In the New Covenant

Hebrews 8: 10-12

10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel

after those days, declares the Lord:

I will put my laws into their minds,

and write them on their hearts,

and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people.

11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor

and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’

for they shall all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest.

12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,

and I will remember their sins no more.”

Let’s be honest with each other for a moment. Most of us live with a constant, low-grade fever of anxiety regarding our relationship with God.

Many Christians have their spiritual life like a gym membership. We signed up with great intentions, but we haven't shown up in weeks, and every time we see the "gym" (the Bible or the Church), we just feel guilty. We feel like we are constantly failing a test we didn't study for.

The problem with man-centered preaching is that it replaces the powerful news of what Christ has finished with a powerless moralistic "to-do" list for what you must finish, achieve, or improve. That turns the church into a classroom for self-improvement, a motivational and life-coach platform.

But Jesus is way more than a Rabbi. Jesus is not a teacher giving you a "to-do" list. According to Hebrews, He is our legal representative in the highest court of the universe.

We live from our identity, not for identity.

Hebrews 8:11 (ESV)

11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor

and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’

for they shall all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest.

Today, you are here to learn what you already are. To know that you are approved by grace.

I talked to my son Pedro in Brazil recently. He was raised in the United States, but he is a young Brazilian man. He is there now to practice his Portuguese and immerse himself in the culture. But here is the beautiful thing: he isn’t going to school to pass a test so he can become Brazilian. He is already approved; his citizenship is a settled fact. He is simply there to discover who he already is.

Like my son Pedro, we are often challenged to speak a "new language" under the Grace of the New Covenant. But this language isn't foreign; it is actually our original "mother tongue". We are learning the culture of Heaven, but this isn't a new culture we are trying to adopt—it is the original culture we truly belong to.

We aren't "faking it" until we make it;

Living in Grace can be challenging because we have to unlearn the "accent" of the Law, but it is also deeply fun. It is not a demanding weight; it is a return to the original purpose of our real citizenship.

Now, does this mean we just go out and live however we want? Does grace make us lazy?

Absolutely not. But the motivation changes. We don’t obey to get God’s love; we obey because we already have it.

Old Covenant: "Obey, and then you will be accepted.”

New Covenant: "You are accepted, therefore, you will find yourself wanting to obey."

Your exhortation today isn't to "try harder.”

It’s to believe deeper. To act out of faith.

And when we fail, don't run from God in shame; run to your High Priest.

The New Covenant made the Old obsolete.

Hebrews 8:13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

The law was a shadow of the reality found in Christ. The old system was divided into three categories. Some people think that Jesus fulfills only some portions of what is considered “the law.” But He brought it to an end by fulfilling it perfectly and completely.

1. The Ceremonial Law: These were the rituals, sacrifices, hygiene and purity, and priestly garments described in books like Leviticus. Because the priesthood has changed from the tribe of Levi to the order of Melchizedek, the entire ceremonial system has been changed and made obsolete.

2. The Judicial Law (Curses and Judgments): This was the system of penalties and "hereditary curses" for those who failed to keep the Law. God has sworn an oath that He will never be angry with you or rebuke you again on the basis of that covenant because He remembers your sins no more. We are disciplined but not for demotion, but for reward and inheritance.

3. The Moral Law (The Commandments): This refers to the 613 commandments, including the Decalogue (Ten Commandments), which defined righteousness. 

This last one is what many preachers says it did not pass. The idea is that faith and grace are for "salvation," and the “moral laws” and our effort are for “sanctification.” 

However, the good news is that Jesus lived a life of perfect, complete obedience to every requirement of the Law.

In the New Covenant, God no longer demands righteousness from you based on your performance; instead, He imparts Christ's perfect righteousness to you as a gift, and by faith, you live it out.

You don't work for righteousness; you live from the righteousness that has already been imparted to you.

Grace is a Better System

(Hebrews 8:6) “But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.”

Many of us try to live in a “mixture."

We believe in Jesus (New Covenant), but we still relate to God through the rules of the Old Covenant.

The Old Covenant was meant to be like a mirror—it could show you that your face was dirty, but it didn't have the power to wash you.

It was "faulty" (v. 7), not because God made a mistake, but because it was never intended to make one righteous.

