Day 12 of 14
Jesus and the New Covenant
This Cup Is the New Covenant in My Blood
Scripture Readings
Today's Reading
On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus gathered His disciples for a Passover meal and did something that reframed the entire history of God's covenants. He took a cup of wine and declared, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20). With these words, Jesus identified His death as the event that would inaugurate the covenant Jeremiah had promised — the covenant that would change everything.
Reflection
The setting is deeply significant. The Passover meal commemorated the old covenant — God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt through the blood of a lamb. Now Jesus takes the elements of that ancient meal and invests them with new meaning. The bread is His body, broken for His people. The wine is His blood, poured out for the forgiveness of sins. The exodus being commemorated is about to be surpassed by a greater exodus — deliverance not from Egypt but from sin and death.
When Jesus says "new covenant in my blood," He is making an explicit claim: He is the one through whom Jeremiah's promise will be fulfilled. The covenant that writes God's law on human hearts, that provides full and final forgiveness, that makes the knowledge of God universally accessible — this covenant is ratified not by the blood of animals but by the blood of God's own Son.
The book of Hebrews provides the theological commentary. Jesus is "the mediator of a new covenant" (Hebrews 8:6), one that is "enacted on better promises." The author quotes Jeremiah 31 at length and concludes: "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" (Hebrews 8:13).
Goldsworthy notes that at the Last Supper, Jesus declared that the new age had dawned. The centuries of waiting since Jeremiah's prophecy were over. The covenant that would succeed where the old one failed was being inaugurated in the upper room and would be sealed the next day on the cross.
Wright emphasizes that Jesus' death was not a tragedy that needed to be redeemed by the resurrection but the very means by which the new covenant was established. The cross achieved what the entire sacrificial system could only prefigure: definitive, once-for-all atonement that makes God's people clean forever.
Going Deeper
Every celebration of the Lord's Supper is a covenant renewal ceremony. When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are proclaiming that we belong to the new covenant — that our sins are forgiven, that the Spirit indwells us, and that we know God personally and intimately. The table is not merely a memorial; it is a declaration that the promises God made through Jeremiah have been fulfilled in the blood of Jesus Christ.
Key Quotes
“When Jesus took the cup at the Last Supper and said 'This is the new covenant in my blood,' he was declaring himself to be the fulfilment of Jeremiah's promise. The new age had dawned.”
“Jesus' death was not a defeat but the means by which the new covenant was inaugurated — the covenant that would achieve what the Mosaic covenant could only point toward.”
Prayer Focus
Lord Jesus, every time I take the cup, I remember that the new covenant was purchased with Your blood. Help me to never take for granted the price of my forgiveness.
Meditation
Jesus said 'this cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you.' How does connecting the Lord's Supper to the entire covenant story change the way you approach communion?
Question for Discussion
How might our practice of the Lord's Supper change if we understood it not simply as a memorial but as a covenant renewal ceremony that connects us to the entire biblical story from Abraham to the cross?