The New Covenant as Inauguration Rather than Mere Restoration

 

The New Covenant as Inauguration Rather than Mere Restoration: A Critical Evaluation of Carmen Joy Imes

In chapter 11 of Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters, Carmen Joy Imes develops an important defense of continuity between Sinai and the life of the people of God. Her main concern is understandable and, in many respects, necessary: to correct the Christian reading that simplistically opposes Old Testament and New Testament, Law and grace, Sinai and Christ. For Imes, Jeremiah 31 should not be understood as an absolute rupture with the former covenant, but as a promise of inward restoration: God will write his law on the hearts of his people, forgive their iniquity, and renew Israel’s vocation as the people who bear his name (Imes, Bearing God’s Name, chap. 11).

This emphasis has several strengths. Imes rightly reminds us that forgiveness was not absent from the old economy. The Levitical formula “and he shall be forgiven” shows that Israel’s cultic system was not a cold machinery of condemnation, but an order established by Yahweh to preserve the covenant relationship, restore the worshiper, and keep open the way of communion within the limits of that administration. In this respect, Imes helps dismantle a frequent caricature: the idea that in the Old Covenant there was only law, judgment, and distance, whereas the New Covenant introduced mercy, forgiveness, and relationship for the first time. Such an opposition is untenable. The God of Jeremiah 31 is the same God who had already forgiven, sustained, and restored his people throughout Israel’s history.

The problem arises, however, when this legitimate concern for continuity ends up obscuring the real covenantal newness announced by Jeremiah and developed by Hebrews. Imes seems to lean toward a reading in which the New Covenant is, fundamentally, the same covenant restored, internalized, or “reformatted.” From that perspective, the emphasis falls on the continuity of the covenant partners, the continuity of the law, and the continuity of God’s purpose. But this formulation, while capturing something true, remains insufficient. Jeremiah 31 does not merely announce an administrative renewal of Sinai; it announces a New Covenant. And if it is new, then it cannot be reduced to the mere repair of the old.

The decisive distinction is this: the Old Covenant was a real economy, but a symbolic one; it was a true administration, but a prefigurative one. It had priests, sanctuary, altar, blood, offerings, communion sacrifices, and a place of encounter. Yet this whole order functioned as a shadow of a greater reality. The Old Covenant was neither false nor useless; it was a figure. It was the historical and cultic framework through which God taught Israel the grammar of access, holiness, mediation, and communion. But precisely because it was a shadow, it pointed beyond itself. The New Covenant, therefore, is not simply the Old Covenant internalized, but the reality toward which the Old Covenant directed the gaze.

This point is especially important when considering the relationship between Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8–10. Jeremiah announces the promise: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer 31:34). Hebrews, in turn, explains how that promise comes into force. The promise of the New Covenant is not realized simply by a divine decision to renew the former relationship, but through the death and blood of Christ. In other words, Jeremiah promises the New Covenant; Hebrews explains its inauguration.

Here we find one of the most significant omissions in Imes’s argument. Her treatment does not seem to give sufficient weight to the fact that the death of Christ is, essentially, the inaugural death of the New Covenant. The cross is not merely the event that makes the repetition of Levitical offerings unnecessary; it is the act by which the New Covenant literally comes into force. Jesus’ language at the meal—“this is my blood of the covenant” or “this cup is the New Covenant in my blood”—should not be understood as a general devotional metaphor, but as a direct covenantal reference. Jesus interprets his death with the language of Exodus 24.

Exodus 24 is fundamental because there the Old Covenant is literally inaugurated with blood. Moses communicates the words of the covenant, the people respond, an altar is built, blood is offered, the altar and the people are sprinkled, and the declaration is made: “Behold the blood of the covenant.” This is not a merely symbolic scene in a weak sense; it is the formal act by which the Sinaitic relationship is established. The covenant comes into force through blood. Then the covenant meal before God confirms the communion established within the framework of that relationship.

Hebrews 9 takes up precisely this logic. The author does not merely compare “old sacrifices” with “the sacrifice of Christ.” The comparison is deeper: the first covenant was inaugurated with blood, and the New Covenant is also inaugurated with blood. But the difference between the two is not simply quantitative or functional; it is typological and eschatological. The blood of the Old Covenant belonged to the shadow; the blood of Christ belongs to the reality. Exodus 24 inaugurates the figure; the cross inaugurates the New Covenant promised by Jeremiah.

For this reason, if one claims that the New Covenant is simply the renewal of the same covenant, the inaugural function of Christ’s death is weakened. Why would a new inaugural blood be necessary if this were only the same covenant restored? Hebrews requires a stronger formulation: there is an Old Covenant and there is a New Covenant. The first was inaugurated with animal blood in an earthly administration; the second is inaugurated with the blood of Christ, the covenant inaugurator, with reference to a heavenly and definitive reality. Continuity exists, but it is typological continuity, not covenantal identity.

