Better Promises
October 20, 2025
Hebrews 8:6 (NKJV) 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.
We began this study because I believe the Lord led me to Ephesians 2:11-13 where Paul tells the believers in Ephesus that they used to be like the rest of the gentiles, who were not part of the Jewish religious system and were also without any connection to Christ because they were without a covenant with God. This caused them to be without hope and without God in the world. That is a very strong statement, and I felt it was pertinent to the idea of thriving in our relationship with the Lord. Jesus brought us near to himself by providing a New Covenant in his blood.
In our lasts two posts we have touched on how this New Covenant is better that the old. Today I want to look at the promises. Hebrews 8:6 says Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant based on better promises. That does not mean that the promises God gave to his people in the Old Covenant have become invalid. God gave those promises to his people because he wanedt them to understand that he loved them and would care for them as any father cares for his family. He also gave them so that the rest of humanity could see the goodness of God and know that he cares for those who are his and will do so for them when they come to him.
James says something that I want to touch on here.
James 1:17 (NKJV) Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
Our God is a good God. Good things come from him. James says there is no shadow of turning in him. That means that it does not even look like he might change. He is always good. Everything that comes from him is Good. That is not so with the false gods worshiped in other religions. Even some Christian systems view God as someone who needs to be appeased so he will not do bad things to us. That is not the God we serve.
Hebrews 11:6 says that he is a rewarder not a punisher. He is not looking for a reason to punish; he is looking for a way to reward. He will chasten us (Hebrews 12) because that is what a good father does to train his children how to walk in the blessings that flow from Godly choices and accountability. However, his desire is to bless. Everything that truly comes from him is to lead you to a place where you will thrive in every area of life. That is probably the most important promise we can embrace.
That is not to say that he was not that way in the Old Testament. He has not changed but man’s condition has changed. In Christ, we have been made new creatures. We are not what we were before salvation. We are no longer without hope and without God in the world. God dealt with man in the Old Covenant according to his condition. Before Jesus came death reigned in humanity. Once Jesus bought our redemption with his own blood, we were no longer bound by death. We have been brought into his family, and he can now deal with us as he intended to deal with Adam.
All the promises of the Old Covenant are still in place. There are certain things that were promised to individuals that are not relevant to us. For example, God has not promised all his people that they shall bear a child at 100 and 90 as he did with Abraham and Sarah. However, the promises he made to the nation of Israel are still ours today. Deuteronomy 28 is a list of the blessings, promises, and curses of their covenant. If they walked in the covenant the promises “came upon them and overtook them” (Deuteronomy 28:2.) The curses came into their lives when they did not keep the covenant. The curses were a part of the law, which was added later, because the law stated consequences for breaking the covenant.
In Galatians Paul makes a very clear statement about the blessing and cursing associated with the Law and the covenant.
Galatians 3:13-14 (NKJV) 13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), 14 that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
The redemption purchased by the blood of Jesus removed the curse from our covenant. We are heir only to the blessings. That does not mean bad things cannot happen to a Christian. As long as we live on an earth cursed by the fall of man, the potential for bad things to happen to us is always there. It is not, however, in any way part of our new covenant relationship in Christ. When we allow sin to abide in our lives without doing anything about it, we are open to the effect of death which is what brought the curse upon humanity to begin with. The difference is that this death is not in us. Because we are born again in spirit, the life of God is not just with us, it is in us.
Deuteronomy 30:19 (NKJV) I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;
God’s people have always been given the right and ability to choose life. However, the promises in the New Covenant are not just chosen from the outside in. They are not limited by the curse of the fall and the separation that it brought to mankind. We can choose the life that is now within us. We can overcome the tendency of our flesh to choose death by choosing sin and draw on the life of God that is now within us.
We see this stated in a different way in 2 Corinthians 1:20.
2 Corinthians 1:20 (NKJV) For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.
Why are all the promises of God now yes and Amen. Because we are in Christ Jesus and his life is in us. In Romans 6:4, Paul says we are now able to walk in “newness of life” because we entered into his death and also his resurrection. In the Old Testament all people were born under the curse that spoken in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3.) Not because God wanted it that way. It was a consequence of sin. Jesus paid the price for the the curse. Outside of Christ, man is legally under the curse. The devil has a legal right to apply that curse to us. We mitigate it with civilization, education, culture and human legal systems. In Christ, the curse has no legal hold upon us.
What are the better promises of the New Covenant? They are all the promises God made to his people under the Old Covenant without the legal curse of the law. We can choose life in a way those in the Old Covenant could not. We can walk in God’s blessing by simply allowing that life to dominate our thinking and our actions. It is possible in a way that it could never be under the law because the law depended on the flesh. In Christ, we can control the flesh by drawing on the spirit within. That is the promise given in Jerimiah 31 and it is ours today!
Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NKJV) 33 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. 34 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.”
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