On the New Covenant (Part 1)

by on July 18, 2025

Arguably two of the issues that separate confessional Reformed folk from their Baptist friends are the Sabbath and baptism. For many Baptists (but not all—there are confessional Baptists who agree with the Reformed on the Sabbath) it is a given that the Sabbath was entirely Mosaic and any Sabbath observance expired with the fulfillment of the Mosaic covenant. To the best of my knowledge, Baptists hold that infant initiation belonged to the old covenant and expired with it. Under the new covenant, because of the nature of the new covenant, there could be no infant initiation. The prevailing Baptist view of the Sabbath and baptism are symptoms of a deeper disagreement. The real, underlying issue here is the nature of the new covenant. Let us then define our terms.

A Caveat About “Baptists”

Broadly there are two kinds of Baptists in the world: confessional and non-confessional. Confessional Baptists—for example, those who hold the First (1644) or Second London Baptist Confession (1689), or the Philadelphia Baptist Confession (1742)—tend to identify more closely with historic Reformed theology and thus tend to agree with the Reformed about the Sabbath and other ethical matters. Some confessional Baptists read the history of redemption much like the Reformed in several respects. Nevertheless, on the matter of the nature of the new covenant and its relations to Abraham and to Moses, there remain significant differences, and thus Reformed and confessional Baptists continue to come to significantly different conclusions about the nature of baptism and its administration.

About the Sabbath and Baptism

A critical reader might wonder if the point of this series has been to vindicate the Reformed confessional view of baptism and the Sabbath. That would be a misunderstanding of the nature of the relations between baptism, the Sabbath, and Reformed theology. The latter is not built on the former. Rather, the Reformed view of Baptism and the Sabbath grow out of a hermeneutic, a way of understanding redemptive history, and a view of the church. This series is not an attempt to convince anyone about the Sabbath or baptism. The intent of the series is to describe and demonstrate briefly and in broad strokes how Reformed theology looks at the new covenant and thereby to illustrate the differences between the Baptist view(s) of the new covenant, covenant theology generally, and Reformed theology. If one adopts a Reformed view of redemptive history as outlined here, one will likely also adopt the Reformed view of the Sabbath and of baptism.

The major thesis of this essay is that the new covenant is essentially a new administration of the Abrahamic covenant.

The New Covenant in Jeremiah 31

The expression “new covenant” occurs first in Scripture in Jeremiah 31:31. Yahweh says, “Behold the days come when I will cut a new covenant (berith chadasha) with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”1The new covenant will not be like “the covenant that I cut with their forefathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke” (v. 32; emphasis added). Jeremiah makes an explicit distinction between the coming new covenant and a very specific complex of redemptive-historical events: the Exodus culminating with the Mosaic covenant that Yahweh made at Sinai. The new covenant is contrasted with the Mosaic covenant, which verse 32 qualifies as a covenant that was broken. There is another contrast implicit here between the Mosaic, Sinaitic covenant that was broken and the new covenant that cannot be broken. Already, in Jeremiah 31, there is a new covenant coming and, implicitly, an old covenant; and that old covenant is associated with the constitution of national Israel and with Moses. Jeremiah continues to qualify the differences between the old and new covenants. Under the new covenant Yahweh says, “I will put my law within them,” that is, “I will write it on their hearts.” Yahweh says, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (v. 33). Under the new covenant, there will be no need for one to say to another, “Know Yahweh,” because everyone will already know him. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (v. 34).

If we consider the nature of the new covenant as promised through Jeremiah, we can see, however, that it is not absolutely “new” at all. Long before Jeremiah, long before Moses, God had promised to Abraham to be a “God to you and to your children” (Gen 17:7).

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

Scripture repeats the same promise under the Mosaic covenant: “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God” (Exod 6:7). That promise recurs in Jeremiah before the promise of the new covenant (Jer 7:23; 11:4; 30:22). This is perhaps the most fundamental promise of the covenant. It was this sort of language that caused some older Reformed writers (e.g., Johannes Cocceius) to define the covenant as “friendship with God.” Of course, before the fall, that friendship was premised upon Adam’s obedience for us. After the fall, that friendship is premised upon the obedience of Christ the Last Adam in place of his elect (Rom 5; 1 Cor 15).

