The New Birth – Love In The Heart

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The New Birth ‑ Love in the Heart

       When God causes us to be born again several things happen to us.  One of the things that happened to us is that God wrote his laws in our heart and our mind.  Several verses of scripture point to this which we quote as follows:

                A.  Heb. 8:10, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a people.”

                B.  Heb. 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 I will write them.”

                C.  II Cor. 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.”

                D.  Rom. 2:15, “Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.”

        From the above scriptures several conclusions can be drawn.  First, the laws of God are written into both the heart and the mind.  Secondly, it is God who does the writing and not man.  Thirdly, these laws written in our heart and mind serve as the basis or foundation for our covenant worship of God.  The foundation of the law worship or service was the ten commandments written on two tables of stone.  The foundation of our worship under the gospel is the laws of God written in our hearts and mind.  Fourthly, these laws written in our heart and mind along with the conscience God gave us serve as the basis for the self‑examining courtroom of our heart and mind.

        We may ask ourselves, “Just what laws did God write in our hearts and minds?”  I Thes. 4:9 seems to be the key to answering this question, “But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.”  Clearly God has taught us to love one another and not man.  Clearly, this was a direct teaching from God to man without any intermediator (preacher).  I John 3:14, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.”  Love for the brethren is a direct evidence of the new

birth.  Anyone who loves the brethren has been born again!  Therefore, we know that God has written love into our hearts and mind in the new birth.  Matt. 22:37‑40 ties down for us that love toward God is to be manifest in our heart, soul, and mind, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  Thus, God writes these two great laws in

our hearts and mind and as a result we are able to love God and our neighbor.  Without these laws written in our hearts and mind we would be unable to love either God or our neighbor.  James 2:8 says, “If ye fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well.”  Rom. 13:8 reads, “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

        Finally, we read in Rom. 2:14, 15 “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts.  The basis of our love toward God and toward our neighbor is founded on the laws of love that God wrote in our hearts and mind when he caused us to be born again.

        In our next essay we will look at the subject of repentance and its relationship to the new birth.