3. This new covenant was to be, so the tremendous promise runs on, a spiritual one, an experimental and universal knowledge of God, a covenant of pardon, complete and sure. Jeremiah was allowed to see the covenant only as Moses saw the promised land from Pisgah. He never saw it realized, but he knew that every promise of God is an oath and a covenant. For he had learnt in the shocks and changes of his life the unfailing pity of Him with whom he had been privileged to have fellowship and to hold " dialogues." The old agreement was, "If ye will obey my voice and do my commandments, then " — so and so will happen. The old condition was, " Do and live ; be righteous and blessed ! " The new condition is, " Take and have ; believe and live ! " The one was law, the other is gift ; the one was retribution, the other is forgive- ness. One was outward, hard, rigid law, fitly " graven with a pen of iron on the rocks for ever " ; the other is impulse, love, a power bestowed that will make us obedient ; and the sole condition that we have to render is the condition of humble and believing accept- ance of the Divine gift. The new covenant, in the exuberant fulness of its mercy, and in the tenderness of its gracious purposes, is at once the completion and the antithesis of the ancient covenant with its precepts and its retribution.
This glad era was ushered in by the Lord Jesus Christ, " the mediator of a better covenant, which hath been enacted upon better promises"; and, since it was necessary that a covenant should be ratified by a sacrifice, He, the true Paschal Lamb, at once Victim and Priest, sealed the new covenant with His own precious blood. Thus it was that He interpreted His Death in the Upper Room. " He took a cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sins."
1 A. Maclaren.
ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 28 425
T[ The covenant is explicitly declared to be founded on Christ's expiatory death, and to be received by the partaking of His body and blood. This importance of the person and work of Jesus, both for the inauguration and the reception of the covenant, agrees with the view that the covenant designates the present, provisional blessedness of believers, for this stage is specifically controlled and determined by the activity of Christ, so that St. Paul calls it the Kingdom of Christ in distinction from the Kingdom of God, which is the final state. The Covenant idea shares with the ideas of the Church this reference to the present earthly form of possession of the Messianic blessings, and this dependence on the person and work of the Messiah (cf. Matt. xvi. 18, xviii. 17). The difference is that in the conception of the Church, the organization of believers into one body outwardly, as well as their spiritual union inwardly, and the communication of a higher life through the Spirit stand in the foreground, neither of which is reflected upon in the idea of the Covenant. The Covenant stands for that central, Godward aspect of the state of salvation, in which it means the atone- ment of sin and the full enjoyment of fellowship with God through the appropriation of this atonement in Christ.1
II.
The Sealing Blood.
1. Christ regards His own blood as the seal and confirmation of the covenant. Covenants were ratified in different ways; sometimes, for instance, the contracting parties were held to be bound by eating salt together ; sometimes by partaking together of a sacrificial meal ; sometimes by passing between the divided pieces of slaughtered animals ; and especially by the use, still prevalent in many parts of the world, of blood, as by each of the parties tasting each other's blood, or smearing himself with it, or letting it be mingled with his own, etc., or by both jointly dipping their hands in the blood of the slaughtered animal. The idea, therefore, of a covenant in blood would not appear strange and new to the Apostles, or occur to them as repugnant, as it does to the minds of men of the Western modern civilization. To us, however far from the ideal we fall, and whatever compromises
1 Geerhardus Vos, in Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i. 380.
426 THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT
we adopt, we know our word ought to be our bond, our " yea " yea, and our " nay " nay. We have our stamped contracts because the ideal is still beyond the powers of human nature at large. But in the early days the shedding of blood was a form of ratification which no other emphasis could equaL It united, it "at-one-d," the parties concerned with a firmness which no verbal agreement could accomplish.
Jeremiah's reference to Sinai bids us turn to that wonderful scene where the high mountains formed the pillars and walls of a natural temple, and where the first covenant was ratified with abundance of sacrificial blood. Moses, we are told, read the Book of the Covenant in the ears of the people ; and, taking the blood, sprinkled half of it upon the altar with the twelve pillars and half upon the people. The law was thus given with a covenant of blood. God thus bound the nation to Himself. He had offered great blessings if the people would keep the words of His law ; His people had responded: "All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do."