Italicized sections are my commentary.
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Thus says the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day, The ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, Who disturbs the sea, And its waves roar (The Lord of hosts is His name): “If those ordinances depart From before Me, says the Lord, Then the seed of Israel shall also cease From being a nation before Me forever.”
Thus says the Lord: “If heaven above can be measured, And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel For all that they have done, says the Lord.
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that the city shall be built for the Lord from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. The surveyor’s line shall again extend straight forward over the hill Gareb; then it shall turn toward Goath. And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the Brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be holy to the Lord. It shall not be plucked up or thrown down anymore forever.”
- Jeremiah 31:31-40
I include this passage because it talks about covenants, and marriage is a covenant between two or more parties. God had made a marriage covenant with His people, Israel, and here God is speaking to the southern kingdom of Judah through the prophet Jeremiah. He said that though He was a husband to their fathers, He was going to make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah because their fathers had broken the covenant. God had a marriage covenant with the descendants of the people He led out of Egypt, but they had continuously committed adultery against Him by fornicating with false gods. He said that Israel was a harlot because of her adultery and unfaithfulness to Him.
Because the fathers of Israel had broken the covenant, God said that He was going to make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah in the future (future from Jeremiah's time). In this covenant, God’s word would be written upon their hearts and in their minds, and they would be His people, and He would be their God. He said that He would forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.
As was the old covenant, the new covenant is conditional. The condition of the new covenant was that if the ordinances in which He gives of the sun giving light by day, the moon and the stars for a light by night, and the sea and its roaring waves depart, then the seed of Israel would cease from being a nation forever. And if the heavens can be measured and the foundation of the earth searched out beneath, then He will cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done.
The conditions of the old covenant required the kingdom of Israel to be faithful to God , but basically, the conditions of the new covenant are impossible for the "seed of Israel" to break because the conditions are all dependent upon God.
The new covenant is with the faithful remnant of Israel, the ekklesia (aka: assembly/congregation), which is comprised of born again followers of Jesus of all ethnicities, nations, tribes, and kingdoms. The ekklessia is both whom God has chosen to continue the work of building His kingdom which Jesus and the apostles began, and it is the kingdom of God. The ekklesia is comprised of disciples of Jesus who go and make disciples. As the new disciples enter the ekklessia, it grows like yeast spreading throughout the entire batch of dough. Jesus said that is what would happen with the kingdom of God.
Together with one another, the ekklessia will conquer evil upon the earth by justice and righteousness in preparation for the coming King who will reign over God's kingdom of people who have inherited it.
God has written His law upon the hearts and minds of the ekklesia through rebirth. He has forgiven them of their iniquity and remembers their sin no more through Jesus's sacrificial death and His resurrection. They are His people and He is their God. They belong to Him and He belongs to them, just as a wife belongs to her husband and a husband belongs to his wife. The ekklesia is the bride and Christ is the Bridegroom in a marriage covenant with one another. They are building a holy "city" for the Lord which is the kingdom of God.
In order for God to have instituted a new covenant with a people other than the kingdom of Israel, the old covenant would have had to have been abolished first, because both covenants are marriage covenants. If God had two marriage covenants with two different peoples, then He would be living in polygamy and adultery, and breaking His own commands and covenant. He would be an untrustworthy and unfaithful liar with no integrity and His character and word would be meaningless. He would not be holy. Everything about His character would be tarnished.
However, we know that this is not God's character because He gave the northern kingdom of Israel a certificate of divorce because of her adultery against Him, and He said that Judah was even worse than Israel because they watched God remove Israel from His sight for their unfaithfulness to Him, yet they continued to play the harlot. God spoke to the prophet Jeremiah regarding Israel and Judah:
The Lord said also to me in the days of Josiah the king: “Have you seen what backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there played the harlot. And I said, after she had done all these things, ‘Return to Me.’ But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also.
