Good Morning Friends,
“This is the covenant I will make with the
house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their
minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my
people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying,
‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the
greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no
more.” (Hebrews 8:10-12)
Through Jesus Christ, God has entered into a
new agreement with men. This new agreement is not like the old agreement.
The old agreement was based on laws written
on tablets of stone, externally imposed and externally enforced. The new
agreement is based on what God does within man, a relationship in which He puts
His law into our hearts by the presence of His own Spirit. It’s not externally
imposed, it is internally implanted. And it’s not externally enforced, but
internally developed.
The old agreement was an inadequate way in
which to know God. What could be known about Him was revealed in stories and
writings that could be taught and learned. In the new agreement, God is not
made known to us just by stories and writings to be studied and taught and
learned. He reveals Himself through His Son and He reveals Himself through His
indwelling presence by the Spirit. It is not knowledge reserved for the priests
or those “in the know”, but shared by all who are His disciples.
In the old agreement, sins were rolled back
from year to year. They had to be covered over by sacrifices made continually,
day after day, year after year. But in the new agreement, sins have been dealt
with once and for all. Forgiveness is not daily, but complete in the cross.
Sins are not rolled back, but completely taken away and forgotten.
Thank God for the new era of Jesus, marked by
God’s indwelling presence by His Spirit and by God’s forgiveness, completed at
the cross.
His, by Grace,
Steve
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