The book of Jeremiah can be considered as an abstract of the entire Bible, for in it we see that only Christ can fulfill God’s economy and only He is the answer to all of God’s requirements in His economy; Christ is the new covenant given to us by God in which God in Christ is everything to us in an inward and rich way. Hallelujah!
In this book, the book of Jeremiah, we see not only God’s speaking through the prophet concerning the situation of the children of Israel, His warning, His chastising, and the prophet’s reaction and weeping; in this book we also see, in an intrinsic way, God’s economy with His dispensing.
On one hand God exposes the real situation and the true cause of all the evils that the children of Israel did; on the other hand, we have a few verses here and there that not only have the New Testament flavor but also give us a key to returning to God, trusting in God, receiving God, being filled with God, becoming God, and having God wrought into us. Wow!
This is what God desires to do from eternity to eternity: He wants to work Himself into us, but He has to first expose our fallen condition, lead us repentance, apply the redemption of Christ, wash and cleanse us, change our nature inwardly, be the fountain of living waters to us, be our food and nourishing supply to us in His word, be our trust and hope, be our very breath as we call on Him from the deepest pit, write the law of life onto the tablets of our heart, and be everything to us.
All these can be seen in Jeremiah, and they lead to one thing: we become God’s corporate expression, His building.
Even more, what we see in Jeremiah is that, even though we are not faithful to God, He is faithful; even though we sin, forsake Him, and run after other things that are idols, vain replacements of the true God, He still will bring a remnant back to Himself to be His corporate expression, for He is a God of recovery.
What a view of the book of Jeremiah, which book intrinsically shows us God’s economy with His dispensing!
May we have the divine view of this book, and may we have the glasses of God’s economy on whenever we read the Bible, for every book of the Bible speaks of God’s economy with His dispensing, and even such a book as Jeremiah can unveil more and more aspects of His economy.
Only Christ can Fulfill God’s Economy and Answer His Requirements, and Christ is the New Covenant!
In his prophecy Jeremiah indicates that only Christ can fulfill God’s economy and only He is the answer to God’s requirements in His economy.
The picture that this prophet portrays before us in his books shows us that we are nothing and that Christ is everything to us.
Hallelujah, only Christ can fulfill God’s economy! Only Christ can live the Christian life. Only Christ can be an overcomer.
Christ is everything to God and He is everything to us, His believers. Christ is the unique overcomer, and we need to be in Him; He is in our spirit, and when we’re in the mingled spirit, we’re in Him as the unique Overcomer, and He lives His overcoming life in us and through us.
In his book, Jeremiah speaks of Christ who fulfills God’s economy; Christ is our righteousness and our redemption (Jer. 23:5-6), God is the fountain of living waters to us (2:13), Christ is our food especially in His word (15:16), and Christ is the reality of the new covenant with all its blessings (31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12).
Christ is the “total package” from God – He is the One who accomplishes God’s judicial redemption and carries out God’s organic salvation, the complete gospel of God.
He fulfilled all of God’s requirements and paid the highest price to redeem us; only He is qualified to shed His blood and bring us back to God, putting us in a favorable position before God to come and enjoy Him, standing on the redemption of Christ and clothed with Christ as our righteousness.
Christ is the fountain of living waters for us to drink, be filled with, be satisfied with, and thus become His corporate expression.
Christ is our food in His word; we need to daily make new discoveries in the word of God, eating the Lord in His word so that we may be filled with gladness and joy in our heart. Christ is the new covenant; He not only made the new covenant, enacted it, and is now carrying it out – He Himself is the new covenant!
Speaking of the new covenant, in 1 Tim. 1:4 Paul says that we should speak only God’s economy which is in faith; what is the connection or relationship between the new covenant and God’s economy?
Looking deeper in the word of God and with the help of the ministry of the age, we can say that, on the one hand, the new covenant is synonymous with God’s economy, being the contents and substance of God’s economy (Jer. 31:31-34; John 10:13; cf. Eph. 3:9).
The items of the new covenant are just the contents and substance of God’s economy.
All the major items of the new covenant are the contents of God’s economy and His dispensing with both His judicial redemption and organic salvation to deify us for the building up of the Body of Christ, consummating in the New Jerusalem! Wow!
So the apostles’ ministry is the ministry for God’s new covenant economy; it is the new covenant ministry that is centered on the economy of God (1 Tim. 1:3-4; cf. 2 Cor. 3:3, 6).
The new covenant involves God writing His laws into our inward parts, and the new covenant is to inscribe Christ into us with the ink of the Spirit so that we may be letters of Christ read by all men. Hallelujah!
On the other hand, we may say that the new covenant is the way that God fulfills or accomplishes His economy; in 2 Cor. 2:12-4:1 we see that the ministry of the new covenant is for the accomplishment of God’s eternal economy. How rich and deep this is!
So on one hand the new covenant is synonymous with God’s economy, and on the other, the new covenant is the way God fulfills His economy.
And the new covenant is just Christ – Christ is the new covenant given to us by God! Christ is the center of God’s economy, and Christ is the new covenant.
