Concerning the law of life, Jeremiah 31:33 says, “I will put My law in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people.” In this verse we see that the relationship between God and us is based on the law that He puts within our inward parts and writes upon our hearts. This law is the basic matter for the relationship we have with God. Moreover, the law here is a new law, different from the law of the old covenant, the law of Moses, which was written in letters on tablets of stone. This new law is not a law of letters but a law of life in the Spirit. It is not written on tablets of stone but it is put in our inward parts and written on our hearts (2 Cor. 3:3).
According to the Scriptures, man is a tripartite being composed of spirit, soul, and body (1 Thes. 5:23; Heb. 4:12). Psalm 51:6 refers to man’s inward parts and to man’s hidden part. The inward parts of man are the parts of the human soul—the mind, the emotion, and the will (Prov. 2:10; 1 Sam. 18:1; Job 7:15). The hidden part of man is the human spirit, referred to as “the hidden man of the heart” in 1 Peter 3:4. The spirit is also of three parts, or three functions. The main part of the spirit is the conscience (Rom. 9:1, cf. 8:16), by which we can distinguish right from wrong. Another part of the spirit is the fellowship, which affords us the capacity to contact God and have fellowship with Him (John 4:24; Rom. 1:9; 7:6; Eph. 6:18). In addition, in the spirit there is the intuition, giving us a direct sense of God and a direct knowledge from God (1 Cor. 2:11; Mark 2:8).
The heart of man referred to in the Bible is a composition of the mind, the emotion, the will, and the conscience (Acts 11:23; Heb. 4:12; John 16:22; Heb. 10:22); thus, the heart includes all the parts of the soul and one part of the spirit, the conscience. In Jeremiah 31:33 God says that He will put His law in our inward parts, that is, in our soul, in our mind, emotion, and will. This also means that He puts His law in our heart, because the parts of the soul are components of the heart. Hence, first God puts His law of life in our inward parts, and then He writes this law upon our heart.
Furthermore, Hebrews 8:10 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; and I will be God to them, and they will be a people to Me.” Then Hebrews 10:16 says, “This is the covenant which I will covenant with them after those days, says the Lord: I will impart My laws upon their hearts, and upon their mind I will inscribe them.” In these verses the one law mentioned in Jeremiah has become a number of laws. Moreover, Hebrews 8:10 says that God imparts His laws into our mind. The word mind in this verse corresponds to the words inward parts in Jeremiah 31:33, proving that the mind is one of the inward parts. The law of life is put not merely into one part of our being but into all our inward parts and then inscribed upon us. Thus, the first step God takes is to put the law of life into us, and the second step is to inscribe it upon our heart.
As we have seen, God puts His law into us, and this law becomes a number of laws. The law of life that God puts into us is nothing less than God Himself. In the new covenant God Himself comes into us as a law. The law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, in the old covenant can be considered the description, definition, and explanation of God; by this law we can know what kind of God He is. It is a fact that any law that a person makes shows the kind of person he is. A good person makes good laws, but a legislator who is a robber will make evil laws. Even the regulations we make in our homes describe the kind of persons we are. The Ten Commandments show us that God is holy, righteous, and full of love and light. In the New Testament time God Himself, the God of holiness, righteousness, love, and light, has come into us as a living law. Because God is a law with many attributes, this law can become several laws as it spreads into our different inward parts.
We must be impressed that God Himself is the law within us. This is so because God in Christ as the Spirit is the life within us, and this life is the law (Rom. 8:2). We can illustrate the function of the law of a particular life by considering a group of chickens and ducks. If we were to chase all of these animals toward a pool of water, the ducks would jump into the water, but the chickens would all scatter. There would be no need to teach the ducks to jump in and swim, nor would there be a need to teach the chickens to be careful and run away, for with every life there is a law. In fact, the stronger the life is, the stronger the law of that life will be, and the richer the life is, the richer its law will be. Today we have the divine life within us, and this life is God Himself, who is strong, rich, and high. Therefore, we have the strongest, richest, and highest law within us. This law is God Himself, and He is one law that includes many items.
On the negative side, the law of life with many items regulates us all the time. Every regenerated Christian has something living within him that regulates him. Before you were saved, if you went to a department store, you could buy whatever you liked. The only restriction was the amount of money you had. The more you bought, the happier you felt. However, after you were saved, whenever you went to the store to buy something, there was Someone living within you regulating you, telling you that certain items are not fitting for a Christian, a child of God. This regulating element is God’s holiness. It is not your father, your mother, the church, or the Scriptures that regulate you; rather, it is the Lord living within you as life and functioning as the law of life.
Furthermore, on the positive side, with the law of life there are also many good things. For example, there is no need to teach an apple tree to bring forth apples. Just by allowing the apple tree to grow for a certain length of time, the law of the apple life will cause many apples to come forth. Many seeds look alike, but when they are sown into the soil and allowed to grow, flowers of different colors and shapes come forth. This is because with every seed there is a law of life. Hence, the law of the divine life not only restricts us from doing evil things but also regulates us to bring forth good things. This living law is Christ Himself living within us, acting and functioning all the time as a regulating element. This element restricts us negatively from doing evil, worldly, and unrighteous things, and it also regulates us positively to bring forth many wonderful and beautiful things.
I can testify to the regulating of the law of life from my own experience. By natural birth I am a proud person, one who always takes pleasure in boasting and glorifying himself. Before I was saved, the more I boasted, the happier I felt. Whenever I missed an opportunity to boast, I regretted it. However, after I was saved, the more I boasted, the more I experienced bitterness instead of joy. This was because I had experienced a change of inward life and thus a change of inward law. I now had another law within me that was quite different from the first law, the law of sin and death. According to our experience, this second law, the law of the divine life, restricts us all the time from doing evil things and also regulates us to bring forth pleasant, wonderful, and heavenly things. This mysterious law of life is Christ Himself as life within us. As Christians, we have something living within us that regulates, controls, and rules us continually. This regulating element is Christ Himself, the embodiment of the Triune God.
In order to experience Christ as life, we must go along with and take care of this inner regulating. Morning and evening, everywhere and at every time, this living regulating element is within us, and we must take care of it and go along with it. As long as we go along with the inner regulating, we live Christ and take Christ as our life.
We have pointed out that, on the one hand, Christ as life within us functions as the shining light, and on the other hand, Christ as life within us functions as the regulating law. Thus, we have two things within us—the shining and the regulating. We experience Christ as life simply by this shining and this regulating. If we have something within shining and illuminating us all the time, we can be sure that we have Christ as our life. Moreover, if we have Christ as life within us, we always have something regulating us. The more we are regulated by the inner law of life, the more we will be transformed in our mind, emotion, and will. We have been regenerated in our spirit (John 3:6), and the Triune God has come into our spirit to dwell there (Rom. 8:16; 2 Tim. 4:22). He is waiting for an opportunity to transform our mind, emotion, and will by shining in us and regulating us. If we love the Lord and have genuine communion with Him, we will say, “Lord, I go along with Your inner shining, and I take care of Your inner regulating.” The more we go along with and take care of the inner shining and the inner regulating, the more ground the Spirit will have to possess us, occupy us, saturate us, and permeate us, that is, to transform us. In this way we will grow in the Lord continually.
This is the only way to experience Christ as life. We must realize that Christ today is within us as life, and this life is the light shining in us and the law regulating us. Hence, we must take care of these two inner matters and go along with them. Although we may have experienced the inner shining and regulating many times already, we must learn to experience them more and more. Then we will be permeated, saturated, and transformed by the Triune God into His glorious image. This is the way for God to be mingled with us.