I was asked recently if I would write a few thoughts on the subject of the new heart. Apparently the person who made the request was having difficulty finding that idea in the New Testament writings. I understand where my questioner was coming from. Probably they were having some trouble with the doctrine of the new heart as it has developed in the minds of some who hear of it, preach it and claim to have received it. So, is the doctrine of the new heart to be found in the New Testament?
Most certainly! But, is it presented there as some kind of instantaneous happening so that I can say, “I have got it and that is that!” Does Scripture promote the sense of a once and for all experience? No, we must answer in the negative, this idea cannot be found anywhere in the Holy Scriptures as far as I can tell. So, let us consider at least one or two things about this subject. Jesus spoke graphically about the heart. It was on one of the occasions when He and His disciples were being criticized because they did not ceremonially wash their hands before eating. The Pharisees and Scribes were complaining, so many of these men observed religious traditions that almost entirely involved outward rituals and nothing of the heart. Jesus rounds on His interlocutors sharply quoting the prophet Isaiah “this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (Mark 7:1-8).
So, the battle lines are drawn, on the one hand merely outward religion with its numerous do’s and don’ts and on the other, the inward heart life. “Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled. What comes out of the heart of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man” (Mark 7:14-23). What follows is a list of evil things, thirteen of which Jesus names specifically and thirteen is, by some, regarded as the number linked with the wicked one. Certainly these things describe his nature and that of fallen mankind. How many of us have tried to change ourselves morally, from the heart and succeeded only partially and only for a season? There seems to be a bias in the deep places of the heart, a weight that always tends to self-serving and sin.
[superquote]“the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick, who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17:9). Can this be true? The heart of man deceitful and wicked above all things, above all, even the devil?[/superquote]
As we ponder this fact, and face it clearly in the light of what God reveals in His book we understand that one of the reasons the long history of the Old Testament took place and fills such a large proportion of our Bible is that we might understand that we cannot fulfill the demands of God’s moral law ourselves. It is impossible. There is no way man can pull himself up by his bootstraps, “None is righteous, no, not one” and so begins Paul’s compilation of sundry phrases from the Old Testament writings (Romans 2:11-18). Indeed, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick, who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17:9). Can this be true? The heart of man deceitful and wicked above all things, above all, even the devil? Well, if we keep in mind that God made mankind in His own image and likeness and endowed them with faculties and powers that are commensurate with that creative purpose it would seem that man was made with higher powers than even those of angels and thus, man made higher, if defecting from God’s purpose will surely be capable of falling lower.
[superquote]From these few sentences it becomes obvious that man must be changed from the heart[/superquote]
This is the terrible outcome of the abuse of privilege. From these few sentences it becomes obvious that man must be changed from the heart, those laws that pertain within, governing the deeps must be dealt with, the bias changed and the ability to rise into a transformed life must be given. It cannot come from man himself, God must accomplish this and He has and does. Frequently, at various times and in differing words He promised that He would provide a Savior and the Messiah would, among other things, put a new heart into man. Perhaps it will help us to try to shed our individualistic reading of scripture as we consider this. We take it all too personally, “I need a new heart,” “I must get it from God,” “I must be sanctified, and changed.” This is understandable, given the individualism of Western thought, but it does tend to lead away from Christ our Savior and the fact that He is God’s gift, not only for us on the cross but to us by the Holy Spirit.
Simply stated we can say that essentially there have only been two men, Adam and Christ and we are born in the likeness of the first and must be born again into the life and image of the Second. The first sinned; his heart states were radically altered. He took in the law of another life when he submitted to the lies of the serpent. Paul defined that law as being “the law of sin and death” as it is brought to light by the law of God (Romans 8:2). Its results are to be found everywhere. But, God provided another Man and His was a new heart. It was not a heart of stone, but of flesh. It was not indifferent to God but utterly sensitized in constant love and obedience to Him. This Man did not walk away from God but with Him in all things.
Paul appears to think in the terms of these two men throughout his writings, but particularly when he says “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12) and continued by speaking of Christ saying “For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17). We can say therefore, if we have received Christ Jesus and His Spirit “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). Perhaps the King James Version says it even more plainly, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of sin and death.” In writing this way I am attempting to remove the divide that comes in the thinking of some when they separate ‘receiving a new heart’ from Him Whose heart it is.
