Jeremiah 31:31
Jeremiah 31:3131Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the new covenant announced in is between Jehovah and "spiritual Israel" — the 144,000 anointed class — with Jesus as its mediator. The millions of Witnesses in the "great crowd" are not parties to this covenant. The Watchtower parallels them with "alien residents" under the old covenant who received blessings without full membership. The 2010 publication God's Word For Us Through Jeremiah (p. 173) reaffirms: "The new covenant is between Jehovah God and spiritual Israel, with Jesus as its Mediator." This restriction underpins the denial of the Memorial emblems to ordinary Witnesses, since the cup represents the new covenant blood (). JWs also read 's "they will all know me" as a purely future promise for the anointed remnant, deferring the verse when it would dismantle the organisational teaching channel.
Protestants read as the foundational prophecy of a covenant that includes the whole people of God. The covenant is made with "the house of Israel and the house of Judah" — the entire nation, not an elite subset. The subsequent verses (vv. 33-34) describe its comprehensive scope: God will write his law on every heart, they will all know him "from the least to the greatest," and he will forgive their sins. The phrase "from the least to the greatest" explicitly rules out a two-tier system. quotes in full and applies it to the present church age, declaring the old covenant "obsolete" (). The Reformed inaugurated-eschatology framework recognises that the new covenant has been inaugurated in Christ but awaits its consummation at his return. The "already" dimension — the Spirit indwelling every believer (), direct priestly access (), the priesthood of all believers () — is sufficient to dismantle any claim that one organisation holds a monopoly on mediating God's truth. The new covenant's stated purpose is forgiveness of sins; excluding anyone from the covenant excludes them from the forgiveness it provides.