Jesus: Mediator of the New Covenant

The Bible details several covenants that God made with His followers. The high point in the book of Jeremiah is when God announces His “new” covenant with His people.

“Behold, days are coming,” declares YEHOVAH, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke…this is the covenant which I will make…I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people….I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

A “new” covenant was needed because the original covenant had been broken. Samuel warned, “If one man sins against another, God will mediate for him; but if a man sins against YEHOVAH, who can intercede for him?” (1 Samuel 2:25) No one prior to Jesus. Paul announces, “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5).

Only Jesus could mediate between God and men because He was simultaneously fully God and fully man. No human can argue with God, “For God is not a man as I am that I may answer Him, that we may go to court together. There is no umpire between us” (Job 9:32-33). Jesus being fully God can mediate for us with our heavenly Father.

He became fully man so He could pay the penalty for our sins, the sins that broke the original covenant. “Therefore, Jesus had to be made like His brethren in all things… to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” (Hebrews 2:17). “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10).

Note that in the new covenant there is no need for ongoing sacrifices as there was in the original covenant. Each year on the day of atonement (Yom Kippur, Leviticus 16:1-34) sins were forgiven in the original covenant through the sacrifice of animals. The new covenant has no requirement for ongoing sacrifices. Jesus mediated the new covenant on our behalf so that His one-time death on the cross would provide for the sins for all me at all times. “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

“For this reason, He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance” (Hebrews 9:15).

The new covenant provides for our salvation.