Whereas Christ's ministry is a ministry of justification, Moses' ministry was a ministry of condemnation (2 Cor. 3:9a). Therefore, in God's economy Moses' ministry is not the central line. However, without the old covenant of the law made through Moses, Jeremiah could not have exposed Israel to the uttermost. In order to expose Israel, Jeremiah often referred to the covenant of the law. Here we see that the function of the law, which is something on the negative side, is to expose our fallen condition and situation. This helps us turn to the source, to the fountain of living waters, which in the New Testament is Christ as the embodiment of God.
In chapter thirty-one Jeremiah laid the foundation of the new covenant, prophesying that God will put His law within us; that He will write His law into our mind that we may know God; that God will be our God and we will be His people; that we will not need anyone to teach us, because we will all have a teaching life within us; and that God will forgive our iniquity and remember our sins no longer. In the new covenant we enjoy the inner law of life. This law of life brings us God's person and also the divine capacity of the divine life, which can accomplish everything for God to fulfill His economy. By the inner law of life we have the capacity to know God, to live God, and even to be constituted with God in His life and nature so that we may be His corporate expression.
We need all the twenty-seven books of the New Testament to define this one short portion of Jeremiah 31. If we understand this portion in light of the entire New Testament, we will see that in this new covenant we have the church, the kingdom of God, God's household, the house of God as God's dwelling place in our spirit, the new man, and the Body of Christ as the fullness of the processed and consummated Triune God. Eventually, this new covenant will bring in the millennium. Ultimately and consummately, it will bring in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth for eternity.
Today there are many who have believed in Christ, who have received the blessing of the new covenant, and yet are not aware of the content of the new covenant and what it accomplishes and produces. Therefore, we have the burden to emphasize the new covenant again and again. May we all see the new covenant and be fully occupied with it.