Thus, whatever is new about the new covenant, new cannot mean “never happened before” or “never before promised,” or “a relationship with God” or “a spiritual state” that has never existed before in redemptive history. Yahweh was a God to Abraham and to his children for most of five hundred years before Moses. The promises of the Abrahamic covenant, which had already been expressed relative to the land and a national people (see Genesis chapters 12 and 15; there are national and land promises in chapter 17 also), came to expression in a temporary national covenant inaugurated at Sinai. That national covenant, however, does not exhaust the covenant promises of God. The apostle Paul says (Gal 3; see below) that the national, Israelite, Sinaitic covenant—the Mosaic covenant—was a temporary addition, a codicil, added to the Abrahamic promises. That temporary national covenant expired with the death of Christ (see also all of Colossians and Hebrews).

The other thing to be noted is that the promises of Jeremiah 31 are cast in Mosaic, typological, and prophetic categories. We need to read it the same way we read prophetic literature generally. The old covenant prophets were writing to God’s national covenant people. Promises that looked forward to his saving acts and words in history, chiefly in the incarnation of God the Son, were cast in Mosaic terms. Failure to recognize this fact lies behind much confusion in biblical interpretation and biblical theology. For one thing, it has caused many Christians to look forward to a re-establishment of the old, Mosaic covenant in history, after the incarnation of the Christ, complete with temple and sacrificial system. Such an expectation, of course, is flatly contrary to the explicit teaching of the New Testament (Eph 2). In Christ the dividing wall has been broken down. In Christ there is no Jew or gentile (Gal 3).

The contrast, then, in Jeremiah 31 is not between Abraham and the new covenant but between Moses and the new covenant. The novelty or newness of the new covenant is measured relative to Moses, relative to the national covenant made with Israel at Sinai, and not with Abraham and the covenant promise God gave to him: “I will be a God to you and to your children.” That promise remains intact. The promise is not Mosaic. It is not old. It is Abrahamic.

Thus far we have begun to arrive at a definition of “new covenant” in light of its use in Jeremiah 31:31. According to the prophet, the essence of the promise is, in fact, not absolutely new: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” In Jeremiah, the new covenant is contrasted not with everything that occurred prior to Christ’s incarnation; rather, the new covenant is contrasted with the Mosaic, Sinaitic covenant. The new covenant is said to be new relative to Moses, not Abraham or Noah. The great features of the new covenant, according to Jeremiah 31, are:

  • An Immutable Covenant
  • An Interior Piety
  • An Immediate Knowledge
  • An Iniquity Forgiven

“Old Covenant” and “New Covenant” in the New Testament

All of these features, however, were part and parcel of the covenant of grace God promised to Abraham and they are promised throughout the history of redemption to those who believe. Further, we observed that this passage must be understood in its literary context. In other words, Jeremiah 31 is a restatement, in prophetic idiom, of the essential benefits of the covenant of grace made with Abraham. One finds these benefits promised in Ezekiel (36:28; 39:29) and perhaps most notably in Joel 2:28.

The expressions “old covenant” (2 Cor 3:14) and “new covenant” occur just a few times in the New Testament, but often enough and with sufficient context for us to be able to determine the intended sense. The New Testament writers pick up the expression “new covenant” from Jeremiah 31, which, in the LXX (i.e., the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures) is expressed as a new covenant. Our Lord uses the expression “new covenant” as part of the institution of holy communion (Luke 22:20). The apostle Paul re-states the connection between Christ’s death, the holy Supper, and the new covenant in 1 Corinthians 11:25 invoking the same essential elements. There he certainly means to invoke the Ancient Near Eastern covenant-treaty making pattern. The new covenant is not in the blood of bulls and goats but in his own blood. He is to become, for us, the ritual sacrifice, God’s pledge of fidelity, and more than that, he will suffer the wrath of our covenant breaking even as he keeps covenant and fulfills God’s covenant promise to be our God. The new covenant is the realization of the promises that had hitherto been expressed typologically and prophetically, but the new covenant is not utterly new insofar as it is made through death and the shedding of blood and the propitiation of wrath. These are ancient biblical themes that antedate the “new covenant” by thousands of years.

In the next part of our series, we will explore the texts that express what Scripture means by the new covenant.

Note

  1. Translation mine.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here. 

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    Post authored by:

  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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