“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, 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. 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. 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.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34 ESV)
Have the words of God’s law written on your heart? Did it hurt?
People ask me when they see my tattoos if they are real? And I say yes they are real. Then they ask, “Did they hurt?” Uhm, a little needle went in and out of my flesh really fast over and over again. YES it hurt. And yes I would do it again. (Or should that be will do it again…)
Sometimes things hurt. Even figurative things… The cartoon has Jerry asking if God writing His law on our heart is going to be figurative. I thought it appropriate that God replies to Jerry, “Jerry you are cramping my style.” But I always wonder as I read this, if this has happened why are we still teaching each other about God, why don’t we just get it? If God’s law is written on my heart, why do I always seem to get it wrong or muck it up?
See and there in lies the problem. THis equation above is all about me. And none of this is about me. It is about God. God said He would write His law upon our hearts and no more would we have to say know the Lord. He finished this section with “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” You see it is not about us but God. It is not about us getting it right, it is about God forgiving our wrongs and remembering them no more.
We get so hung up on our doing the right thing, following the code, that we can not see the grace for the law. We can not see the gift for the set of rules we have to follow that we can not even get right what the rules actually are. We are hung up on us, and me, that we can not let God be God and give us the grace He wants to give us.
So believe that His law is written on your heart, but believe even more that the grace He has given you covers your iniquity, and He has forgiven them and remembers them no more!
aSacredRebel 