Letter writing is almost a thing of the past. We live in an instant age where we have instant messaging, text, and email, but few physically write a letter by hand. My Dad was from the letter-writing age. He loved to write and receive, His letters were almost a page of art. His grammar was perfect, and his penmanship was beautiful. After I married, he would write cards on special occasions and they always touched my heart, but as beautiful as they were, I would only keep them for a little while. However, letters written by my husband during our dating were precious. His did not look like a work of art, but I still have every one of them. They were letters that expressed love and went straight to the heart. In the Old Testament, we have God writing to His people on tablets of stone. They were laws that God expected His people to keep. These laws were the standard God expected His people to live by, but as hard as they tried they could not keep them perfectly. If they were to be in right standing with God, atonement must be made. Year after year, His people made sacrifices of animals to symbolize their sins being covered by the blood. With the New Testament, comes a new covenant. God takes the external tablets of stone and through grace writes this new letter on the heart of man. The ink is the blood of His Son.
The external tablets were a perfect law. They were to teach us how far we were from missing God’s standard for our lives. They were to bring us to a point of understanding that we were sinners and could not keep the law on our own. The law was only a shadow of what was to come. Every year the people would come with their animal sacrifices to make atonement for their sins. Once the New Covenant, the sacrifice of Jesus was made, the yearly atonement was not needed. His sacrifice was the perfect one that was enough for all time. It was not only enough to satisfy God it was open to all mankind, not just the Jews. It was a covenant of grace. God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense!
This New Covenant of grace was written upon the heart of man, not a tablet of stone. It is internal, not external. This letter was not written with ink that can fade and become illegible, but it is written by the Spirit of the living God. It is no longer an inanimate object, but a tablet of living flesh. Because it is written by the Spirit it is valuable, precious, and permanent.
II Corinthians 3:3 “Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.”
Hebrews 10:16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;”
God wants all to come to Him. He loves us and seeks to have a relationship with us. However, His holiness would not allow us to come to Him on our merit. God could not violate His holiness, but He was willing to make a way so that he could have a personal relationship with us. A heart relationship. Before we are saved, He works in us through the Holy Spirit to convince us of our sins and our need for a Savior. After our salvation experience, He works in us to perfect us to be more like His Son.
Philippians 2:13 “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
The writing on the heart is an expression of His desire for a personal relationship. We now have access to Him, one on one, deep and intimate, not through a tablet of stone, but through a heart of flesh. His ink is permanent and will never fade. When we give our lives to Him and take Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior, His love is written on our hearts as if they were carved never to be removed. He made it possible for all to experience this love letter in the heart, but all will not receive it. Multitudes will reject this letter and it will be marked “undeliverable!”
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