Would you say that we are fully living in the New Covenant era? Obviously I know that Christ's death on the cross was the initiation of the New Covenant. But when I read the promise of the law being written on our hearts in Jeremiah 31, I also see that we are to expect that we have no need to "teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD." Although we have the spirit in us that allows us to desire God's law, I also know that it is truly not written on my heart in such a way that I do not daily have to remind myself to "Know the Lord".
Jeremiah 31
In other words, it seems this passage is essentially describing the new heavens and the new earth, and the glorified state in which we will exist, living in perfect communion with God. Is it wrong to say the New Covenant era in its fullness is the age to come? How does covenant theology understand this distinction, if it does at all?
Jeremiah 31
31*“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32*not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 33*For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: 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. 34*And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
In other words, it seems this passage is essentially describing the new heavens and the new earth, and the glorified state in which we will exist, living in perfect communion with God. Is it wrong to say the New Covenant era in its fullness is the age to come? How does covenant theology understand this distinction, if it does at all?