- Jeremiah 3:6-8
Even though Judah had committed adultery against God, it seems that He continued to remain with her, at least until Jesus finally cut them off:
“If you will return, O Israel,” says the Lord, “Return to Me; And if you will put away your abominations out of My sight, Then you shall not be moved."
- Jeremiah 4:1
Under the law that God gave to Israel, a man was unable to take his wife back after giving her a certificate of divorce, otherwise it would be an abomination to Him and it would bring sin upon the land which they were inheriting. For that reason, God would not have been able to take the northern kingdom back as His wife without breaking His own law. Also, God would not have been able to call the southern kingdom of Judah to return to Him if He had given her a certificate of divorce, therefore it seems that He did not do so at that time. The fact that God remained with Judah for as long as He did despite her unfaithfulness to Him reveals how patient and faithful God is.
“When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, when she has departed from his house, and goes and becomes another man’s wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.
- Deuteronomy 24:1-4
We also know that God abolished the old covenant and replaced it with a better one as Hebrews says:
But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, He says:
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
- Hebrews 8:6-13
Jesus also said that the kingdom of God was going to be taken away from the kingdom of Israel because they killed God's servants and Son whom He sent to them and because they were not bearing the fruit of justice, mercy and love which the land He leased to them produced.
“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.
- Matthew 21:43
At the time of Jesus saying this, the kingdom of Israel, which God had established to set apart as His kingdom of people to witness who He was to the surrounding nations, had become a religion with a list of do's and don'ts that were required to be followed in order to be a part of it. They had implemented hundreds of rules and ordinances which God had never commanded of them and which they used to oppress the people. The Jewish religion that Israel had instituted contained only bits and pieces of what God had intended, and God never intended for His kingdom of people to institute a religion, or for His people to consist only of Hebrew ethnicity. The religion is called Judaism and the people are called Jewish, or Jews, which is derived from "Judaism". Jesus challenged Judaism because it was not at all what God intended, and its leaders eventually killed Him for it.
Throughout their history, Israel had ignored God's commands, committed idolatry and persecuted God's prophets.
When Jesus came on the scene, they rejected that He was God's Son and their Messiah, and they immediately conspired to kill Him. They were eventually successful, but only because it was God's plan to fulfill His purpose.
When Jesus was crucified, it set the wheels in motion for God's kingdom to come. He had said, "the kingdom of God is near", and so it was. Through His ministry, He had begun the establishment of God's kingdom and had prepared disciples to continue the work when He was gone. Their work was to build God’s kingdom by making disciples who would enter into it and who would make more disciples who would also enter into it, in order to multiply disciples for the purpose of growing God's kingdom in preparation for the return of the King.
The Bible calls this kingdom of people the ekklesia (assembly/congregation). The kingdom of Israel were also called the ekklesia, so the ekklesia was not new, but had always been the assembly of people who belong to God. It had begun as a mixed multitude of people from various ethnicities when God brought them out of Egypt. The only requirement to be a part of the assembly was circumcision.
Not all people within the assembly were faithful to God, in fact very few were. Those who were, were the faithful remnant of Israel. They did not partake in the idolatry and other sins of the people, but remained faithful to God even when the rest of the kingdom was not. We see evidence of the faithful remnant of Israel throughout the Bible - Moses, Joshua, Caleb, Deborah, Samuel, David, Ruth, Hezekiah, Josiah, Elijah, Elisha, the prophets, Anna, Simeon, and Jesus's twelve disciples, to name some.
Jesus chose twelve Jewish men of the remnant of Israel to take their witness of Jesus and teachings of Jesus's commands to the lost sheep of Israel. These twelve were His apostles. Many believed their testimony about Jesus and became followers of Jesus, however many did not and they rejected Him. Many of His followers left Him and stopped following Him when He said that He was the Bread of Life who had come down from heaven. Because of their rejection of Him by the lost sheep of Israel, Jesus cursed them by casting woes upon them and said that the kingdom was going to be taken from them and given to a nation bearing its fruits.
After Jesus was crucified by the Jews and resurrected, the apostles, who were witnesses of Jesus's life, death, resurrection and ascension to heaven, took His testimony throughout various parts of the world before their deaths, both personally and by the disciples that they made.
