The heart is used figuratively in the Bible as man’s moral, emotional and sometimes intellectual center. Jesus said emphatically in Mt.22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind”. Jesus was quoting De.6:5 of the Old Covenant (OC). In this topic, we’ll look at the Old Covenant and the New Covenant (NC), in relation to the heart.
Our Bible forms an integrated whole, a standard for the church. 2Ti.3:16 all scripture is given by the inspiration of God. Yet Christians and others overlook some of God’s (enduring) principles, because they were cited in the OC. Many speak of the OC with disdain, not considering that moral principles therein were evident in Genesis for gentiles…and that was before there ever was a nation of Israel or an OC! see the topics, “Added in the Old Covenant” and “Genesis Principles Predate Moses”.
Most of ancient Israel didn’t like the laws of God. Neither do some NC Christians. In that regard, it seems these Christians somewhat resemble the mindset of OC Israelites/Jews! They dislike, or ignore, or may even be hostile towards some of God’s written laws (purposed for the good of society)!
There is only One true Lawgiver. Ja.4:12 “There is one Lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy.” God the Lawgiver had His morality and justice recorded for humanity and the Kingdom of God!
But from the beginning, man opted to establish his own laws and ways, thinking that man of himself innately knows right from wrong. But a just determination of good & evil is a prerogative solely of God the Lawgiver, not man. If man tries to ascertain what’s good vs evil on his own, he does so from the wrong tree of the knowledge of good & evil. ref Ge.3:3-6. (see “Tree Symbolism in Scripture”.)
God’s theocracy of ancient Israel was given His just laws. Moses asked the rhetorical question in De.4:7. “What great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God?” None. No other nation on the face of the earth! Old Testament (OT) Israel was given God’s very own principles of morality and His commandments. Le.22:31 “You shall keep My commandments and do them; I Am the Lord.” God isn’t unfair. He didn’t require the ancient nation He loved to do that which wasn’t doable! God’s commandments are doable! But their heart wasn’t in it.
Who specifically gave God’s divine laws to Moses/Israel? Jesus said that no human in OT times had heard Father God’s voice or seen His form. ref Jn.1:1, 14, 18, 5:37, 6:46. John indicated it was Jesus the Word of God who the Jewish prophet Isaiah had seen in vision on the Throne! (cf. Is.6:1-ff with Jn.12:41-44.) De.32:3-4 “Ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock! His work is perfect.” The Rock of Israel, who went with them in the wilderness…“That Rock was Christ”, according to Paul (1Co.10:4)! It was Christ who’d personally visited Abraham (Gen.18). It was Christ who spoke to Moses, gave Israel the Decalogue (Ex.20), and then established the OC (ref Ex.24:1-8). Moses and the elders of Israel saw the preincarnate Christ (Ex.24:9-12)! also ref the topic “Jesus Was The Old Testament God”.
Orthodox Study Bible, p.652, quotes church historian Eusebius writing about OT saints. “It is obvious that they knew God’s Christ Himself, since He appeared to Abraham, instructed Isaac, spoke to Jacob, conversed freely with Moses and the Prophets who came later.” Christ/the Word was the God who spoke with mankind in the OT! And He.13:8…“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
During their OT history, Israel rebelled against Christ the Lord and His laws, and later corrupted God’s precepts with their own man-made religious traditions. Je.17:9 “The heart of man is deceitful above all, and corrupt.” The human heart is deceitful. Most of ancient Israel didn’t have the Holy Spirit (HS). So under the OC, the HS wasn’t impressing God’s principles on their hearts. The last verse of the book of Judges sums it up. Jg.21:25 “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Apart from God’s laws, man does what seems right in their own conscience or circumstances…an ancient form of humanism.
(Some Christians seem to do this too, yet may attribute their actions to the HS leading them…as if Christ or the HS isn’t consistent, and contradicts God’s written word or moral principles from the OT!)
As a result, God sent disobedient Israel and Judah into captivity…for bloodshed, idolatry, incest, usury, sabbath-breaking, oppressing the weak, etc. (ref Ezk.22:1-16). The law of God wasn’t in their heart.
Some from the southern kingdom of Judah later returned to the Holy Land. These Jews wrote selected OT verses in small boxes or phylácteries. They literally strapped them to the arm & forehead. De.6:4-9 “Hear O Israel! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. These words shall be on your heart. And you shall bind them on your hand.” But their literal practice became a pretense; they did it mostly to impress others. Jesus said in Mt.23:2-5, “The scribes and Pharisees…do all their deeds to be noticed by men, for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.” (De.6:8 a literal physical binding of scriptures in phylactery or téfillin boxes wasn’t the meaning of the verses anyway. For example, Pr.3:3 & 7:2-3, “binding” God’s commandments on necks, fingers and hearts…was metaphorical only, not to be taken literally. They weren’t to tie them onto the fingers!)
Jesus called them hypocrites (or stage actors) in Mk.7:6. “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.” Most Jews who returned from captivity didn’t “write” upon their hearts the principles of God, which Christ and the HS had given Moses. Jesus accused Jews who opposed Him in Jn.7:19. “None of you carries out the Law.” They disliked Christ’s OT laws. Those Jews considered God’s written commandments a burden. But 1Jn.5:3 “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” According to John, real love involves keeping God’s commandments…and they’re not a burden! (see “Love – Godly Love”.)
However, there was a minority of OC Israelites who honored and even loved God’s written principles, and desired to obey them. King David was such a man. Ac.13:22 (quoting 1Sm.13:14) David is called “a man after God’s own heart”! 1Ki.11:34 “David observed My commandments and My statutes.” Only in the matter of Bathsheba/Uriah did David turn aside from what God commanded him. 1Ki.15:5 “David did what was right in the sight of the Lord.” David made mistakes, a few very serious, but his overall intent was to obey the Lord. [Note: Mic.5:2 is a prophecy of Bethlehem, David’s birthplace (1Sm.20:6, 17:58) and Jesus’ birthplace. Lk.2:4 the family ancestry was there. Mt.9:27 Jesus is the son of David!]
