Ezekiel 36:26-27. 26And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
What is Christianity?
Have you ever asked yourself that question? What is the core belief, the foundational reality of our faith? Is it a moral code? Is it law keeping? Is it WWJD?
No. The central truth of Christianity is that we have been graciously made new by the heart changing indwelling Spirit of God. As Ezekiel puts it, the heart of stone has been removed, and the heart of flesh has been given.
The prophet Jeremiah spoke about this as a New Covenant. But Jeremiah’s prophecy only hinted at the life changing reality of the new heart – “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33).
Jeremiah showed us the necessity of God’s grace in this process of being made new. We could never keep God’s law of love ourselves. We could never change on our own. We could never formulate a new desire, or stir up love from within. Why? Because as Jeremiah 17:9 says, “the heart is desperately wicked, who can know it?” We were each born with a heart of stone. An inflexible, stubborn, hateful, fearful, full of contempt for God and his love, heart of stone.
But Ezekiel takes us further than Jeremiah’s prophecy did. Ezekiel 11 reveals that God’s law of love can’t just be chiseled onto our stone hearts. More than a heart change, we need a heart exchange – I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. A tender heart. A heart that is broken by sin and injustice. A heart that is moved by the gospel. A heart that desperately longs for grace. A heart that beats for the love of God and others. A heart that is conformable to the image of God. But how is all of this possible?
God must change the very nature of our hearts. The outside force of God’s grace must become the inside force of God’s love. For us to become the image of God, God must take over our lives. This is the great truth of Pentecost and the great work of God – I will put my Spirit within you. The Spirit of Christ.
Each and every Christian has this promise of the life-giving Spirit of Christ abiding in them forever. To have the Holy Spirit is to have Christ in you. The new heart, the heart of flesh, the new spirit, is Christ’s own heart. Christian, you have the heart of Christ, you have his own Spirit. Now, his desires are your desires, his affections are your affections, his mind is your mind, his will is your will, and his emotions are your emotions.
This is amazing grace! In Christ, God has done it all, leaving nothing up to us. God has performed the heart surgery on us that we desperately needed. Now by our simple faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross, God has acted upon us from the inside-out. His life giving, indwelling love, is now supernaturally changing us day by day into the perfect image of God, Christ Jesus.
This, my friends, is true Christianity. Knowing that God has done it all. That by his grace he has given you his life giving Spirit, and that the Spirit has performed a heart transplant on you. Christian, you now have a heart that actually wants to obey Christ.
Romans 6:17. But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart.
The Christian’s deepest desire is to obey. To follow our leader. To submit to our Savior. I know it may not seem like it all the time, but the new heart is beating inside of you, keeping you alive spiritually. You just have to go deeper, past the old habitual ways of thinking and, deeper than the fleshly desires that linger on the surface. Keep digging. Let the love of God chisel away at the remains of that old stony heart of yours and above all, learn to trust your new heart. It’s in there. You just have to go deeper into your soul to find it sometimes.
Ask yourself: What do I really want? How does this “want” actually reveal my desire for Christ and his love? How is the Spirit satisfying this desire right now, already, in this present moment?
Learning to live from the new heart is not easy. The Father gave us the Spirit and the Spirit gave us the new heart, but we must still learn to trust it. How? By learning more and more to trust Jesus as the satisfier of every heart’s desire.
You: Can you identify in yourself the heart of flesh (tenderness toward the things of Christ) from God or only a heart of stone?
You in Christ: You have the heart of Christ! How might truly believing this change how you live today?
Christ in you: Think of an unmet desire that you are currently facing? How is that desire revealing a deeper heart’s desire for Jesus and his love?
Prayer: Father, the heart of flesh is often hard for me to find in the midst of my suffering and temptations. Teach me to go deeper and to trust the new heart that you have given me, the heart that Jesus satisfies. Amen.
To Live is Christ 