Jeremiah 31:34

For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. [Jeremiah 31:31-34] Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

He hath changed sunset into sunrise, and through the cross brought death to life; and having wrenched man from destruction, He hath raised him to the skies, transplanting mortality into immortality, and translating earth to heaven-He, the husbandman of God, "Pointing out the favourable signs and rousing the nations to good works, putting them in mind of the true sustenance;" having bestowed on us the truly great, divine, and inalienable inheritance of the Father, deifying man by heavenly teaching, putting His laws into our minds, and writing them on our hearts. What laws does He inscribe? "That all shall know God, from small to great;" and, "I will be merciful to them," says God, "and will not remember their sins." Let us receive the laws of life, let us comply with God's expostulations; let us become acquainted with Him, that He may be gracious.

To show the rapidity of the change and the facility with which they would embrace Christ’s teaching, the prophet went on to say, “And they shall no more teach everyone his neighbor and everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.” On his coming, Christ would also pardon the transgressions of all people and no more remember their sins. What could be clearer than this? By these predictions the prophet revealed the calling of the Gentiles, the superiority of the new law over the old law, the ease of access, the grace possessed by those who have believed and the gift given in baptism.

Consider how easy it is for people to obey. For Jeremiah said, “They shall no more teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying: ‘Know the Lord.’ For all men will know me from the least of them to the greatest.” And Isaiah showed how indestructible the Church would be. “For in the last days the mountain of the Lord will be conspicuous, and the house of the Lord will be on top of the mountains and will be exalted above the hills. And to this mountaintop will come many peoples and many nations.”

Let me beg you to consider then this simple and single-hearted person and take notice of him in the affairs of life, and you will see him a pattern of the utmost scrupulousness, such that if he would have shown it in spiritual matters he would not have been overlooked. The facts of the truth are clearer than the sun. And wherever a person may go, he might easily lay hold of his own salvation, if he wanted to, that is, to be obedient and not to look on this as a byproduct. For were these events confined to Palestine or to a little corner of the world? Didn’t you hear the prophet say, “All shall know me, from the least even to the greatest”?

In Jeremiah, we read concerning the future kingdom …, “They shall all know me, from the least to the greatest of them.” The context of this passage clearly shows that the prophet is describing the future kingdom. But how can there possibly be in it a least or greatest, if all are to be equal? The secret is disclosed in the Gospel: “Whoever shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever shall teach and not do shall be least.”

If we are asked why we do not worship God as the Hebrew ancestors of the Old Testament worshiped him, we reply that God has taught us differently by the New Testament fathers, and yet not in opposition to the Old Testament, but as that Testament itself predicted. For it is thus foretold by the prophet Jeremiah … that that covenant would not continue but that there would be a new one. And to the objection that we do not belong to the house of Israel or to the house of Judah, we answer according to the teaching of the apostle, who calls Christ the seed of Abraham and says to us, as belonging to Christ’s body, “Therefore you are Abraham’s seed.”

You do not say, “Let man be made,” but, “Let us make man.” Nor do you say, “after his kind,” but after “our image” and “likeness.” Because, being renewed in his mind and beholding and apprehending your truth, a person does not need another person as his director so that he may imitate his own kind. By your direction he proves what your good, acceptable and perfect will is. You teach him—now that he has been made capable—to perceive the Trinity of the Unity and the Unity of the Trinity. Therefore this being said in the plural, “Let us make man,” it is yet followed by the phrase in the singular, “and God made man.” This is said in the plural, “after our likeness,” followed by the phrase in the singular, “after the image of God.” Thus humankind is renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of him who created them. Being made spiritual, he judges all things—all things that are to be judged—“yet he himself is judged by no mortal.”

Obviously, those who have heard the gospel and refused to believe are all the more inexcusable than if they had not listened to any preaching of the truth. But it is certain that in God’s foreknowledge they were not children of Abraham and were not reckoned among the number of them of whom it is said, “In your seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed.” He promised them the faith when he said, “And no one shall teach his neighbor and no one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ For all shall know me, from the small among them even to the great.” He promised them pardon when he said, “I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” He promised them an obedient heart when he said, “I will give them another heart and another way, that they may fear me all days.” He promised them perseverance when he said, “I will give my fear in their heart, that they may not revolt from me, and I will visit them, that I may make them good.” Finally, to all without exception he promised the faith when he said, “I have sworn by myself, justice alone shall go out of my mouth, and my words shall not be turned away. Every knee shall be bowed to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”

The adulterous woman whom the law prescribed to be stoned was set free by him with truth and grace when the avengers of the law, frightened with the state of their own conscience, had left the trembling guilty woman to the judgment of him who had come “to seek and save what was lost.” For that reason he, bowing down—that is, stooping down to our human level and intent on the work of our reformation—“wrote with his finger on the ground,” in order to repeal the law of the commandments with the decrees of his grace and to reveal himself as the One who had said, “I will give my laws in their understanding, and I will write them in their hearts.” This indeed he does every day when he infuses his will into the hearts of those who are called and when with the pen of the Holy Spirit the Truth mercifully rewrites on the pages of their souls all that the devil enviously falsified.

The future life achieves the fulfillment of these words. In that life we shall no longer need instruction from one another, since everything will be patently obvious. Sufferings will be at an end, bodies will be incorruptible, souls will be immune to change. Now it is customary with the divine Scripture to mix prophecies together. It connects prophecies about his repeated call to Israel with those about the captivity, and the Lord in the sacred Gospels cites at the one time the sayings about Jerusalem and those about the consummation.

The teachers of the Word come and go, and others follow in the succession of those who pass away. But the sacred Scripture remains for all time without ever being abolished, until the time when the Lord shall appear at the end of the world. Then we shall have no further need for the Scriptures or for those who interpret them, since there will be a long-awaited fulfillment of that promise of the Lord that says, “And they shall not teach their neighbor and brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”