David’s name appears over 1,100 times in the Bible. Interestingly, both the first and the final name mentioned in the New Testament (NT), except for “Jesus”…is “David” (in Mt.1:1 and Re.22:16)!
In some respects, David was a forerunner of real NC Christians! 1Sm.16:13 the HS was mightily on David from that day when Samuel anointed him! Jesus said in Mk.12:35-36, “David himself said in the Holy Spirit….” The following two verses, written by David, reflect how he viewed Christ’s principles and laws: Ps.19:7-8 “The law of the Lord is perfect”. Ps.40:8 “Thy law [toráh Strongs h8451, Hebrew] is within my heart.” The HS figuratively wrote God’s laws on David’s heart.
Therefore we might call David a prototype of He.8:8-11 (prophesied in Je.31:33-34). “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel’, says the Lord. ‘I will put My laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. All shall know Me.” In the NC, God writes His laws upon human hearts.
God made the NC with Israel and Judah…other Christians are grafted-in, according to Paul. ref Ro.11:13, 17, 23-27 all of ‘spiritual’ Israel will be saved, via the NC (not via Judaism). As God’s laws are being written on our hearts in the inner man, we shouldn’t habitually sin. We should be able to say with David, “Thy law is in my heart” (Ps.40:8).
Similar to Je.31:33 (Je.38:33 LXX), is Ezk.36:26-27. “I will give you a new heart…I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and observe My ordinances.” Real Spirit-filled Christians allow God to write His laws and principles on their hearts & minds! The apostle Paul said in Ro.3:31 e.g., “Do we nullify the Law through faith? God forbid! We establish the Law”.
David wrote of the righteous man in Ps.37:31. “The law of God is in his heart; his steps do not slide.” David, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Paul essentially are saying the same thing in the verses quoted. Paul wrote in Ro.7:12-14, “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just and good. We know that the law is spiritual.” Yes, the Holy Spirit had given it to Moses. Paul goes on in v.22-25, “I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man….I myself with my mind am serving the law of God.” According to the NC (He.8:10), God was writing His laws upon the apostles’ minds and hearts too. 2Co.3:3 Christ’s moral laws are no longer written on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.
Other ways of describing the heart on which God can write His laws are…a new heart (Ezk.36:26), an exchanged heart, a circumcised heart. These are interchangeable terms for that heart which is willing to obey the Lord. De.30:6 was Moses’ prophecy of a future (non-physical) heart circumcision which God would do (to the hearts of both men and women). Paul wrote in Ro.2:29, “Circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit”. Not the physical circumcision operation of the foreskin done by men. Col.2:11 “In Him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands.” God does it (this fulfills De.30:6). These persons will allow God’s principles to be written on their heart by the HS. (see the topics “Circumcision in the Bible” and “Holy Spirit-Filled”.)
Ten years ago I had the opportunity to hear a Christian speaker from Mozambique. This man had reportedly resurrected a dozen people from the dead in the name of Jesus! He related to us a vision he’d received. In the vision, he was shown people with trees growing out of their heads! He said the Lord told him the vision represented modern society (including the church) partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good & evil (Gen.3:6)! Even the church appears humanistic, many churchgoers attaching Jesus’ Name to that wrong tree, not desiring God the Lawgiver’s definition of good & evil on His terms.
On another occasion, a pastor from Uganda was invited to speak at a church in my city. He told of closing himself off for three days in his room to seek the Lord for the topic. He said God told him to address Ezk.22:26. “Her priests have violated My law, they make no distinction between the holy and the profane, or between the unclean and the clean; and they hide their eyes from My sabbaths.” That visiting pastor spoke courageously! But his sermon was hard for some to hear.
Is.8:20 “To the law and to the testimony [the Decalogue, Ex.31:18]! If they don’t speak according to this word, it is because they have no light.” Too many Christians (perhaps unknowingly) are attaching Christ’s Name to man’s laws and justice system from the wrong tree of humanism…as if man is God.
It can feel more comfortable to be religious or follow denominational traditions which may not honor God’s written word. That’s what the majority of OC Israel/Judah did, and the Pharisees did in Jesus’ day. Paul wrote of them in Ga.6:13. “Those who are circumcised [physically] don’t even keep the law.” Those Jewish religious leaders who contended with Jesus weren’t keeping God’s written laws. Mt.15:18 “The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart.” The scribes & Pharisees who spoke against Jesus…God’s written principles weren’t on their hearts. (Jesus was law-abiding).
Let’s us not be pharisaic NC Christians by resembling OC Israelites/Jews that disrespected God’s laws. Sectarian church traditions or the views of so-called church ‘fathers’ (e.g. some Roman Catholic Church tradition) shouldn’t be placed above the written word of God. That practice can also be a cause of division in the Body of Christ. (also see “Doctrinal Disunity Impacts Evangelism”.)
The Lord exclaimed in De.5:29, “Oh, that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me and keep My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever”! But such a heart wasn’t in most of those OC Israelites, and they failed to be a right example to the nations.
In conclusion…God saves the upright in heart (Ps.7:10). We too can be real NC (grafted-in) Christians, having God’s righteous moral principles written on our hearts and minds! And they’re not burdensome (1Jn.5:3). And as the gospel spreads, obedient NC Christians will reflect the righteousness and true heartfelt love of God to the world! To God be the glory!!
Bible Topic Exposition 