God established the New Covenant through Jesus Christ. His blood provided a new way of relating to God (1 Cor. 11:25). God wanted a love relationship with man, an abiding fellowship with each of His children. The Old Covenant (the law) couldn’t bring about a heart change, and God is interested in our hearts. In Ezekiel 36:26-28 God tells about His plan of the New Covenant: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Sprit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Then…you shall be My people, and I will be your God.”
We experience this as Christians when we get saved, that we have new desires within our heart that were never there before. Desires to know God more, or read the Bible, or go to church, or help someone around us. These are because the Lord puts a new heart within us, that changes us from the inside out. He puts a new spirit within us, His Spirit within us, so that now we are alive to spiritual things. Our eyes are open spiritually. 2 Corinthians 3:14 explains that “the veil is taken away in Christ.”
Now, through Christ, each of us can have a personal relationship with God. In fact, as a person grows in Christ, he or she becomes a living epistle to those around them (2 Corinthians 3:3). Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” The word Paul uses there for “workmanship” is the Greek word poiema, which is where our word for poem comes from.
Isn’t that neat to think about? As we live in relationship with Christ and walk in the New Covenant, the Lord actually molds and shapes our hearts into His poem.
As Christians, we want our lives to reflect the Word, but we can’t do that through a set of legalistic laws and rules. We can’t do it in our own effort–and that is good news!
“And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. (Col 2:13-14).”
The list of requirements against us is gone! The old self is dead and gone! Now, we are “alive together with Him,” and His Spirit is crafting our lives into a poem that glorifies Him.
Under the Old Testament law, Israel was a shining example of God’s holiness to the dark and depraved nations around them. His glory would often rest upon them in a supernatural, visible way. But 2 Corinthians says that our ministry is more glorious! We each have the Spirit inside of us!
My personal relationship with the Lord can reveal Him to the world, not because I lived up to the “letter of the law,” but because of His glorious, supernatural work in my heart.