Hebrews 8:10 tells us, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.”
If we want the Lord to be our God, we must be His people. We cannot serve the world and claim that the Lord is our God.
When God’s grace has written his laws upon the heart, there is not only a bent and determination to do the will of God, but there is a constant endeavor to act upon His will. It is not legalistic adherence to the law, but is motivated by a desire to do what is pleasing to the Lord.
We read what obedience to the gospel is in Philippians 3:12-14, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
In Romans 7:24 we see how the Apostle Paul mourned over his sin, when he asks, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
We see that the deliverance is in Christ—that is what makes Christ so precious. The more we see our shortcomings, the more we see how impossible it is from our side to be perfect, to do what is perfectly right in the eyes of the Lord. The harder we try, the more we realize we come so short.
Then Christ is precious to us, and we can say with the apostle in verse 25, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” This is what makes Christ so precious.
