“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” (Jeremiah 31:33 ESV).
God told the prophet Jeremiah of a new covenant that He would make with His people in the future. They had broken the old covenant that had been given through Moses. And during Jeremiah’s day, the Lord gave Jerusalem over to the Babylonians for destruction. For the old covenant was conditional and they had not kept it. The law was good, but it was unable to empower them to keep it.
The future that Jeremiah prophesied of is now. The new covenant in Christ Jesus is greater than the old. For Christ kept the law that humanity couldn’t and died the death that their sins deserved. Now the law once written on stone tablets is written by grace through faith on the hearts of those who have believed and received the righteousness of Christ.
What the law couldn’t do, Christ did. As the apostle Paul told the Romans, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4).
PRAYER: Dear Father, thank You for the new covenant we have in Christ Jesus. For You have written Your law on our hearts and by Your Spirit we are empowered to do Your will. Help us to walk according to the Spirit today. In Jesus’ name, amen.