Hebrews 8:13 Is the Old Covenant Obsolete?
July 18, 2020 - Pastor Jacob Kanda
Hebrews 8:13 “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”
What is the old covenant?
The Old Covenant was a conditional or bilateral agreement that God made with the Israelites. In the Old Covenant, the Israelites were required to obey God and keep the Law, and in return He protected and blessed them (Deuteronomy 30:15–18; 1 Samuel 12:14–15). It is “old” in comparison to the New Covenant, promised by Jeremiah the prophet (Jeremiah 31:31, 33) and made effective by the death of the Lord Jesus (Luke 22:20).
So in the “New” covenant Jesus makes the first one obsolete. The word obsolete in Greek (#4160) is palaioo which means to make old. Palaioo is used here in the “active voice.”
The author of Hebrews details some of the differences between the Old Covenant and the New. The Old Covenant required repeated, daily sacrifices of animals as a reminder of the people’s sin. But “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). Under the New Covenant, “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (verse 10), ending the need for animal sacrifices. “Where [sins and lawless acts] have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary” (Hebrews 10:18).
Having finished the quotation from Jeremiah 31, the author of Hebrews made a summary comment on that passage. He was looking at this quotation from the standpoint of the period from Jeremiah to the New Testament. The quotation of Jeremiah 31:31–34 is the longest quote in the New Testament, yet Hebrews gives a short commentary of it in this verse. The focus in this verse is on the word “new.” It is new in the sense that Christ shed His blood once (He 9:12, 14; 10:19, 29; 12:24; 13:12, 20). Thus, the purpose of the quotation is theological to show the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice over the sacrifices of the Old Testament.
The word “new” in Greek means new in quality, not new in time. The dynamics of this quality is that there will be another covenant of a different character than the Mosaic Covenant. This covenant was of a different nature than the Mosaic Covenant; it will never fade or grow old and is eternal in nature (He 5:9; 9:12).
The Old Covenant was “becoming obsolete” at the writing of Jeremiah. It must have been a shock to the Jewish readers of Hebrews that the Mosaic Covenant was temporary and would be terminated. The author made no attempt to show that believers today replace Israel in God’s economy. The implication, however, is that the old economy of Moses is not binding on believers in the church age.
The Old Covenant of Moses would soon stop its Levitical ceremonies (Mt 24:1–2), shortly after the writing of Hebrews. God did not intend the Old and the New Covenants to coexist; the New Covenant replaced the first.
What the Old Covenant had to do repeatedly and could never complete, Jesus did once and for all. His death was the necessary basis for the establishment of the New Covenant. He brought in better promises than Israel had ever had in Judaism.
The New Covenant prophesied in Jeremiah was made with Israel, ratified at the cross, and implemented to replace the Mosaic Covenant. Presently, it is the basis on which we relate to and fellowship with God. The church was not a formal partner of the New Covenant but participates in its blessings with Israel. The church, therefore, does not fulfill the New Covenant. That will happen when Israel as a nation returns to God at the end of the Tribulation.
In the New Covenant, things change and God becomes the proactive and unconditional source of salvation and blessing. In the New Covenant, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).