News of Jesus's death and resurrection spread rapidly both within and outside of Israel. Disciples of Jesus, also called Christians, consisted of Jews and Gentiles within Israel and throughout different parts of the world. These Christians comprised the ekklesia.
While this was going on, the Jews had begun persecuting Christians. Persecution of Christians in those days was primarily by Jews, not gentiles, although there was persecution by them as well as recorded in the apostle Paul's letters.
I do not yet know all of the facts of the Jewish War, but in AD 70, Jerusalem and the Jewish temple were destroyed by Rome, fulfilling Jesus's words as He wept over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:38, "See! Your house has left you desolate", and His prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple as recorded in Matthew 24:1-2:
Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
- Matthew 24:1-2
The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple put an end to the Jewish sacrificial system and was the sign of God's departure from Israel. Jerusalem had been the city of God, His dwelling place. The temple had been the place of sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. Neither were needed any longer because of God's once for all sacrifice of Jesus and because of the Holy Spirit whom God sent to dwell among His people, their bodies now being His temple. However, Israel rejected Jesus and prior to the destruction of the temple, they continued to offer sacrifices to God, despite the offering that God Himself made for them. This was a slap in the face to God, and further evidence of their harlotry against Him. Their sacrifices were an abomination to Him. Therefore, God left Jerusalem desolate and destroyed their temple so that no further sacrifices could be made.
Since then, the Jews have not had a temple to offer animal sacrifices. What was once a people meant to be God's kingdom, has become a religion much like Christianity has become. Judaism holds little resemblance to God's original intent, and tragically, neither does modern day Christianity.
Getting back to Jeremiah's prophecy of the new covenant...
Because the seed of Israel is the ekklesia, which is the congregation or assembly, the new covenant cannot be broken by it according to the conditions that God provided. God's covenant with the assembly can never be broken unless He were to break His own ordinances.
However, the covenant can be broken on an individual basis, just as a marriage covenant can be. What I mean is, a Christian within the ekklesia has the ability to break the covenant. People are sinful by nature and therefore are naturally unfaithful. Even Christians, which is defined as a follower of Jesus, can give way to temptation because of his own fleshly desires, and be led away from God by his sin which leads to both physical and spiritual death. When this happens, the former Christian is no longer following Jesus and therefore is no longer a Christian (remember that the definition of a Christian is a follower of Jesus). He has forsaken God by turning away from Him, and by turning to his sin as his god. He is acting as a harlot and is committing adultery and fornication against God, which Jesus gave as the one reason for a man to divorce his wife. Because the former Christian has broken his end of the marriage covenant with Jesus, He has grounds for divorce based on His own standards which He gave to His followers
The former Christian can turn away from their sin and turn back to God and again follow Jesus if he chooses to do so, but if he abandons God, Jesus will eventually divorce Him and he will lose his inheritance in God's kingdom. Remember that marriage means the joining of two together, so if one abandons the marriage because of fornication, the two are no longer joined together as one, and there is grounds for divorce.
Just as God had high expectations for the kingdom of Israel whom He had set apart for Himself, God has high standards and expectations of His people today because His name and reputation are at stake. His people and kingdom are not of this world, and they are not to resemble it. His people are a holy nation of priests, set apart for God. People who fall away from God because of sin or who self profess to be Christians, but live like heathens, have either forgone their rights to their inheritance, or blemish His holy name and kingdom, and therefore they have rejected their invitation to be a part of His holy people and are not accepted into His holy kingdom.
The apostle Paul provides lists of behaviors which exclude anyone from inheriting God's kingdom in his letters to the different churches that he oversaw. Those who behave according to Paul's lists are excluded from God's kingdom because they are following their sinful desires rather than following Jesus, and therefore they are not a Christian. They are being unfaithful to their marriage covenant with Christ and therefore according to the Bible they are harlots, adulterers, fornicators, and idolaters, and are outside of the church.
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