Will Write My Law Their Hearts

Many Christian theologians have explained that the law that is placed in our minds and written in our hearts is related to the Holy Spirit, which leads believers to follow the selective laws that the Spirit follows them, not the whole law. This is based on an out-of-context reading of Galatians 5:18, which says, „If ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law.“ It is clear that when Galatians 5:18 is read in the full context of verses 16 and 17, it means, „If ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not among the [unrighteous desires of] the law [of the flesh].“ Many believers think that the Spirit will lead them to follow the laws that God imposes on them and writes in their hearts. Some then cease to study God`s laws through the Scriptures and follow only their own conscience, heart, and mind (5. Moses 12:8; Judges 17:6, 21:25; Proverbs 12:15; Jeremiah 17:9). Many believe that God`s laws are abolished, and if they are not, then the Holy Spirit will convince them differently. As we now live in turbulent times, it should be comforting to know that God does intervene in His children`s affairs and offers us a way to keep our covenants by touching our hearts: „And I will give them a heart, and I will put a new spirit in you; and I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh, and I will give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes, and observe my ordinances, and do them; and they shall be my people, and I shall be their God“ (Ezekiel 11:16–20). 34 And every man shall no longer teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, „Know the Lord,“ for they shall all know me, from the smallest to the greatest, saith the Lord. For I will forgive their sins, and I will remember their sins no more. (Jeremiah 31:34) This is not a word you would have expected from Jeremiah if you had known him.

Jeremiah was known as „the crying prophet“ and he was always upset about something. The message God gave him was one of judgment, the truth that God`s people were not exempt from judgment and that Jerusalem itself would be destroyed. This did not make Jeremiah popular. He ended up in prison and in a pit, and he became angry with God for giving him this job. What Jeremiah kept telling people was that sin has consequences. They could no longer disobey God`s moral law and think that nothing would happen to them. Jeremiah entered the temple and said, „You think you are safe, for this is the house of God, this is the house of God, this is the house of God. God says: If you change your ways, I will let you live here. If you start treating yourself fairly, if you take care of widows and orphans, if you give up violence and stop worshipping other things for me, then I will let you live here and you will be safe. But you are deceiving yourself! You deceive each other, lie to each other and sleep together, and then you enter my house and chant „A mighty fortress is our God.“ Go to Shiloh, where my house used to be. There`s nothing! This is what will happen here if you do not change and begin to obey me.

If you go to Jerusalem, you can see where the temple was. Twice, God used foreign armies to destroy His own home because people were just talking, not obeying. There is no temple at all in Jerusalem, only a mosque. In the Book of Mormon, King Benjamin told his people that if they want to overcome the natural man, they must become „submissive, meek, humble, patient, and loving like a child“ (Mosiah 3:19). To these childish qualities, I would add „the love of repetition“. Young children don`t just endure repetition, they thrive in it! They can eat macaroni and cheese every day of their young lives, and they can hear the same stories and sing the same songs several times in a row. Oh, how all adults had such filial faith and could flourish through the repetition of temple teachings, covenants, and ordinances performed on behalf of those beyond the veil! All my people will know me, he says – from the person with an IQ of 70 to the person with 140, from the person without influence to the leader, from the youngest to the oldest. You will all know me. Jeremiah sounds like a proto-Baptist. Everyone has the Word of God and everyone has the Spirit, so God`s people are an egalitarian people.

Or at least one day, we will be. Then they will know that I am the Lord; for I will say to them, These wounds are the wounds with which I have been wounded in the house of my friends. I was raised. I am Jesus who was crucified. I am the Son of God. (D&C 45:51–52; see Zechariah 13:6.) On that day, when God comes to establish His kingdom, that is exactly what will happen. „I will put my law in them, and I will write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people“ (31:33). The new covenant that God promised through Jeremiah contains three things. Eventually, these symbols would take on a very nuanced, Christ-centered meaning. Near the end of His mortal ministry, the Savior gathered His twelve disciples in an upper room and began to do something they had known since their youth. „When they ate, Jesus took bread, broke it, blessed it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, `Take, eat; it is in remembrance of my body, which I give you as a ransom“ (Joseph Smith Translation, Matthew 26:22). After this moment, broken bread directly referred to Christ as the Lamb and developed a new and parallel meaning to what it represented during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, namely that Christ was the Savior from sin and death.

The bread was then to represent the broken body on the cross of Calvary. In Hebrews 8:8-10 and 10:16-17 above, it is clear that Yeshua (Jesus) refers not only to the Law written in our hearts and minds in this age, but also to a much greater extent in the age to come, during His reign over the Millennium Kingdom, where no one will ask His neighbor, „Do you know the Lord?“ for all who dwell in His kingdom will know Him. The righteous saints of the first resurrection (Revelation 20:6), who are considered worthy (Luke 21:36) to enter His kingdom as firstfruits, will be cleansed from all sin (Isaiah 1:18), truly born again in regeneration (John 3:3) (Matthew 19:28; 1 Corinthians 15:51-54) and are made immortal and incorruptible. But this will be the covenant I will make with the house of Israel; After these days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inner parts, and I will write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they will be my people. For believers who want to follow Yeshua (Jesus) in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24), the Torah (law) is no longer written only on tables of stone and in the book of the Law of Moses. The law was now placed in our minds and hearts because Yeshua (Jesus) obeyed the law and showed us the way to do so, and because Yeshua (Jesus) suffered and died for us. What was once the law to be obeyed by obedience alone has become the law to be followed by the example of our Lord and Master. Furthermore, knowing the terrible sacrifice that Yeshua (Jesus) suffered on the cross to atone for our sins because we disobeyed His laws compels our minds and causes our hearts to obey all His commandments as He obeyed them (1 John 2:3-6) so as not to grieve the Holy Spirit in us (Ephesians 4:30).

What his father tells him – and what we told the children in VBS – is that this is the real secret of the stone tables: no one can fully obey God`s law because our hearts need to be changed.