Would you like Him to come close enough to write upon you? That would be a moment of supreme blessing for your soul. And where would He write? On your heart. And what would He write? What you are to do? What you are to bring to Him? Would He write condemnation? Would He write claims or curses? No, He would write Christ. And what would you find that writing to be? It would be as the apostle Paul puts it in this chapter — the ministration of glory, the ministration of righteousness, the ministration of life. God is writing Christ now on the fleshy tables of the heart in contrast with His writing the law on the tables of stone.
The Writing on the Stone
Look at the first place where you get God writing — the writing on the tables of stone. This writing has its own deep significance. In Exodus 19 where the Lord speaks to the people of Israel of His claims upon them, before ever they hear what those claims are, they make answer, “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” Had there been a bit of sense of what we are in ourselves, they would have said, “We would like to hear first what God does command.” But they say, as it were, “Whatever He commands we are quite able to do.” This is the natural self-sufficiency of the heart of man; we like to feel we can be something, do something.
In Exodus 20 we have the law — the Lord asserting His own claims, and the responsibility of man as a creature to meet those claims to God, on the one hand, and to his neighbor, on the other. The law was the perfection of love towards God and towards your neighbor. But the moment you bring in law, you put people far from God. “When the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off” (Ex. 20:1818And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. (Exodus 20:18)). The law was never meant to bring people to God. It is the “ministration of death,” for it was written in stone, not in “fleshy tables of the heart” (2 Cor. 3:33Forasmuch 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)).
What, then, is the value of the law? Romans 3:1919Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. (Romans 3:19) answers us: “That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” What is the object of God? To stop my mouth and make me know that I am guilty. The test comes in and reveals what the state of man is. No sooner is the law given than it is broken. Before Moses came down from the Mount, Aaron had made the golden calf; the first commandment was broken. What then can I get from the tables of stone? Nothing but condemnation.
The law comes in to teach us that we have no strength to do the thing we ought to do, and therefore to strip us of self-righteousness. But “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:2020Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: (Romans 5:20)). That is glorious. When the law had come and stirred up the evil in man’s heart to convict him that he was nothing but a guilty sinner, then grace comes, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He meets in grace and blesses the very sinner, whom the law has convicted of his guilt.
The Writing on the Wall
In Daniel 5 we have a very solemn scene of daring impiety and foolishness. Belshazzar drinks with his lords around him, out of the vessels that had been brought out of the house of God. Here we have a careless, godless, unconverted man. But God has a message for him. “In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another” (Dan. 5:5-65In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. 6Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. (Daniel 5:5‑6)). That hand-writing was a testimony from God, and this careless man was troubled. Surely God has a reckoning day for each one of us, as He did with Belshazzar.
Daniel says to Belshazzar, “Thou hast lifted up thyself against the God of heaven ... and hast praised the gods of silver ... and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified” (Dan. 5:2323But hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified: (Daniel 5:23)). This was the writing on the wall: “God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it” (Dan. 5:2626This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. (Daniel 5:26)). Belshazzar disregarded the writing on the wall. He contented himself with making Daniel a great man, and went on with his feast. We know the result — that very night he was slain. The enemy entered under those very gates that seemed to defy the foe, after first diverting the course of the river, as history tells us, and Belshazzar met his doom.
The Writing on the Ground
There is another place where the finger of God writes, and this we have recorded in John 8. They bring to Jesus a poor guilty woman that He may condemn her, and what does He do? “Jesus stooped down, and with His finger wrote on the ground” (John 8:66This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. (John 8:6)). Then He says, The one that is sinless is the only one that can cast the stone at her. This worked on their consciences; they all went out, and the sinless One who alone could cast the stone, and the guilty convicted sinner are left together.
The writing on the ground has to me this significance here, as though Jesus would show that when law could only condemn the guilty sinner, grace in His own Person comes in, and as the Psalmist says, “Thou has brought me into the dust of death” (Psa. 22:1515My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. (Psalm 22:15)). In order to meet and bless the guilty condemned sinner, He Himself must go into the dust of death, the sinner’s place.
When the writing on the tables of stone could only condemn, and when the writing on the wall could only ring out the sentence of judgment, then this blessed One Himself comes down into the very dust of death, not to condemn, but to seek and to save.
All the claims of God, and the judgment of God, have been met there by Him; the One who was upon the cross for our sins is now alive in glory, and the Holy Spirit comes down and gives us what we have in the fourth writing.
The Writing on the Heart
The Holy Spirit says, I will write Christ on your heart. He will not write now what God claims from us, or the sentence of judgment upon us because we have not met those claims. He is not now even writing what Christ can do or will do, but now He speaks to us of what Christ has done, and if we receive Him, He writes Christ in our heart. It is all Christ; He has borne sins, has taken the curse of the law, has taken the judgment of God. Christ has gone into the dust of death, and now the Holy Spirit seeks to write Christ on our heart. God’s thoughts are all about Christ, and He is looking for hearts on which He may write Christ. May the Holy Spirit write Christ on our heart today, if He never has before, and the effect of His writing in the fleshy tables of our heart will be that Christ will be seen in us.
A. Marshall (adapted)