultivated olive tree and a wild olive tree. Paul says natural branches (Jews) are broken off, and wild branches (Gentiles) are grafted into the cultivated olive tree. There are not two trees, but one, as Gentiles are grafted into the Jewish tree. In Romans 15:7–13, there are enough ethnic Jews in the church struggling with the presence of Gentiles that Paul tells them to “welcome” the Gentiles, as this is a fulfillment of OT prophecies.
5. To the believers at Corinth, Paul writes a letter, applying to the Church all that Christ said about the New Covenant at its inauguration during the final Passover meal. The Lord’s Supper is the meal foreshadowed in Jeremiah 31, and the church at Corinth celebrated it. In Paul’s second letter to the same church, he tells Jewish and Gentile believers in the church at Corinth that they are “ministers of the New Covenant” (2Co 3:6). If Paul calls a Gentile-heavy church “ministers of the New Covenant,” then the debate is over.
6. In Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia (1:2), he writes to confront the issue of Jewish Christians in local churches putting pressure on Gentile converts to obey the law of Moses, especially in physical circumcision. The point is that the church is so ethnically integrated that Paul must write, “There is neither Jew nor Greek [Gentile]…” (3:28). In 4:24, he describes two covenants. If the New Covenant is not a spiritual reality at this point, why is Paul referring to two covenants?

Certainly, no one would dare suggest that the same Paul who writes about the NC in 1 and 2 Corinthians is now juxtaposing the Mosaic covenant with any other covenant except the New. That would be absurdly confusing. Just when you think Paul will reference Sarah as our mother, since Abraham is our father, he instead refers to the “Jerusalem above” as our mother. But that makes sense since the spiritual birth from above brings one into the New Covenant.

Finally, Paul wraps up the letter to the Galatians, as he writes, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God” (Gal 6:15-16). It is the NC that makes it possible for one to be a new creation, and all who are new creations in Christ are in the Israel of God. Any other interpretation would suggest that Paul is resurrecting the Jew-Gentile division he just negated in verse 15.

7. In Ephesians 3:6, Paul describes Gentiles as co-heirs: “This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs [with Jewish Christians], members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” Gentile Christians are co-heirs with Jewish Christians. Again, I am reiterating a point I previously made: We must all stop thinking of the early church as a Gentile entity. In the NT, it is a Jewish church incorporating Gentiles, one convert at a time. Notice Paul says “the promise” in v. 6. If you are in the OT looking for promises to the church, you will not find any. Period. Paul says the promises belong to the Israelites (Rom 9:4). That is why I am a fellow heir—because to them (the Jews) belong the promises.
8. “Watch out for the dogs!” Yes, you read that right. In Philippians 3:2, Paul tells the church at Philippi to “watch out for those who mutilate the flesh.” Jews hated dogs (often associated with Gentiles), but Paul flips that and calls the Jews who are insisting on physical circumcision dogs. Then, in verse 3, Paul applies circumcision to the church: “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.” Circumcision is covenant language in the OT, marking covenant identity and covenant membership. Paul does not treat it as a metaphor here; he relocates the covenant marker itself. He applies that covenant language to Jews and Gentile Christians because they are in the New Covenant. This is why Paul calls them the true Jews (Rom 2:29)—those whose hearts have undergone the Spirit-wrought circumcision promised in the prophets—and why they alone can now worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24).
9. In Hebrews 8, the author writes, “…we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven…” (Heb 8:1). Then, in v. 6, he writes, “But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant He mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.” It says, “has obtained,” not “will obtain.” We do not have to wonder what this better covenant is with better promises—he tells us. Hebrews 8:8–12 is the single longest direct quotation from the OT anywhere in the NT, and it is a quote from Jeremiah 31:31–34. No NT writer ever says, Jeremiah 31 will be fulfilled in the future.

In Hebrews 8:13, the author states that the old covenant is obsolete because the new one is in effect. Next, in 9:15 and 12:24, we read that Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant. Don’t miss this point. The verses do not say He will be in the future when Yahweh restores the nation of Israel. In the book titled Hebrews—which is written to Jewish Christians—Jesus is their mediator, and they are in the NC. This is why Gentile believers are co-heirs with the Hebrews. Whether Yahweh restores the nation of Israel is a different issue.

The issue is simple: how should we understand “the house of Israel and the house of Jacob” in Jeremiah 31? We don’t need Jeremiah to explain “the house of Israel” for us. The NT has done that already. Are we supposed to ignore all the new information in the NT as we work through this? Do we ignore Jesus, Peter, James, Paul, and the writer of Hebrews? Absolutely not. The NT writers are Holy Spirit-inspired interpreters of the OT. Paul tells us that not all of Israel is Israel (Rom 9:6). There is ethnic Israel and an Israel in a New Covenant relationship with Yahweh—a spiritual Israel (Rom 2:28-29). The New Covenant was established with the house of spiritual Israel, which is full of the sons and daughters of Abraham’s faith, both Jews and Gentiles (Gal 3). It does not matter whether Jeremiah understood that or not.

10. We started with Jesus; let’s end with Jesus. In John 10:16, Jesus describes Himself as the greater Son of David, fulfilling the “shepherd” promises in Ezekiel 34:23 and 37:24 that were given to the nation of Israel. The fulfillment is not postponed; the Shepherd-King is standing in front of them. King Jesus says He has “other sheep that are not from this sheep pen [and He] must bring them also, and they will listen to [His] voice. Then there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16, CSB). The “sheep pen” is the renewed house of Israel gathered around the Messiah, full of Jewish believers who hear His voice. The “other sheep” are the Gentiles who will come to saving faith in Christ. And notice the timing—Jesus does not speak of this as a future mission. Under one new and everlasting covenant of peace, Jesus has created one people of God, for whom He is their Shepherd-King, to the glory of God the Father.

Finally, nothing I have written negates the future salvation of ethnic Jews. Nor does any of this directly impact our understanding of the millennial kingdom in Revelation 20. I am writing to encourage the entire church to be unified in the understanding that the NC is for us. We are not ignoring Scripture to make it say what it doesn’t. The New Covenant was always meant to gather one people of God—Jew and Gentile together under the reign of Christ. We are being Bereans