What are the contents of the new covenant? The contents include four things, the first of which is the imparting of the law of life. Verse 10 says, “For this is the covenant which I will covenant with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will impart My laws into their mind, and on their hearts I will inscribe them.” In Jeremiah 31:33, the source of this quotation, the word laws is singular, proving that it is one law that spreads into a number of laws. The one law that eventually develops into many laws is the law of life (Rom. 8:2). Every life has a law. The higher the life, the higher is its law. The divine life we receive of God is the highest; therefore, it has the highest law, the law referred to here. By imparting His divine life into us, God puts this highest law into our spirit, from whence it spreads into our inward parts, such as our mind, emotion, and will, and becomes several laws. We all know this by experience. When we called on the name of the Lord, the divine life came into our spirit. Gradually, as we have been growing in this life, this life has had the opportunity to develop from our spirit into all of our inward parts. When this life develops into our inward parts, in every part there will be a law to regulate us. Many laws develop out of that one law of life.
This law of life differs from the law of letters. The law of life regulates us from within by and according to its life element, while the law of letters regulates us from without by and according to its dead letters. The law of dead letters depends upon outward teachings, but the law of life depends upon the inward consciousness, the inward sense of life. Since we all, great or small, have this law of life, we do not need outward teachings according to the law of letters (8:11).
The law of life is imparted into our spirit and from our spirit it spreads into our mind and into all of our inward parts (v. 10). In Jeremiah 31:33, “inward parts” is used for “mind.” This proves that the mind is one of the inward parts. It is also an interpretation of the term inward parts. The inward parts include the mind, the emotion, and the will, which are the composition of the heart mentioned in the following clause in verse 10.
Verse 10 also says that the Lord will inscribe His laws on our hearts. Firstly, God imparts His laws into us; then He inscribes them upon us. He does the inscribing in our experiences of the law of life. The more we experience the law of life, the more its laws will be inscribed into the different parts of our heart. They will be constituted into the different parts of our inward being through our experiences.
The second item of the new covenant is the blessing of having God and of being His people. The last part of verse 10 says, “I will be God to them, and they shall be a people to Me.” In the new covenant we have the privilege of having God as our God and of being His people—the enabling of life for us to participate in the enjoyment of God in fellowship with Him. The people under the old covenant had God according to the Ten Commandments. God was God to them according to the old law of letters, and they were His people also according to the law of letters. But today our God is God to us not according to letters but according to the inward life, and we are His people not according to any written regulations but also according to the inner life. It is according to the law of life that God is God to us and we are a people to Him. God’s relationship with us today is fully based upon the law of life; it is a relationship in life. So today we do not need to walk according to the knowledge of the law of letters but according to the consciousness of the law of life.
It is very difficult, for example, to find a verse in the New Testament which tells us what time God wants us to get up in the morning. How then shall we know what time to get up? We shall not know it by any regulation of letters outwardly but according to the inner life. When tomorrow morning comes, the inner life will tell us what time God wants us to get up. If we do not rise up at that time, we shall miss God’s presence. Another example is the matter of getting a haircut. All of the young people should realize that we are God’s people. As God’s people, how should we cut our hair? Since the term haircut is not found in the Bible, how can we know how short or how long to cut our hair? We know it by the law of life. If we go according to the inner law of life, we shall know how short or how long our hair should be.