The Law of God Written in the Heart.
By Daniel T. Bourdeau
“I WILL put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts,” or minds. Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:8-12. This is one of the better promises of the new covenant. It relates to a law that was in existence in Jeremiah’s time. This cannot be the typical law; for that law ceased at the cross. The law in question must therefore be the law of right and wrong as embodied in the ten commandments, which remains unaffected by the change of dispensations. See Matt. 5:17-19; Rom. 3:31, etc. The Spirit of God was to be the great agent that was to accomplish this work; but that Spirit was to work through principles and motives; and there is no motive which the Holy Spirit has used more mightily in writing the law of God in the hearts of men under this dispensation than that growing out of the fact that Christ died for our sins, or transgressions of the law, John 3:4, receiving the very blows that our sins deserved, because the law could not be changed or abolished. The agonizing prayers of Jesus in the garden, the drops of sweat that there fell from his sacred person as the sins of the whole world rested upon him, the abuses that he received from his enemies in the trial that followed, and his sufferings upon the cross while his precious blood flowed freely from his head, his hands, and his feet, speak a thousand times more distinctly to the quickened conscience in favor of the law of God, than the voice that spoke from Sinai, telling us that Christ resisted unto blood, yea, unto death in striving, not against the law, but against sin, the transgression of the law. And remember, dear reader, that the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is a part of this law. Hence it is, that even at the close of this dispensation it is to be put or written in the foreheads or minds of the servants of God, as the seal or sign of the living God. Rev. 7:1-3; 6:12-17; 14:1; Eze. 20:12, 20; Ex. 31:17, etc. On the term seal in Rev. 7:2, see different versions, some of which render the original word seal, others sign, and others mark—seal, sign, and mark being convertible terms. Since, then, our sins have cost the Son of God such cruel sufferings, how careful we ought to be to avoid sinning, by keeping the law of God through gratitude and love for him who died for us. D. T. BOURDEAU.