Hebrews Chapter Eight, The First Covenant's Weakness

 

Hebrews 8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. [8a] Because finding fault with them, He says:

 

There is a saying that a chain is only as good as its weakest link. God is perfect, and the Law is holy and good. But Paul observed that the Law, which was to bring life, brought death instead, because the Law was contrary to its recipients. While the Law was holy and good, mankind is unholy and evil.

Evil? Unholy? Yes. The tenor of the Bible carries this message from beginning to end. “Every intent of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually,” Genesis 6:5. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. The gospel is only beneficial for the sick, the spiritually dead, those who know themselves to be sinners. The good news of Christ’s death cannot reach ears that are stopped by pride. Man is evil and unholy. To be unholy simply means “not holy.” There is no demoniacal intention behind the word. Hollywood horror movies have done much to associate the word with the worst of the worst. But the apostle Paul calls an entire generation of people to come, “unholy,” 2 Timothy 3:2. It means the absence of holiness, whose fixation is no longer on God and the things above, but on self and its gratification.

 

Elsewhere, Paul affirms that, “the law is good if one uses it lawfully,” 1 Timothy 1:8. But he also adds, “the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate,” 1 Timothy 1:9. The Law wasn’t given at Eden, it was given at Sinai to increase man’s awareness of sin and accountability, Romans 5:20. It was made, we are told by divine inspiration, not for righteous people, but for those who are lawless (without law) and insubordinate (disobedient or noncompliant). The Law’s ultimate purpose was to find fault, to expose the weakest link, to demonstrate that we—humanity—cannot save ourselves. The Law isn’t a spiritual life preserver; it is a rulebook only the perfect can actually fully obey. While it reveals God’s perfect holiness, it in turn reveals mankind for the spiritually bankrupt and unholy race we are.

 

The writer coins it in simple terminology: “finding fault with them.” The faultiness of the Law was the weakness of those to whom it was given. Adam’s successors are no more capable of obedience than their progenitor. Those who knew it could not be faultlessly kept turned to the God who gave it, beseeching mercy. In turn they received grace and went from being unholy to holy. The holiness they received is not something native to us; it is imputed by the Holy Spirit, adopting us into the household of God, Romans 6:22.

 

Those who attempt to earn their way to Heaven through Law-works suffer the curse the Jews did in the days of Haggai the prophet. Yahweh chastised the people for ignoring the Lord’s house and turning each to their own homes. They did not have God’s interests at heart and went about ordering their lives in a backward way, to their own hurt. They were lawless and insubordinate. While the Jews suffered physical want, the passage Haggai utters could easily be applied to us, should we seek to earn what God offers for free.

 

“Consider your ways! You have sown much, and bring in little; you eat, but do not have enough; you drink, but you are not filled with drink; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes,” Haggai 1:5, 6.

 

Does this sound anything like what Jesus wants for us, His followers? “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly,” John 10:10. Adam and Eve, when they sinned and understood their sudden nakedness, turned not to God, but religion, to save themselves. “They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings,” Genesis 3:7. They were lawless and insubordinate. When they were at length reconciled to God, it was the Lord Himself that clothed them, shedding animal blood to atone for their sin, Genesis 3:21. The Jews were mistaken in the notion of believing that in the Law itself they possessed eternal life. Jesus warned the same when He told His Jewish audience, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me,” John 5:39.

 

The writer produces the valid point that had the first covenant been faultless, there would not need to be another. We read in Isaiah, written around 700 B.C., the theme of a new covenant. “For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery for burnt offering; I will direct their work in truth, and will make with them an everlasting covenant,” Isaiah 61:8. The phrase “will make” connotes a future tense regarding a people who had already received the first covenant on Sinai hundreds of years prior, Exodus 19:7, 8.

 

The worker of iniquity, choosing religion over faith, earns coin to put into a bag with holes in it. The bag is bottomless because the value of eternal life is infinite. Finite beings cannot purchase what is utterly beyond our scope.

 

“None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him—for the redemption of their souls is costly, and it shall cease forever—that he should continue to live eternally, and not see the Pit,” Psalm 49:7-9.

 

The NASB renders verse 8, “For the redemption of his soul is costly, and he should cease trying forever.” The ESV translates the verse, “for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice.” The point illuminated here is the willful termination of human effort once understanding arrives. We are made, by the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of God, to understand our sinful position before God. The Psalmist writes that it is impossible to achieve the effect we desire by our own effort, so stop trying. The result, he writes, is that we may receive eternal life and not enter the Pit, or decay, a colloquialism for Hell.

 

The emphasis of this passage is not that God found fault with the Jews. Mind you, the Law was only given to the Jews, and no other, Psalm 147:19, 20. Rather, the emphasis is on why fault was found with the first covenant, the dispensation of the Law. Namely, it was because of us. The weakness of the flesh is contrary to the holiness of the Law, Romans 7:9. The carnality of a man void of spiritual life is equally contrary to God’s nature, Romans 8:7, 8. So a place was found for a second covenant. Or perhaps more to the point, the first and eternal covenant had been determined prior to creation in which God the Trinity determined to save mankind by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God.

 

The Law merely amplified our need of the Lamb. Just as a country’s laws reveal to its populace what may or may not be legally performed, it has no power of itself to impress its demands on us. That choice, our volition, is what gives the Law power, or robs it thereof. We may speed or we may not; we may steal or we may not. The Law opposes that which is contrary to the safeguard of its commonwealth. Yet its commonwealth is comprised of people like you and I, who must, each one, decide if we will obey the laws, and determine the reasons why. Lawless and insubordinate people abound; many fill our prisons. Many roam free.

 

But we are one and all guilty of infracting the law of our country at some point in our life. This law seeks only to provide mutual safety and comfort for the sake of order. God seeks obedient hearts that will submit, not only for the sake of order, but because as our Creator He knows what is best for us as a people and individuals. His Law would in fact provide peace and safety to those who adhere to it because it would keep us from many hurtful choices. But it does not save, nor can it be used to garner eternal life.