For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Hebrews 8:10
Above, quoting from Jeremiah 31:31-34, the writer of Hebrews describes the New Covenant. The Old Covenant was all patently external. Its laws were written on stone (Ex.32:15-16). No internal power was there to help man live them out. The Old Covenant was predicated on man’s ability to keep the law. The New Covenant is predicated not on what we accomplish or upon our faithfulness, but what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross and the faithfulness of God.
Consider this as illustration–– Dr. Christian Barnard, the first surgeon to ever do a heart transplant, impulsively asked on of his patients, Dr. Philip Blaiberg, “Would you like to see your old heart?” On a subsequent appointment, the men stood at a room of the Groote Schuur Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dr. Barnard went to a cabinet, took down a specialized, transparent container and handed it to Dr. Blaiberg. Inside that container was Blaiberg’s old heart. He gazed in stunned silence–– the first man in history ever to hold his own heart in his hands. Finally, he spoke and plied Dr. Barnard with technical questions. Content, he turned to take a final study at the container and contents within, and said, “So this is my old heart that caused me so much trouble.” He handed it back, turned away and left it, never to see it again.
This is in essence, what Christ does. We still have the same heart, but it is radically new as God is working in our hearts. He is changing our desires from within. We still have some of our old struggles, and yet we now rather, and long for the things of the Spirit. And a life controlled by Him. The result is noting shy of glorious as we are evidence of God’s intimate and personal relationship with us. This is fulfillment of what Jeremiah wrote, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
It is always good to be reminded of the wonderful truth of II Corinthians 5:17:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
Now all things are of God…”
Once more, this time from Phillips:
“For if a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogether––
the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new.
All this is God’s doing…”
Maranatha!