We see therefore that the new covenant excels in bringing people into the image of God; bringing them into union with Christ; making them fruitful; and establishing them on the thrones of glory.

Today the Christian salvation is viewed almost entirely as the Divine plan for forgiving people and bringing them to Heaven. The potential contained in the new covenant is not understood or developed.

It is true that in the Book of Acts the primary message was forgiveness. But a careful reading of Acts will reveal that the preaching of forgiveness included repentance, that is, a turning away from the ways of the world. It appears today the stress is on "accepting Christ." Sometimes the need for doing works suitable for repentance is not even mentioned. This is an unscriptural practice.

But once people turn to Christ for salvation they should leave Acts and come into the Epistles, so to speak. There they will not find the same stress on forgiveness. Now the emphasis is on the transformed life, the life of righteousness and holiness. In our time the message is largely limited to forgiveness. Sometimes the preaching is limited to passages that speak of grace and forgiveness. To these have been added a "pre-tribulation rapture" and going to Heaven.

But look at the way Hebrews sets forth the new covenant. It does not resemble what is being preached today.

This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. (Hebrews 8:10-12—NIV)

Knowing the Lord is included along with the forgiveness of sins. But the emphasis is on putting the laws of God into the mind and writing them on the heart. The laws are put into our mind so we will understand them, and written on our heart so we will love to do them.

It is not the Law of Moses that is put in our mind and written on our heart, it is the eternal moral law of God, of which the Law of Moses is an abridged, negative, covenantal version. The Law of Moses is based on the eternal moral law: You shall love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. Such love includes both the image of God and union with God, the two parts of the fiat that have to do with what we are.

The question is, how is the law put into our mind and written on our heart?

The answer is, by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Law of the new covenant and puts Christ, the living Word, into our mind and writes Christ on our heart.

To be continued.