Romans 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

The New Covenant is better because it relies on God’s faithfulness.

Imagine you’re trying to cross a massive, turbulent river. The Old Covenant is like God giving you a perfect set of instructions for swimming. The instructions are flawless, but they don’t help because you’re a terrible swimmer.

The New Covenant is God putting you on a massive, unsinkable ocean liner. You aren't crossing because of your swimming skills; you're crossing because the ship is designed to get you there.

Jesus is the “guarantor." μεσίτης (mecí-tes). He didn't just sign the New Covenant; He is the New Covenant.

If Jesus stands, you stand.

Coming to the End of Yourself

We are notoriously bad at keeping our own word. Let’s be honest: how many of you even remember your New Year’s resolutions for 2026?

We are simply bad at keeping our part of a bargain. God wasn't surprised by this. In fact, He gave the Old Testament Law specifically so we would reach the end of our own strength.

Consider the "arrogance" of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. Before God had even finished stating the standards of His Law, the people made a sweeping promise they had no power to keep.

Exodus 19:8 All the people answered together and said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do.” And Moses reported the words of the people to the LORD." 

Before they had even heard the 613 commandments or the Ten Commandments, the people declared they were capable of fulfilling divine requirements. They were making a promise they fundamentally could not keep because they were unaware of their own inability and God's absolute holiness.

(Exodus 24:3) 'Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do."'

They were tragically unaware of how holy, clean, exalted, and righteous God truly is. They thought they could meet divine requirements with human effort.

This is the same trap so many fall into today: we think we just need to "try harder," not realizing that our very nature is the problem.

The Law doesn't cure the disease; it just reveals that you are terminally sick. 

This is the "End of Self." Have you reached that point yet? Have you finally admitted that you cannot be "good enough" for an infinitely holy God?

Grace only begins where your effort ends. Until you reach the end of yourself, you will never truly lean on the sufficiency of the New Covenant.

Grace is The Finished and Ongoing Work

We often think grace is for the start of the Christian life, and then "hard work" takes over to keep us there. That is a lie.

Grace is what saves you, and grace is what keeps you. 

Grace introduces you to a new dimension. The New Covenant.

In the Old Covenant, the law was on stone tablets—external and cold. In the New Covenant, God does the work in us. This is sanctification.

It isn't you trying really hard to be "holy"; it's the Holy Spirit applying the finished work of Christ to your heart, changing what you love so that you actually want what God wants.

Think of it like a "heart transplant" rather than "heart surgery."

God doesn't just patch up your old, rebellious desires; He gives you a new nature that beats in sync with His.

The fundamental difference between the Old and New Covenants is the location of the Law. In the Old, it was on stone; in the New, it is "downloaded" into the heart.

At the beginning of my adult life, I worked in a public school and helped with their Basic Computing course. The school had various old computers that it was suppose to be used in that course. The first thing you need to learn about computing language is that every computer requires an Operating System (OS) to function, but that OS is strictly limited by the machine’s hardware requirements.

God did not simply give you a software update or a new "patch" for your old life. Until you are acomplete new machine, there is no way to walk and live out the new system.

He knew that the Old Covenant was "faulty" because the old "hardware"—the fallen human heart—could not process the perfect requirements of the Law.

If he had only changed the OS, the system would still have crashed because the hardware was corrupted. Instead, God performed a complete hardware replacement and an operating system upgrade. Maybe the Computer Case is the same, but inside, everything else is different. He removed the "heart of stone" and installed a "heart of flesh”.

(Ezekiel 36:26-27) "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

 You are not just a "repaired" believer; you are a new creation who has been born again with the capacity to run the "Law of Life" spontaneously and eternally.

A new heart with a new law

The opening part of the New Covenant describes God giving us a new heart and a new law.

(Hebrews 8:10)“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

To align with your request, we will replace the dog-and-cat analogy with the Pig and the Sheep. This illustration perfectly captures the "metabolic" change of the New Covenant—where God doesn't just change your rules, He changes your nature.

The Nature of the Heart: The Pig and the Sheep

Imagine a pig being commanded to live like a sheep. The Law says to the pig, "You shall love the green pastures, and you shall loathe the mud." The pig might try to obey out of fear of the farmer; he might stay away from the mud for a few hours, but his internal nature still craves the mire. He is a pig trying to "work" his way into being a sheep, and he lives exhausted because he is constantly fighting his own desires.

