Hebrews 8:11 Commentary and Bible Study

Here is another wonderful difference between the church of Jesus Christ and the Old Testament order. This is not about heaven; it refers to the New Testament church during its time on earth. It is Jeremiah’s prophecy about the nature of the coming church. Israel as a nation was composed of those, like Abraham, who had trusted God for salvation, and those who were born into the nation but lacked spiritual life, and the latter far outnumbered the former. You became a member of the nation when you were born physically, and to mark this, if you were a male child, you were circumcised on the eighth day. That rite was performed in the flesh, but the majority never experienced the change of heart that Abraham experienced, which comes through faith and which circumcision in the flesh was intended to symbolise. They remained within the national covenant but the covenant did not save them and they perished eternally in their final hour. Those who had true faith realised what was happening. They saw Israel as God’s school and they longed for their fellow Israelites to understand his lessons. They therefore spoke earnestly to their neighbours, to their fellow citizens, and said, ‘Look, this is the meaning of what we have been born into, but unless we exercise faith and repent of our sins, it will all be for nothing. We will not truly have grasped the meaning of all these symbols and rituals of the ceremonial law. They knew they had been wonderfully changed by God, and they wanted all in the nation to share the same salvation by coming to know the living God.But the church of Jesus Christ does not suffer from the same problem. You do not enter the new covenant by physical birth but by spiritual birth. You cannot be in the kingdom in some lesser way, and then enter it truly and spiritually subsequent to that. You are either in it fully, or you are completely outside it. The church should not accept into its membership any but those who have come to salvation. There should be a recognised membership and there should be a guard on that membership, and the entrance qualification is the new birth. Those who belong to Christ should understand the changes that take place in a life when a person comes to faith, and they should apply biblical tests on applicants to make sure they are genuine.But what follows from this is that there is no longer any need for the kind of activity which Old Testament believers engaged, in trying to convince those who have some nominal status in the covenant, but who have not yet become fully fledged covenant members. There is no need for this activity, because there is no such category of person as someone who is merely a formal member of the covenant. Of course, verse 11 is related to verse 10. The reason why every member of the church should be regenerate is that this covenant is different: God writes his laws on the heart of every single one who is in this covenant. All of them are born-again. All of them know the Lord and cry, Abba Father. In the Old Testament this is only ever true of a minority. The rest would rather go after idols, or find their fulfilment in this world.