The Claim
Most churches teach that the Law of Moses and the Old Covenant are the same thing. When Yahushua brought the New Covenant, the Old Covenant ended, and the Law ended with it. Hebrews says the first covenant is “ready to vanish away.” Paul calls the old covenant a ministration of death written on stone and says the letter kills. Believers today live under a new covenant with new terms: love, belief, and the Spirit, not the commandments given at Sinai.
The argument is clear and it has a real starting point. Scripture does speak of a new covenant, and it does speak of an old one passing. The question is what exactly passed.
The Short Version
- A covenant is an agreement between parties. The terms are what the parties agree to. They are not the same thing.
- Jeremiah, who first announced the new covenant, named its terms: “I will put my law in their inward parts.” The same law.
- The fault in the first covenant was found in the people, not in the terms.
- What changed was the mediator, the blood, and where the law is written. What was written did not change.
What a Covenant Is
The Hebrew word is berit (H1285). The Greek is diatheke (G1242). Both describe a binding agreement between two parties, sealed by an oath or by blood. A covenant has parties, terms, a seal, and consequences for keeping or breaking it.
Sinai shows every part. Moses read the terms aloud, the people agreed to them, and then the agreement was sealed with blood:
And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that Yahuah hath said will we do, and be obedient.
— Exodus 24:7
And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which Yahuah hath made with you concerning all these words.
— Exodus 24:8
“Concerning all these words.” The covenant was made concerning the words. The words were what the covenant was about. The two belong together, but they are not the same thing. One is the agreement. The other is its content.
Where the Fault Was Found
If the first covenant failed, something in it was at fault. Scripture names what:
For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith Yahuah, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
— Hebrews 8:8
With them. The fault was in the people. At Sinai they promised, “All that Yahuah hath said will we do.” They did not do it. The terms were holy and good. The hearts that agreed to them were not changed.
A marriage broken by unfaithfulness shows the pattern. When such a marriage is restored, the vows are not rewritten to permit adultery. The same vows are spoken again, and this time the heart behind them is new. Yahuah used exactly that picture: He was a husband to Israel, and Israel broke the covenant (Jeremiah 31:32).
Jeremiah Named the New Covenant’s Terms
The new covenant was not announced first in the apostles’ writings. It was announced by Jeremiah, six centuries before the tree, and he said exactly what would be in it:
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith Yahuah, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their Elohim, and they shall be my people.
— Jeremiah 31:33
My law. The Hebrew word is torah, the same word used for the instruction given at Sinai. Jeremiah does not say Yahuah will write a new law. He says He will write His law, and He says where: in the inward parts, on the heart.
This is the single most important verse in the whole question, and it settles it by itself. The new covenant’s defining promise is not the removal of the Torah. It is the Torah moved inside.
The Torah Was Always Meant for the Heart
Even this was not a new idea. Moses told Israel from the start where the words belonged: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6). And again: “But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it” (Deuteronomy 30:14). The new covenant does what the Torah always asked for. It puts the commandment where Moses said it should be.
New or Renewed
The Hebrew word for new in “new covenant” is chadash (H2319). It comes from a verb, chadash (H2318), that means to renew or restore: “renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10); “renew our days as of old” (Lamentations 5:21). It is the same root as chodesh, the renewed moon that begins each month.
Honesty requires a limit here. Chadash can also simply mean new, as in “a new king over Egypt” (Exodus 1:8). The word alone does not decide whether the covenant is brand new or renewed. Jeremiah 31:33 decides it: whatever is new about the covenant, its law is the same law.
A Confirmed Covenant Is Not Edited
Paul states a rule about covenants that applies to every one of them:
Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.
— Galatians 3:15
Two verses later he applies it: the law that came 430 years after the promise to Abraham could not cancel that promise (Galatians 3:17). A later covenant does not erase what an earlier one confirmed. Covenants in Scripture build on one another. Noah, Abraham, Sinai, David: each adds, none cancels. Yahuah says of His covenant, “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips” (Psalm 89:34).
What Did Change
Naming the real changes keeps the case from being overstated, and there are real changes.
- The mediator changed. At Sinai it was Moses. Now there is “one mediator between Elohim and men, the man Messiah Yahushua” (1 Timothy 2:5). One Elohim, and one man standing between Him and mankind: two, and Scripture keeps them distinct.
- The blood changed. Moses sprinkled the blood of animals. Yahushua said of the cup, “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28).
- The place of writing changed. The first terms were cut into stone. The same terms are written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33).
- The promise of forgiveness was sealed. “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
- The terms did not change. No passage lists a single commandment removed from the new covenant, and Jeremiah lists the law as its content.
What actually ended with the first covenant’s earthly service, the priesthood and the offerings, is set out in F-06.
The Verdict
The modern teaching joins two things that Scripture keeps apart: the covenant and its terms. Once they are joined, the passing of the old agreement seems to take the commandments with it. Once they are separated, the passages say what they actually say. The agreement was renewed with a new mediator and new blood. The terms were moved from stone to the heart.
Every passage that rests on this foundation is answered one at a time in its own testimony. Each one can be met with the same question: does the verse speak of the agreement, or of its terms?
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
— Romans 3:31
The new covenant is the law established in the place it was always meant to live.