You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
II Corinthians 3:2-6 NIV
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” Ezekiel 36:26-27 NIV
As we spend time reading and studying the Bible, we begin to see connections. I love the connections I see between the promises given in the Old Testament and the fulfillment of those promises in the New Testament. Do you notice some of the same language in both the II Corinthians text and the Ezekiel verses above? Hebrews 8 and Jeremiah 31:31-34 are two more places where this same covenant is promised in Jeremiah and the fulfillment is explained in Hebrews.
“And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws,” Ezekiel 36:27. If you notice, this does not say: “if you try harder, work harder, push yourself to exhaustion, travel to every pilgrimage site, deprive yourself; then you will be able to obey me.” No, what it does promise is: God himself will put His Spirit, The Holy Spirit, in us! Then, with the Holy Spirit in us, He will move us to follow God’s decrees; He will give us the power, the ability, the knowledge, the endurance necessary to be able to obey God. Amazing!
If we try to live the Christian life by striving, by trying to follow every rule, every command in our own strength, we will at some point realize we simply are not able to do it. We will fail, and we will fail again. But that is not what God desires. That is not what God designed. He promised to put His Spirit in us so His Spirit would move us to follow His decrees and to keep His laws. It comes down to surrender, it comes down to allowing the Spirit to move and work in our lives, and each of us being willing and available to be used by Him in that way. Then the power of the Holy Spirit can move, can work, can flow through each of us to impact the world and the people around us. Hallelujah!
by Grace Hunter
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