328. Laws in the Heart
Hebrews 8:10a For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts:….
Hebrews 10:16 This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, sainthood the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.
This promise comes from Jeremiah and is fulfilled in the times of the New Testament. Jesus made it possible for the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts by faith. It is the Spirit who is the living law of God; He is the laws in the mind and written in the hearts.
The laws of God, God’s Moral Law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, and explicated in the Sermon on the Mount, are already by nature written in the hearts of all natural men. Everyone inherently knows that there is a right and a wrong, and most people agree on the basic laws. Romans 1:15: “ They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.”
If the laws are already written on the heart of all people, what does the New Covenant do when it says God will write them in their hearts? In the New Covenant God writes the His laws in the heart. “The Law” is not essentially a new revelation of something we could not know naturally. So what is it? It is the Spirit, who gives us the ability to actually keep the law. This is the promise: not to inwardly know the law, but to do it. The Law, the conscience in the heart, has already accused us: we broke it, and we are guilty. The Gospel is the power to do the Law; the Gospel motivates by the gentle but powerful love of God.
After we acknowledge that we do not have the ability in our own flesh to do what we know to do, then we repent, believe, receive forgiveness, and begin to walk into the good works God has prepared for us. This is the promise of “written in the heart:” by faith, and by the power of the Spirit I begin to actually do the right thing, the good thing that I already know about. It is not that the New Testament believer no longer needs the Law; it is that the Law has no external power to influence compliance. But the promise is that the Gospel does have the power and ability to actually do what I want to do. We do not see how this works out, but we are told the truth: this is how it works. Hear the Gospel, and change will come. That is the promise of His “law in the mind.” “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” [Zechariah 4:6].