Jeremiah 31:33 “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

I think we lose sight of what it means that God is a Covenant God. He doesn’t do things on a whim, but rather lays things out clearly. Man, on the other hand, is about as reliable as a weed in the breeze, which is an image that is used repeatedly in the Bible. God laid things out clearly through Moses, expressing in very concrete terms what was good and what was not, the benefits of being in right relationship with Him and the consequences of rebelling against Him, and we took it all lightly, desiring the blessings but feeling entitled to them, minimizing or ignoring in our minds the consequences of rebellion. That’s why God chose a different tactic, no longer depending on an external set of rules, but instead writing His rules in our heart. In our perverseness we again tried to flip that, saying, “Whatever is in my heart is right and true,” forgetting that “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) That’s why the current fad of “my truth” and “your truth” is such a total crock of baloney. God writes His law in our heart if we will receive it, not if we deny it and pretend to be the ultimate authority in all things. The situation is so dire that God had to send His Son to take the penalty for our rebellion, but again, we have to accept His sacrifice as taking the penalty we deserved, and not as something to which we were entitled regardless. In English we lose an opportunity to understand this situation by calling the parts of the Bible “Old Testament” and “New Testament,” because modern English has forgotten the meaning of “covenant” that “testament” originally had. In Japanese, the word for “covenant” is the same as “contract,” and the characters used to write it include the one used for “testament” in speaking of the Bible. The fact that the New Covenant frees us from legalism has made some people run off into libertinism, “if it feels good, do it,” but even Paul had to deal with that. He wrote extensively about it, including the famous statement, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Romans 6:1-2) However, he also wrote a whole letter, Galatians, to counter the evils of legalism, of thinking we can be saved by our own efforts. As he wrote to the Ephesians, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) Last year our verse for the year was the one after that, speaking of all the things God has planned for us to do, but it all starts from accepting the contract God has laid out for us, signing it with the blood of His Son, just as Jesus said when He instituted Communion just before His crucifixion.

Wow! This is deep indeed. I need to understand that I am under contract, and I need to communicate that understanding to the believers. Thankfully, it is God who writes it on our hearts, just as He says here, by His Spirit. I need to be transparent so that people will be able to read what is written on my heart, and I need to encourage the believers to be likewise. If we will do that, then the people around us will become hungry and thirsty for what they see we have, and many will be brought out of darkness into light.

Father, thank You for the privilege of baptizing someone yesterday into whom I planted the seed of the Gospel over 10 years ago. He hasn’t even been in contact for most of that interval, so I had nothing to do with the watering, but You brought the increase and the harvest. I do pray that he would grasp indeed what You have done for him, to walk in the fullness of the New Covenant as a shining witness, for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!