In the Old Covenant, the Law served as that external command. It told a "pig-natured" sinner to act like a "sheep-natured" saint. But prohibitions cannot transform the heart. Eventually, the pig will return to the mud because that is what he is.

But in the New Covenant, God does something revolutionary. He doesn't just give the pig "sheep-like" rules; He performs a nature replacement.

Through the New Covenant, God takes a person with a "pig nature"—one who naturally desires the "mud" of sin—and transforms them into a “sheep”.

(John 10:11, 27) 'I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep... My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.'

He gives the believer a new heart and a new spirit.

Under the law, a wife might kiss her husband or cook for him simply because it is a "commandment," leaving the relationship hollow and driven by fear of punishment. Under grace, the husband wins her heart by loving her unconditionally and sacrificing for her first. Consequently, her devotion is no longer a burdensome requirement but a spontaneous, loving response to the love she has already received.

The husband says, "Commandment Number Two: Make my dinner. Commandment Number Three: Give me a kiss. Commandment Number One: You shall love me because it is the rule". The wife obeys and provides the meal and the kiss, but only because she is following a rigid law. When asked if she loves him, she says, "Of course, it is the first commandment". Her heart is not in it; she is simply performing a duty to avoid judgment.

The grace husband is different. He wins the heart through unconditional love and sacrifice. The grace husband comes home and finds no food prepared. Instead of rebuking her, he goes to the supermarket, buys the ingredients, and cooks the meal himself. Overwhelmed by his care, the wife asks how she could ever repay such kindness. She embraces him and says, "How could I not love you? You won my heart by loving me first.”

Desires according to His will

(Philippians 2:13) 'for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.’

Under the New Covenant, God does not just give us a list of rules and leave us to fail; He actually provides the internal "desire" (the will) and the "power" (the work) to live out His righteousness

I am trying to teach my son about financial responsibility, and the basic lesson is to distinguish between needs and desires. A wise person does not confuse that. 

Psalms 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

But the ones who “delight" in the Lord have what their new heart desires.

The "Metabolic" Change of Grace

A few asked me about Ash Wednesday or the 40-day Lenten fast as a demonstration of repentance. While these practices can hold personal value, the danger of external "religion" is that it often becomes cosmetic—focused on external symbols and public displays of faith.

Under the Old Covenant, the system was based on man’s outward obedience to the 613 commandments.

Remembering these 613 Commandments alone is already a significant challenge.

"Did I break the 514th Commandment?” 

Additionally, breaking one commandment can condemn us for all the law. That's why the new covenant is so different.

In contrast, the New Covenant is not about human effort or outward rituals. It is a "metabolic" change—a transformation from the inside out. Instead of external signs of repentance.

(Romans 12:2) 'Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.'

(2 Corinthians 3:18) 'And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’

What are the new laws of the Lord?

In the New Covenant, the "laws" written on our hearts are fundamentally different from the 613 commandments of the Mosaic Law. While the Old Testament law was external and focused on behavioral prohibitions—such as dietary restrictions or the forbidding of mixed seeds—the Holy Spirit's current agenda is not to help us keep those obsolete regulations. 

Instead, the Law of Christ is an internal "download" of God's own desires into our spirit. This transformation means we no longer relate to God based on external demands or the fear of punishment, but through a new nature that spontaneously seeks to do His will.

(John 14:15) 'If you love me, you will keep my commandments.’

Jesus is not referring back to the commandments of Moses here, but to the new commandment of love that flows naturally from a heart that understands it is already loved.

The New Covenant specifically identifies two primary commandments that define this life of grace.

(1 John 3:23) 'And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.' 

This verse summarizes the entire focus of the New Covenant: faith in Christ's work and the outward expression of His love.

These laws are sufficient because love fulfills the entire law. When we walk by the Spirit, we are no longer under the legalistic system of the Old Testament, as the Spirit inspires us to produce fruit against which there is no law.

(Romans 5:5)'and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.'

Today, our love is simply a response to His love for us, which has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit. This divine love is the power that enables us to fulfill the spirit of the law without legalistic effort.