This distinction also allows us to correct the way Imes treats forgiveness in Leviticus. It is true that there was forgiveness in the old administration. But not every sin was processable through the Levitical system of offerings and sacrifices. There were sins that fell outside the ordinary capacity of that cultic administration: rebellious, persistent, hardened sins, committed with a “high hand,” which could not be resolved simply by bringing an animal offering. Israel’s national infidelity reached precisely this depth. Jeremiah is not speaking merely of occasional faults that could be addressed through the Levitical order; he is speaking of a condition of sin engraved on the heart, an iniquity that had led the people into covenantal failure and exile.

For this reason, the promise of Jeremiah 31 cannot be reduced to the claim that God will continue forgiving as before. The phrase “I will remember their sin no more” points to a divine action deeper than the episodic forgiveness available within the limits of the old economy. It concerns the forgiveness of the iniquity that the Old Covenant could expose, judge, and curse, but could not definitively resolve. At this point, Imes recognizes the existence of inexpiable sins, but she does not seem to connect that category with the specific promise of the New Covenant. If certain sins could not be processed by the Levitical administration, then Jeremiah 31 announces precisely the divine intervention that surpasses those limits.

This connects directly with the purification of the conscience in Hebrews 9:14. The conscience should not be reduced to a psychological experience of subjective guilt. Within the framework of Hebrews, the purified conscience refers to the person placed in a new cultic and covenantal condition before God. The old administration could produce real forgiveness within its limits, but it could not definitively perfect the worshiper or remove the remembrance of sins as an obstacle to access. In the New Covenant, by contrast, the blood of Christ inaugurates a reality in which sins are no longer remembered as a covenantal barrier, and therefore the people are enabled to serve the living God.

From this follows another necessary correction: one should not speak indiscriminately of the “sacrificial system” as if all Levitical offerings belonged to the same sacrificial category. A more precise reading recognizes that the old administration included sanctuary, priesthood, altar, purification offerings, reparation offerings, burnt offerings, and communion sacrifices. Not every offering was a sacrifice in the strict sense. Sacrifice, especially in its covenantal dimension, is connected with communion and the table, whereas other offerings perform functions of purification, reparation, or dedication. This precision matters because it prevents us from reducing the entire Levitical economy to a generic sacrificial mechanism and allows us to see more clearly the complexity of the system that the New Covenant comes to fulfill and surpass.

The New Covenant, then, does not merely introduce a better inward disposition. It introduces a complete new cultic reality. If the Old Covenant had priests, the New Covenant requires a new priesthood. If the Old Covenant had a place of encounter, the New Covenant requires the true place of encounter. If the Old Covenant was inaugurated with blood, the New Covenant must also be inaugurated with blood. But now the priest is not Aaron nor his descendants, but the risen Christ; the place of encounter is not the earthly sanctuary, but the heavenly presence of God; and the blood is not that of animals, but the blood of Christ, by which the promised covenant comes into force.

This reading allows us to affirm continuity without erasing discontinuity. God’s purpose remains: to dwell with his people, to make himself known, to forgive their sins, and to form a community that bears his name. But the administration changes radically because the shadow has given way to the reality. The Old Covenant prefigured; the New Covenant realizes. The Old Covenant taught the pattern of access; the New Covenant opens true access. The Old Covenant had inaugural blood; the New Covenant has the definitive blood of Christ. The Old Covenant had an earthly sanctuary; the New Covenant brings the people into the true place of encounter through the heavenly priesthood of the risen and enthroned Christ.

In conclusion, Imes is right to resist an anti-Jewish or radically discontinuous reading that despises Sinai and caricatures the Old Covenant as an absolute failure. She is also right to stress that forgiveness, mercy, and the faithfulness of Yahweh were already present in the old economy. Nevertheless, her argument falls short when she presents the New Covenant primarily as the restoration or internalization of the same covenant. Jeremiah 31 announces something more decisive: a New Covenant that answers sins the old administration could not definitively process. Hebrews shows that this covenant is inaugurated by the death of Christ, following the pattern of Exodus 24. Just as the Old Covenant was literally inaugurated with blood, the cross is literally the inauguration of the New Covenant.

Therefore, the death of Christ should be understood primarily as covenantal death: the death of the covenant inaugurator who brings the new reality promised by Jeremiah into force. In that death, the blood of the New Covenant is poured out; through that blood sins are remitted; through that remission the conscience is purified; and through that purification the people gain access to the true place of encounter, under the new priesthood of the risen and enthroned Christ.