Grace in Deuteronomy 30

 

                Jesus Christ said that the greatest of all the commandments was that human beings must love the Lord our God with all our hearts and souls and minds and strength (Mark 12:28-30; Deuteronomy 6:5).  But how is it possible for human beings to love God?  After all, we are conceived in our mothers’ wombs with hearts that love sin instead of God, so that by nature “no one seeks God,” and “no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:11, 12).  How can our hearts undergo total transformation, so that instead of rebelling against and running away from the Lord, we instead begin to love him and to seek him with all our hearts?   God gives us the answer to this question in Deuteronomy 30:6, where he promises his people that “the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, that you may live.”  Do you see the amazing grace in that passage?  What God commands of us—full-hearted love to himself—is the very thing he gives to us in his grace.  God commands us to love him with all our hearts, and he himself, when he gives us the new spiritual birth, circumcises our hearts so that we are able to love him.  Jesus Christ proclaims the identical truth in John 17:26, where he declares that when God saves a sinner, he puts into the heart of that sinner nothing less than the intratrinitarian love God has enjoyed within himself from all eternity.  Given the immensity of the Lord’s grace, whereby he circumcises sinners’ hearts to put his own love in them, how can we not respond with wonder and praise?