Here is another statement of God’s covenant promise to ancient Israel: “I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will he their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart” (Jer. 24:7). Knowing God through faith in Jesus Christ means we enter a covenant relationship with God.

There is a clear parallel. “1 will give them a heart to know Me,” and, “they will he My people, and I will be their God.” When God entered into covenant with ancient Israel, He gave them the ten commandments. Moses re minded the people, “So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the ten commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone” (Deut. 4:13). The God-ordained response of the people to the love of God in redeeming them was written in stone. After forty years of stubbornness and rebellion, Moses noted the inability of the people. “Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear” (29:4). Love of God and His word stems from hearts that know and understand Him.

Hence the great promise of God: “More over the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live” (Deut. 30:6). The people would know and love God, by God’s empowering grace. Jeremiah makes the same observations. People cannot “naturally” respond to God’s love with love. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to do evil” (Jer. 13:23). Hearts void of the Spirit of God become progressively harder.

The will opposed to God does not and cannot alter itself. The God-ordained response of men and women to the love of God in redeeming them remains an external, objective, stone-cold law. Like Moses, the Prophet Jeremiah knew the need for God’s inner work of grace in the heart. He reiterates the promise. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will he their God, and they shall be My people” (Jer. 31:33). “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it” interprets the Jeremiah 24:7 statement, “I will give them a heart to know Me.” “I will be their God, and they shall be My people” remains the same in both cases.

When God gives tis a heart to know Him, He inscribes the ten commandments within us. He conforms our minds, emotions, and wills to this covenant. The law becomes light rather than darkness. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105). We then love God’s law because we love God. “O how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the clay” (v. 97). Jesus Christ Himself declares, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). John, the apostle of love, confirms these words. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). The God-ordained response to the love of Christ in redeeming us becomes warmhearted conformity to God’s covenant in the ten commandments. Our love expresses itself in gracious, resolute accomplishment of duty. It is not a burden. It is love. It is covenant love.