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The recipient of this covenant is the spiritual Israel. The old Jewish covenant is to provide figures that may help us to understand the spiritual covenant which we make with God and God makes with us, through Jesus Christ, the covenant-Negotiator. Here God's side of covenant-pledge is that he will always be the inner life and inspiration of his people. And it is assumed that his people's covenant-pledge is that they hold themselves as fully consecrated unto him, and in all holy and earnest activities seek to serve him.

I. THE NEW COVENANT ON GOD'S SIDE. Compare the pledge in the older Jewish covenant - preservation of bodily life, with all that this might demand of providing, guiding, and preserving - everything needed for the life that now is. In the new covenant the pledge is of preservation of that Divine life, spiritual life, which in us has been divinely quickened, with all that this higher life may demand of sustenance, guidance, protection, and inspiration. God will be sure to supply all the needs of our soul-life, and put his Spirit in us and keep his Spirit with us, to be the life of our life, our security, our guarantee, our sanctification. Cramer says, "Does the Spirit of God remain? then also does his Word; does the Word remain? then preachers also remain; do preachers remain? then also hearers do; do hearers remain? then also remain believers; and therefore the Christian Church remains also." Too seldom do we take the comforting and strengthening assurance that our God is actually under pledge to us to carry on to its completion the work of grace in us which he has begun. "Though we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself." Matthew Henry says, "In the Redeemer there was a new covenant made with us, a covenant of promises; and this is the great and comprehensive promise of that covenant, that God will give and continue his Word and Spirit to his Church and people throughout all generations." Dean Plumptre says, "The new covenant is to involve the gift of the Spirit, that writes the law of God inwardly in the heart, as distinct from the Law, which is thought of as outside the conscience, doing its work as an accuser and a judge."

II. THE NEW COVENANT ON MAN'S SIDE. Find what is the spiritual counterpart of the old Jewish covenant-conditions on man's side. Then he pledged loyalty to Jehovah, strict and prompt obedience to the will of Jehovah. The answering spiritual pledge may be found in Romans 12:1, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." - R.T.

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KJV: As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.

WEB: "As for me, this is my covenant with them," says Yahweh. "My Spirit who is on you, and my words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your seed, nor out of the mouth of your seed's seed," says Yahweh, "from henceforth and forever."