And how does it effect that great miracle?  ’I will put My Spirit within you.’  The new life-principle is the effluence of the Spirit of God.  The promise does not merely offer the influence of a divine spirit, working on men as from without, or coming down upon them as an afflatus, but the actual planting of God’s Spirit in the deep places of theirs.  We fail to apprehend the most characteristic blessing of the gospel if we do not give full prominence to that great gift of an indwelling Spirit, the life of our lives.  Cleansing is much, but is incomplete without a new life-principle which shall keep us clean; and that can only be God’s Spirit, enshrined and operative within us; for only thus shall we ’walk in His statutes, and keep His judgments.’  When the Lawgiver dwells in our hearts, the law will be our delight; and keeping it will be the natural outcome and expression of our life, which is His life.

Then follows the picture of the blessed effects of obedience (vs. 28-30).  These are cast into the form appropriate to the immediate purpose of the prophecy, and received fulfilment in the actual restoration to the land, which fulfilment, however, was imperfect, inasmuch as the obedience and renewal of the people’s hearts were incomplete.  These can only be complete under the gospel, and, in the fullest sense, only in another order than the present.  When men fully keep God’s judgments, they shall dwell permanently in a good land.  Israel’s hold on its country was its obedience, not its prowess.  Our real hold on even earthly good is the choosing of God for our supreme good.  In the measure in which we can say ‘Thy law is within my heart,’ all things are ours; and we may possess all things while having nothing in the vulgar world’s sense of having.  Similarly that obedience, which is the fruit of the new life of God’s Spirit in our spirits, is the condition of close mutual possession in the blessed reciprocity of trust and faithfulness, love bestowing and love receiving, by which the quiet heart knows that God is its, and it is God’s.  If stains and interruptions still sometimes break the perfectness of obedience and continuity of reciprocal ownership, there will be a further cleansing for such sins.  ’If we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin’ (v. 29).

The lovely picture of the blessed dwellers in their good land is closed by the promise of abundant harvests from corn and fruit-tree; that is, all that nourishes or delights.  The deepest truth taught thereby is that he who lives in God has no unsatisfied desires, but finds in Him all that can sustain, strengthen, and minister to growth, and all that can give gladness and delight.  If we make God our heritage, we dwell secure in a good land; and ‘the dust of that land is gold,’ and its harvests ever plenteous.