[superquote]There is one heart in that one body and it is His[/superquote]
We know that the church of God is referred to as “the body of Christ” and we should remember that there is but one heart in the body. There is one body, it is Christ’s and there is one baptism, and that belongs to Him and those who are in Him. There is one heart in that one body and it is His. Going back into the Old Testament there are two scriptures that are wonderful to contemplate, especially if we make careful note of the personal pronouns used. At the time Israel, having attempted to live up to the ways of God, was collapsing as a nation and beginning to undergo His punishment in captivity in Babylon. Against such a background God raised up His prophets by two or three. Jeremiah the older man, living in the corrupted heart of the nation in Jerusalem and Ezekiel, the younger already in captivity and we must not forget Daniel too. They spoke of things to come, promises from God Who delights in saying tremendous things when things look most bleak. “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant, I will put my laws within them, I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
These are famous words, quoted twice by the writer of the book of Hebrews (Hebrews 8:8-12 & 10:15-18). And what of Ezekiel who specifically speaks of the new heart. “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your unclean nesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And 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. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). I always want to put the “MY” in the upper case although our Bible translations do not! Taken together these two sets of scriptures enforce and reinforce that it is the laws of God’s own Being that are written into the heart of His children. In the Ezekiel scripture it is ‘heart’ singular. Not plural, and although the plural is used in Jeremiah that still does now allow us to overly individualize ‘my’ experience. God is begetting a family of sons, all sharing in the heart that is in Jesus. His habits, our habits, His thoughts, our thoughts, His love, our love and so much more, for we are all partaking of that one saving Life. “We are saved by His life,” (Romans 5:10) says Paul. He will not allow any spiritual experience to become abstracted from the Person of the Lord Jesus and take on a ‘life’ (which would in fact become a death) of its own.
[superquote]They all partook of His one heart and displayed a likeness to Jesus that others took note of (Acts 4:13). [/superquote]
We must acknowledge that there must be something instantaneous about this, a point when we receive the power of His Life in an inward and real way. We can see this graphically in the experience of the apostles. Not until Jesus poured the Holy Spirit into their hearts on the day of Pentecost did they display the law of His life in their behavior. Although they had followed Jesus during His ministry, they were completely filled with contradictions. There was no real likeness to Him and He bemoaned their hardness of heart and the confusions in their understanding. But, the night before He went to Calvary He told them categorically that it would not always be so, they would receive His Spirit. “In that day My Father and I will make our home with (in) him” (John 14:23). God in Three Persons making His home, taking up residence in the human heart! How can that be unless it includes the law of His Being becoming the law of our being? Impossible? Not so, for this is the gospel; He desires to have children after His own heart, in His own image and likeness. Coming back to the experience of the apostles and the many others present on that day of Pentecost we can see that they all received, they became one body indeed, they stood together; the tongues of fire were all one fire. They all partook of His one heart and displayed a likeness to Jesus that others took note of (Acts 4:13). Family similarities were becoming plainly visible, and yet, they were not the finished articles, for there was need of an ongoing sanctification.
The crisis ushered them into a process, a process that required their willing cooperation, and the process was not towards a fading glory like that of Moses but from glory to glory (look at 2 Corinthians 3:1-18). All is by the Spirit of the Lord Who works in those who cooperate with God’s will. He witnesses in our hearts concerning two matters at least, first, Jesus, by one offering has perfected forever those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:14-18) and second, we can maintain a true heart, clear and clean and always have access through Jesus into the holiest of all (Hebrews 10:19-23). We can go on, we can and we must. We are, in our experience, not the finished article, even though Jesus has perfected us forever. His law is written on our hearts in its main outline but being written as to its detail. What happened on Sinai is a clear illustration of this fact. Moses the man God used to mediate the Old Testament received the God’s law written instantaneously on two tablets of stone (Exodus 24:12 & 31:18). Those ten words are expressions of His glorious nature and Being.
[superquote]Having written that scroll he put it by the ark (Deuteronomy 31:26) in that same innermost place. Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant works thus in those who cooperate with Him.[/superquote]
We do not know exactly how God wrote them, one movie at least depicts Him writing by the action of lightening, maybe that was so, but first He spoke them and Israel did not want to hear His voice (Exodus 20:1-21). I have often wondered what tone was in His utterance and how beautiful the sound of His voice. Was it full of command or did it have the tenor of tender promise? Anyway, speculation apart, the fact was that God gave, God wrote, and it was sudden and by His hand alone. Moses then brought those tablets down and put them into the heart of the camp in the ark of God in the holiest of all. The reality of which Moses and the tablets were a shadow is that Jesus brought the nature of God’s being down from heaven in His Person. Written in Him, in the holy of holies of God’s Son, hidden in the tent of His body, indeed, “He dwelt (pitched his tent) among us, and we have seen His glory” (John 1:14). Through thirty three years of life our Lord Jesus made sure that the unchanging principles of the Trinitarian Life were written in every detail of His soul, in every circumstance and situation they were extended throughout the length, breadth, depth and height of His humanity. And of this process Moses was an example when he wrote, probably quite painstakingly, the detailed ‘small print’ of God’s covenant ways for the nation. Having written that scroll he put it by the ark (Deuteronomy 31:26) in that same innermost place. Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant works thus in those who cooperate with Him.
There is continuity then, writing into His people, into their hearts, into the ‘small print’ of their lives. From those ten words the outline, the law of God; into the detail of daily living He continues His writing. The work is His and in it He delights. So, He will present us into Himself as a chaste bride (Ephesians 5:25-27) and we must aid Him in His work, there can be no ‘nay saying,’ but, a yes, yes, yes must be our constant response. We therefore will be “a letter of Christ, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on the tablets of human hearts and known and read of all” (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). Well, I do not know if I have helped, at least a little, in the question voiced to me, “what about the new heart?” I hope so and may these thoughts quicken us into a wholehearted agreement with Him in all things.
