He Has Signed Things He Did Not Read and Paid for It

It was on page nine and it was four lines long and it cost him about fourteen months.

He is not going to describe the arrangement because it does not matter and because he is tired of the story. What matters is what it did to how he reads things now.

He reads everything. All of it. He is the man at the table who is still turning pages while everybody else is waiting, and he is aware of how that looks and he does not care, because the last time he trusted somebody's summary it was on page nine.

And that habit has come with him into places it was never designed for.

Somebody says God has made a covenant and something in him goes straight to where the trap would be. Not out of hostility. Out of procedure. He assumes there is a clause, and that it is the part nobody mentions in the summary, and that he will find out what it says at the worst possible moment.

God says where He puts the terms

There is a sentence in Jeremiah about a new arrangement, and the striking thing is the location.

But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts. (Jeremiah 31:33, King James Version)

Write it in their hearts.

That is not a filing arrangement. He is describing terms that are not kept in a document at all, and therefore cannot be kept somewhere a person has not looked.

There is no page nine on something written inside you. There is no back of the folder.

You are inside something with no place to hide a clause. Jeremiah 31 puts the terms in the inward parts rather than in a document, and it is the Holy Spirit who is named elsewhere as the one who does that writing.

And then He states the terms out loud in the next verse

He does not leave it there. He says what the terms are, immediately, in plain words.

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:34)

Two clauses, and both of them are His.

That is the whole of what He undertakes, stated in a sentence that a man could read out at a table in ten seconds.

Notice what is not there. There is no corresponding list of what the other party undertakes. The verse before says He will be their God and they shall be His people, which is a description of a state rather than a schedule of obligations.

You are looking at terms that fit in one sentence. Jeremiah 31 states what He undertakes and stops, and it is His Spirit who makes a short sentence do what a long document could not.

Hebrews quotes the whole thing back

The writer of Hebrews takes that passage and quotes it at length, which is worth knowing because it means somebody checked.

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 them a people. (Hebrews 8:10)

He reproduces it. He does not summarize it.

And that is the argument of that whole letter: here is the document, here is what it says, read it against the old one.

A man who reads everything and trusts nobody's summary is being handed the actual text rather than a description of it.

You are being handed the document rather than a summary of it. Hebrews 8 quotes the passage in full rather than paraphrasing, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a full quotation feel like the courtesy it is.

Moses said outright that it is not hidden

There is a passage in Deuteronomy that says something about accessibility, and it is unusually direct.

For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. (Deuteronomy 30:11)

It is not hidden from thee.

And then a few lines later:

But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. (Deuteronomy 30:14)

Very nigh. In the mouth and in the heart.

That is a statement about where the material is kept, made by somebody who knew that a covenant hidden in a place a person cannot reach is not a covenant, it is a trap.

You are not being kept away from the terms. Deuteronomy 30 rules out hidden and far off by name, and it is His Spirit who makes an old assurance land on a man who reads every page.

And Paul says who wrote it and where

There is an image in Corinthians that puts the whole thing together.

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. (2 Corinthians 3:3)

Not with ink.

He is contrasting it with a document deliberately. Ink and stone are both media that can be filed, misplaced, or read out selectively.

And he names the instrument: the Spirit of the living God.

You are the document, and you were written on rather than handed a copy. 2 Corinthians 3 rules out ink and names who did the writing, and it is the Spirit of the living God, named in that same line, who did it.