The first section of Jeremiah is truly staggering to read. YHWH is finished with His people and His patience is at an end…He WILL judge them and they WILL be destroyed in the death of exile. I keep waiting for the “gospel turn” but it doesn’t come…again and again and again the people are–justly–hammered into the dust of their idolatries. They will be left broken “so that [they] can never be mended” (Jer.19:11).
I read that verse today about “never being mended” and looked it up in Hebrew to discover that the word for “mended” is the same word for healed. This, in turn, took me to Jeremiah 30:11 where the Lord says, in no uncertain terms, that His people are wounded so that they cannot be healed…..it would seem that the condemnation is final and irreversible.
“Your hurt is incurable, and your wound grievous. There is…no healing for you.”
But–and, praise God, the joyful and blood-bought turn to good always comes–But, even though the wound cannot be healed….In Jeremiah 30:17, we read that the Lord Himself will heal it:
“…I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal…”
Just think of the implications of these two statements, especially coming in the same chapter…..the Lord WILL heal what cannot be healed. He WILL cure what is incurable. Now, that doesn’t mean the exile won’t come, it doesn’t mean horrors won’t befall His covenant people, it doesn’t mean the city won’t be destroyed (indeed, all of those things DO happen), but–in the end–He Himself will cure the incurable wound of godlessness that festers in the heart of His (and of all) people.
And how will He do it?
“I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel…I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people…they shall know me…For I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”
– Jeremiah 21:31-34
The incurable will be cured under the “New Covenant”–a covenant that we know has been inaugurated and secured by the blood of the incarnate Son of God (Luke 22:20).
When the Beloved Son pours out His covenantal blood on the cross, He becomes incurable….He is wounded beyond healing….He is shattered so that He can never be mended. And then three days later, He IS mended, He IS healed, He IS cured, He IS risen from the dead, never to die again. And by this great New Covenant reversal, ALL who trust in Him are–beyond ALL hope–cured, healed, and mended.
“By His wounds, you have been healed.”
– 1 Peter 2:24
