Scripture: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their hearts will I write it."— JER. xxxi. 31, 33.
When God made the first covenant with Israel at Sinai, He said, "If ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me from among all peoples" (Ex. xix. 5). But Israel, alas, had not the power to obey. Their whole nature was carnal and sinful. In the covenant there was no provision for the grace that should make them obedient. The law only served to show them their sin.
In our text God promises to make a new covenant in which provision would be made to enable men to live a life of obedience. In this new covenant, the law was to be put in their inward parts and written in their heart, "not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God," so that they could say to David: I delight to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within my heart." The law, and delight in it, would, through the Holy Spirit, take possession of the inner life with all its powers. Or, as we have it in Jer. xxxii. 40, after God had said: "Is there anything too hard for Me?": "I will make an everlasting covenant with them; and I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me."
In contrast with the Old Testament and its weakness, which made it impossible to continue faithful, this promise ensures a continual, whole-hearted obedience as the mark of the believer who takes God at His Word, and fully claims what the promise secures.
Learn the lesson that in the new covenant God's mighty power will be shown in the heart of everyone who believes the promise: "They shall not depart from Me." "It shall be even so as it hath been spoken unto Me." Bow in deep stillness before God, and believe what He says. The measure of our experience of this power of God keeping us from departing from Him will ever be in harmony with the law: "According to your faith be it unto you."
We need to be at great pains to keep the contrast between the Old and the New Testament very clear. The Old had a wonderful measure of grace, but not enough for the continual abiding in the faith of obedience. That is the definite promise of the New Testament, the fruit of heart renewal and the power of the Holy Spirit leading the soul and revealing the fulness of grace to keep us "unblameable in holiness."
