Sanctification. Heb. 10:15–18. (112)
“For after that He had said before” (v. 15). “This is the covenant that I will make with them.” “I will put My laws into their hearts” etc. These Divine mercies of God’s putting His laws into our hearts and forgiving our sins, are the immediate fruits of Christ’s sacrifice, but more remotely, are the fulfillment of God’s covenant-promises unto the Mediator. The everlasting covenant which God made with Christ is the ground of all the good which He does to His people. The “new covenant” of Jer. 31:31, so called not because it was new made… it was made with the elect in Christ their Head from all eternity (Tit. 1:1, 2); nor as newly revealed, for… it is so referred to in distinction from the former administration of it, which had waxen old and vanished away. It is also called because of the “new heart,” “new spirit,” “new song” which it bestows, and because of new ordinances (baptism and the Lord’s supper) which have displaced the old ones of circumcision because its vigor and efficacy are perpetual; it will never be antiquated or give place to another.
- “I will put My law into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them” (v. 16). This is for those whom He eternally set apart Eph. 1:4, those whom He gave to the Mediator Jn. 17:6, those for whom Christ died: “whom He did predestinate, those He also called” Rom. 8:30. When Adam left the Creator’s hands the law of God was in his heart, he was endowed with all sorts of holy properties, instincts and inclinations unto whatsoever God did command. That was the “law” of the nature of his heart. The laws of God in Adam were the original nature, or constitution of His spirit and soul, as it is the law of nature in beasts to love their young, and of birds to build their nests. “It was an inward law put into his heart, the equipment for the discharging of his responsibility. It was real, lively, and spiritual dispositions, and inclinations in his will and affections, carrying him on to what was so directed, as to pray, love God, and fear Him; to seek His glory in a spiritual and holy manner. They were inward abilities suited to every duty” (T. Goodwin, Volume 6, p. 402). The external command of Gen. 2:17 was designed as the test of his responsibility. Ps. 40:8 says, “Thy law is within My heart,” and Rom. 5:14 declares that Adam was “the figure of Him that was to come.” Rom. 2:14 says the Gentiles “do by nature the things contained in the law”: their very conscience tells them that immorality and murder are crimes. Thus, in the “nature” of Adam, we have the shadow of it in the hearts of all men.
- Alas, Adam fell, and the consequence was that his heart was corrupted, his very “nature” vitiated, so that the things he once loved he now hated. Thus it is with all of his fallen descendants: being “alienated from the life of God through the ignorance…” Eph. 4:18 their carnal mind “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” Rom. 8:7. Instead of that holy “nature”, man is now in-dwelt and dominated by sin; hence, Rom. 7:23 teaches “the law of sin and death” rules in our members Rom. 8:2. And thus it is that in Jer. 17:1 (as the opposite of Heb. 10:16) sin and corruption in the heart is said to be “written with a pen of iron, with the point of a diamond.”
- Now in regeneration and sanctification the “image” of God, after which Adam was originally created, is again stamped upon the soul: see Col. 3:10; the laws of God are written on the Christian’s heart, so that it becomes his very “nature” to serve, obey, please, honor, and glorify God. It is termed the “law of the mind” Rom. 7:23, for the mind is now regulated by the authority of God and turns as instinctively to Him. Thus, the renewed heart “delights in the law of God” Rom. 7:22, and “serves the law of God” Rom. 7:25, it being its very “nature” so to do. This wondrous change is here attributed directly and absolutely to God: “I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.” It is an invincible and miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit, which thoroughly transforms the favored subjects to it. None but the Almighty can repair the awful damage which the Fall wrought, counteract the dreadful power of sin, deliver the heart from the lusts of the flesh, the thraldom of the world, the bondage of Satan, and rewrite upon it His holy law, so that He will be loved supremely and served sincerely and gladly. God subdues and largely remove the enmity of the natural heart against Him and his law, which subduing is figuratively spoken of as a circumcising of the heart (Deut. 30:6) and a “taking away the stony heart” (Ezek. 36:26). He also implants the principle of obedience to His law, which is figuratively referred to as the giving of “an heart of flesh” and the “writing of His laws upon the heart.” Pink Arthur W.
