God is Changing Hearts and Minds - Hebrews 8-10

 Hebrews 8:10 (ESV Strong's)

10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel

after those days, declares the Lord:

I will put my laws into their minds,

and write them on their hearts,

and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people. 

God is Changing Hearts and Minds

In Jeremiah 31 God is telling us about what he is going to do when Christ comes in the New Testament.   When I put my faith in Christ for my salvation (as I realize I can not save myself with good works), Christ begins to “write” God’s laws and ways on my heart.  As I walk in little obedience to his laws and ways, he begins to write more on our hearts. Our walk with him becomes “internal” and not just external trappings.  We still do the external, but it is motivated by a change of heart and a change of mindset that God begins the minute I set my heart in faith for him to save me.  That is what Jeremiah is saying.  Israel was giving all the trappings of outward worship.  But, they didn’t do them.  Even by doing them they, mostly, did them superficially and not from the heart.   God wants our hearts.  Once we come to faith in Christ, he begins to create in us a new heart that has a desire for Him.  We have free will right now.  But, we will always choose to disobey God without His interceding in our lives.  Our sin is a judgment of death to us.  But, Christ comes to give us life.   That life begins in the heart and the mind as we, by faith, believe that Christ is going to do something different in us.  We then begin to act differently outwardly because he has begun a good work in us inwardly.   

2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV Strong's)

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Ephesians 4:20-25 (ESV Strong's)

20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.