We praise You Lord Jesus for coming to fulfill God’s economy and be the answer to God’s requirements in His economy! Hallelujah, Christ came to redeem us and become our righteousness so that we may have the proper standing before God to receive Him as our life. Amen, Lord, we come to You as the fountain of living waters to drink, have our thirst quenched, and become Your corporate expression. We eat of You, Lord, in Your word, until Your words become the joy and gladness of our heart. We take You as the reality of the new covenant and we open to the divine dispensing so that Christ as the new covenant may be wrought into us to make us the same as God in life and nature for His corporate expression!
Christ Enacted the New Covenant, He executes the New Covenant, and He is the New Covenant
What the Bible shows us in its entirety is that God has a heart’s desire, which is to come into man as life and be one with man.
For this, God made a few covenants with man; He came to contact man, He met man where he is, and He made eight covenants with man.
Out of these eight covenants, He mainly counts two – the old covenant (made with the children of Israel through Moses in the wilderness) and the new covenant (prophesied of in Jeremiah and made through Jesus Christ in the New Testament).
The other covenants – the covenants with the create man, with the fallen man, with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel in the land of Moab, and with David – could be considered by God as “side covenants”, made specifically with specific people according to their specific situation and need.
Even more, the old covenant is now over, for Christ as the new covenant has come; so God’s only covenant with us is the new covenant, which is Christ.
In the book of Jeremiah we see a prophecy concerning the new covenant; Jeremiah saw more than what Moses saw – he saw and prophesied concerning the new covenant, which is the covenant of life.
The ministry of Christ was a ministry of justification and life, but the ministry of Moses was of condemnation (2 Cor. 3:9).
Moses did prophesy concerning Christ, but he didn’t speak of the new covenant at all. In Jeremiah we see how God used the old covenant to expose the situation among the children of Israel, their fallen condition and situation, and then God promises a new covenant, which is of life.
Hallelujah, Christ came to enact the new covenant – which became the new testament, the will; He enacted it with His blood for the redemption of the transgressions of God’s people (Matt. 26:28; Heb. 9:15).
He died for the enactment of the new covenant, and through His blood we are redeemed. Christ died for us – He died in our stead, fulfilling the righteous requirements of God; the blood that Christ shed through His death was used to form a covenant, the new covenant.
At His Table the Lord said that the cup of the Lord’s table was a symbol of the new covenant in His blood (1 Cor. 11:25).
Hallelujah, Christ redeemed us back to God and He qualified us to inherit everything of God, which is in Christ as the embodiment of God.
The new covenant is actually Christ Himself – God gave Christ as a covenant to His people; Christ is the reality of the new testament, the new covenant – He is the reality of all that God is and all that God has given to us. Hallelujah, Christ is the new covenant!
The bequests of the new covenant are many, but all these many bequests are actually one person – Christ Himself as the Spirit (Isa. 42:6; 49:8; Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12; John 20:22; Eph. 3:8).
God bequeathed us inexhaustible bequests in the new testament, and they are for us to experience and enjoy through the Spirit for eternity (Heb. 9:15).
Hallelujah, in His resurrection Christ became all the bequests of the new testament, and He became the Mediator, the Executor, to execute the new testament (Heb. 9:15-17)!
Christ Himself is the new covenant; H’es the centrality and universality as the reality of the new testament. God gave this One, the all-inclusive and extensive Christ, to be the covenant, and in Christ we can enjoy the reality of all that God is and of all that God has given us.
We just need to enjoy Christ as the reality of the new covenant, for Christ is the new covenant given to us by God.
We can enjoy Christ because He became our justification, our righteousness, and He is the very way for us to enter into God, the reality of what God is, and the life in and by which we can enjoy God (John 14:6).
Christ is everything for us and for God; in and by Christ we can enjoy God, experience God, and even become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead, according to the new covenant.
Praise You Lord Jesus for enacting the new covenant with Your blood for the redemption of the transgressions of God’s people. Thank You for dying for us according to God’s righteous requirements, and thank You for becoming the new covenant for us to enjoy God and all that God is! Hallelujah, Christ is the new covenant given to us by God, and in Christ we can enjoy all that God is! Praise the Lord, all the rich and wonderful bequests of the new covenant are in Christ and are Christ, and Christ is the covenant of God given to us, the reality of all that God is and of all that God has given us! Lord, we come to enjoy You in our spirit as the reality of the new covenant right now!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 39 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, week 8, God’s Economy with His Dispensing in the Book of Jeremiah.
- Further reading: recommending msg. 46 from the life-study of Isaiah on the matter of the new covenant.
- Hymns on this topic:
– A better covenant, / And better promises; / A better law of life / And sacrifice this is. / Redemption’s work, done long ago, / A better blood has made it so. (Hymns #1187)
– We’re under the New Covenant, / With glorious items, three: / The law of life, spontaneous, / Transforming utterly; / We are His people, He’s our God— / Oh, bless’d reality; / We all are fully able now / To know God inwardly. (Hymns #1188)
– A better covenant was made / With Thy dear blood in heaven; / By Thee this sure new testament / To Thy redeemed was given. (Hymns #188)
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