Hebrews 8:1-2 , Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 8:10-12
The New Covenant Its Promises.
I. Pardon is the last named of the promises, but it is the first bestowed. The terms of the promise indicate two things respecting the blessing it holds forth, namely, its source and its fulness. (1) Its source "I will be merciful to their unrighteousness." The source, then, of the promised pardon is the mercifulness of God. We mean, of course, its moral source, for its legal source is the atonement of Jesus Christ. (2) The fulness of mercy "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." This oblivion of transgression is a feature of the Divine pardon, much emphasized in Scripture, with a view no doubt of duly impressing men with the fact of its absolute entirety.
II. The intuitional knowledge of God assured by the better Covenant. The knowledge of God obtained through experience of His pardon is the grandest of all knowledge of Him. This is a knowledge of God that makes Him the predominant idea of the man's whole life, the supreme fact of his life, whether as regards its activities or its happiness.
III. The Divine kinship assured by the New Covenant. "God is not ashamed to be their God." He permits His people the utmost freedom in their assertion of the relationship. He holds it not in any way derogatory to His Divine dignity to be recognised as their Father. This relationship is in itself a guarantee of the fullest and most devoted service on their behalf.
IV. Observe the assurance which the better Covenant gives of a loving, childlike subjection to the Divine will. "I will put My laws in their minds, and will write them in their hearts." We see from this how completely the law of God, or the Divine will, becomes the motive power in the life of the divinely pardoned man, how wholly it assimilates his entire being, bringing it into beautiful harmony with the mind of God.
A. J. Parry, Phases of Christian Truth,p. 170.
References: Hebrews 8:2. W. M. Statham, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 1.Hebrews 8:5. P. Brooks, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiii., p. 344; Ibid.,vol. xxxiv., p. 150; A. Johnson, Ibid.,vol. xxxv., p. 356; S. Macnaughton, Real Religion and Real Life,p. 184.
The New Covenant The Superiority of Its Promises.
This superiority relates to two things the quality of the promises and their certainty.
I. The Quality of the Blessings. (1) Note the greater excellence of the Christian blessings. The Jewish religion had its pardon, or something that passed for pardon; the superiority, however, of the pardon held forth by the gospel is indicated by the expression, "And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." Contrast this statement with what is said respecting the method of dealing with sins under the Old Covenant: "But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance of sins every year." In the one case we have the forgetting of sins, in the other the remembrance of them. The ancient pardon, then, was not really such, but only a kind of reprieve annually renewed, a kind of suspension of the sentence, not the removal or abrogation of it. It was in the nature of a ticket-of-leave transaction. A convict, through good behaviour, obtains a suspension of his punishment, but he is not pardoned; for one of the conditions of his liberty is that he report himself regularly at stated times to the authorities. There was only sufficient efficacy in the Jewish sacrifices to revive the memory of sin; but the infinite sacrifice of Christ, on the contrary, is of sufficient efficacy, not only to abolish the penalty of sin, but also to obliterate the very memory of it, in the sense we have explained, from the mind of God. (2) The greater excellence of the knowledge of God, assured by the New Covenant. (3) The greater excellence of the relationship between God and His people. (4) The greater excellence of the formative principle of the New Covenant.
II. The superior certainty of the promise of the New Covenant. The utmost assurance that these promises will be fully realised in the experience of every one who accepts Christ's salvation is given us in the fact that they are called by the term covenant. The term "promise" is merged in the term "covenant." This substitution of covenant for promise indicates the element of certainty belonging to the latter. To appreciate properly the nice use of terms by our author, we must bear in mind the difference between a promise and a covenant. A promise is the bare word; a covenant is the act which ratifies that word and guarantees its due performance. It is implied, then, by this designation "covenant," applied to the promises, that they are accompanied by guarantees for their due fulfilment. The promises of the gospel rest upon the atonement of Christ The grand and mighty act of sacrifice is the sure foundation whereon rest the Divine promises enumerated in the text.
A. J. Parry, Phases of Christian Truth,p. 184.