⁸ For finding fault with them, He says, “Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, When I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah …”

Fault lies with the people, the “them” of this passage. This clarifies the previous verse that implied that the first covenant (with Moses) was not without fault. That covenant was perfect, but it could not make people perfect because the people were at fault. The Law exposes humans to be unlike God, something they have been trying to attain ever since the fall of Adam and Eve. Remember the temptation from the serpent, “God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God …” (Gen 3:5). Their fall and the failure of every human since shows that we are not God!

Only Christ was faultless. He was the perfect human—not because adherence to the Law made Him perfect, but because it showed Him to be perfect and without sin or fault of any kind. It showed Him to be truly and fully God. And He is our perfect High Priest of a more excellent covenant (vs. 6).

We image bearers should likewise have been shown to be reflections of God by the Law, but sin has prevented that. The Law was God’s tool to prove beyond any doubt that we are failures in the most fundamental aspect of our creation – we were made in the image of God. The Law was supposed to be a magnifying glass to show God-likeness in us. But sin has skewed the image, the reflection has been distorted like a curved mirror in a funny house. The Law showed that we all have fallen short of gloriously reflecting God’s image, it brought the wrath of God and resulted in our death (Rom 3:23, 4:15, 6:23).

So the first covenant was inadequate in bringing us to God and, in the context of the book of Hebrews, into God’s rest. That is the place where we all desire to be, completely at home in the presence of God. The first step, though, had to be the Law showing us our need. But the next step had to be something other than law-based and human-enabled. The new covenant really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone steeped in the Old Testament prophetic writings, it had been promised already, and the writer of Hebrews now reminds them of this. God had promised a new way for the people of Israel. And this would affect the whole world, because God originally promised Abraham and his descendants to bless them and then to bless the world through them. God always works according to His promises. We will look at the promise of a new covenant in the next few verses.

Lord, though our sin distracts us from Your promises, You are always steadfast and true. We have a solid anchor in Your character.