When confronted with the gospel of Jesus Christ, a friend of mine responded that he led a good life and that he didn’t really need a savior. Dared then to go one day without sinning, my friend eagerly accepted the challenge! He didn’t last one hour. He needed a savior. And he knew it.
I’m grateful that my friend was honest with himself about his heart. Truth be told, in that one hour, he probably only glimpsed the surface of his sin, for, as Jeremiah mused, who can begin know the heart or the depths of the evils we harbor there? When we think of all the destructive words we’ve spoken and harmful things we’ve done – all proceeding from our hearts – we cringe. To think further about the inner thoughts that we dared not act upon or give voice to is just overwhelming. We need a savior. And we know it.
So where better for God to establish his new covenant but on our hearts? As they say, “Put the medicine where the hurt is!” Through Jeremiah, God said, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33 )” And so he has! Paul describes Christians as “a letter from Christ ... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Corinthians 3:3)”
Make no mistake about it, sin still lurks in our flesh – our sinful nature – that self-willed part of us that seeks to live life on our own terms and not God’s. But the Spirit of Christ lives in us, too! And he empowers us to choose his ways, which are written on our hearts.
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” – The Emmaus disciples
[To see the daily reading in Jeremiah 17:1-10, click here.]
No comments:
Post a Comment