Jeremiah 31:33d – Regeneration in Intimate Experience

33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God… Jeremiah 31:33d, New King James Version

In his sermon "Elijah's Appeal to the Undecided," Spurgeon reflects on a differing conviction from that of his father and grandfather, in this case on infant baptism. I love them and revere them," he testifies. "Yet it is no reason why I should imitate them!"

Such as the fork in the road we come to buy the sovereignty of God in Jeremiah 31:33. God has traced in the preceding verse His ways with the forefathers of the audience he forecasts. He has been faithful both parentally and intimately. They have been faithless. God takes them through this history that they might know His ways, His heart.

Yet THEIR hearts, He says He will make new. Their minds He says He will renew. They will perceive and receive His Word, described overall as His Law differently, not as a fearsome, unapproachable standard but as an indication in all its particulars of His character, the character He is working out in them, a likeness He is faithful to complete.

Do we take our cues, Spirit-indwelt Christian, from this new nature, or from the familiar words and motions of yesterday and yesteryear? It takes, brothers and sisters, a reflective discipline, a healthy suspicion of habit, to make room for the expression of Christ the new Adam in place of the groans of the old, doomed Adam. That new nature, bold as its imposition is to take down the strongholds of the flesh in thinking and practice, it operates by subtle whispers from the Spirit of Christ, meek and lowly, His yoke gentle and light.

Our next decision, then, is an opportunity to prove we are His, to consider and celebrate this transfer of kingdoms, indeed, this new DNA of the Spirit, this certainty we have within our own experience that our hearts and minds are different. Before this audacious gift of Divine and eternal purpose to the mundane aspects of today's experience, nearly all the enemy can do is whisper that we are not different enough yet. 

 The Accuser will suggest that if this newness was real it would have proceeded apace and demolished this former fear or petulant practice. Let us, though, ignore that insidiousness and trust that Christ will complete what He has begun, that even our struggle in the initially awkward fit of the new nature is proof that we are His, for before we slid seamlessly toward Hell.

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