Better Country

The Better Country They desired a better country, that is, an heavenly one. God is not ashamed to be their God; He has prepared a city. Not Sinai’s smoke and trembling mount, not tables carved in stone alone— a better covenant, better promises, the Mediator on the throne. Behold, the days have come, He said: I will put My laws in their mind, write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My kind. The first grows old and vanishes; the second stands by blood. I will remember their sins no more— merciful, true, and good. A new heart also will I give you, a new spirit I will put within. I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh again. Not hardness that will not bend, not tablets none could keep; the law of Christ written inside where love and liberty meet. If ye fulfill the royal law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” ye do well. Love worketh no ill. Love is the fulfilling of the law. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. Use not liberty for the flesh, but serve one another in love. And I saw no temple therein: the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. No sun, no moon—His glory lights the land. The gates are never shut by day; there is no night at all. The nations of the saved walk there; the Lamb is light for all. So pilgrims still desire that land the fathers saw from far. Heart of flesh instead of stone, His law no longer war. Love is the law, the Lamb the shrine, the city God prepared. We seek the better country still— the heavenly one. We are not ashamed.