user is a tester, which is a little like donating your body to science except that you don’t get to die first.

The newness of the system was obvious as soon as I started using it. Cool dialog boxes pop down from the title of a document. A translucent interface shows a ghost of a window as you drag it, casting a soft shadow beneath. Controls have an elegant, three-dimensional feel. Icons bounce happily when you click them. Very cool. Very new.

I slipped a disc into my computer and gave it a new nature. The parts are all the same. But everything is new.

God’s promise through Jeremiah of a new covenant must have seemed strange as it was first proclaimed. Six times in the Old Testament, God made a covenant with men, but men always fell short. Through the covenant at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19-24), God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and the foundation of entire Law. The Law of Moses gave a perfect guideline that imperfect man could never follow. After centuries of struggling with the demands of the Law (not struggling, mostly, since the law was observed mostly in the breach), man was no closer to a true reconciliation with God.

new is written on the hearts and minds of those who receive it. The old was external, the new is internal. The old covenant depends on people, but didn’t change them. The new covenant changes people, but doesn’t depend on them.

The holiness of God’s law proves that I am completely incapable of satisfying the standard of holiness. By my own efforts, I am not good enough, have never been good enough, could never be good enough. But my reconciliation with God does not depend on my performance.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:8-10).
If it were possible for man to be holy enough, the cross would be unnecessary. But through the cross, we are a new creation, with the new covenant written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

“For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:3-4).