King David became “a man after God’s own heart.” He was the shepherd boy who composed and collected psalms of praise to God. He slew Goliath, became Israel’s greatest king, and desired to build a temple of God to house the Covenant of the Ark. Among his descendants was Jesus of Nazareth, who will return one day to take his rightful seat on the throne of David.

But there was a time in David’s life when he had a dark side: He was an adulterer, a murderer, and a hypocrite. Not surprisingly, he had enemies. At one time when he was running for his life, his loss, suffering, and fear convicted him of his sinful ways, and he came to grips with the reality that his survival was totally dependent on the grace of God. And so he prayed out of a “broken and contrite heart” (Psalm 51:17b) for God to “create in me a clean heart,” to “renew a steadfast spirit within me,” and “do not take Thy Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:10, 11).

A “clean heart” in David’s time was an old heart conditionally (not substantively) purified through repentance, cleansing, and renewal. A “steadfast spirit” was love for God, manifested in faithfulness, obedience, and in other ways.But what David really needed was a completely new heart. We too were born in need of a new heart. And here is how God meets that need, as recorded by the prophet Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit 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 you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:26, 27a).

The Fulfilled Promise of a New Heart
God’s promise of a new heart and a new spirit of loving devotion to Him, along with the indwelling of His Spirit, would find its ultimate fulfillment through:

1. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ Jesus.
2. The crucifixion of the old man with Jesus, and the resurrection of the new man with Him.
3. Our salvific experience of being baptized1 into Christ (brought into unity with Him).
   

Figure 6-1, below, is repeated from earlier in our study, and shows the correlation between David’s prayer request for a new heart, God’s response with the promise of a new heart for all of His children, and the New Covenant fulfillment of that promise.

We needed a new heart and all that comes with it. Our old sin-corrupted hearts were incompatible with God’s holy, loving nature. Because of this, He promised each of His children a new spiritual heart through which we can “know” Him—be related with Him and fellowship with Him on the deepest, most intimate, spiritual level, through knowing Christ Jesus as Savior and Lord. God has given us everything we need to know Him and to live in His ways (1 Peter 1:3, 4).

As we will examine more closely, God exchanged the heart’s procreated spirit and soul for a new, God-created spirit and soul, and He made our personhood “new” through our crucifixion and resurrection with Christ, or baptism1 into Christ. God did all of this through His only begotten Son. Provision for the new heart was accomplished by Jesus through His death and the death of the Adam-hearted old man (sin-natured, old humanity), and His resurrection and the resurrection of the Christ-hearted new man (love-natured, new humanity). And it became experiential for us at the time of our salvation. Our new heart, new spirit of love, and new life are what make us new creatures in Christ: “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works...” (Ephesians 2:10a).

The Exchanged Life
Becoming a Christian is truly a life-changing experience—actually a life-exchanging experience:

1. God exchanged your position from the realm of darkness, sin, and flesh to the realm of His light, love, and Spirit; and from the age of pre-cross covenants to the age of the New Covenant in Christ Jesus.
   
   
2. God exchanged your state of being from darkness, sin, and flesh to light, love, and spirit.
   
   
3. God exchanged your old unity with and position in Adam to new unity and position in Christ.
   
   
4. God exchanged your old man human nature in the likeness of Adam for new man human nature in the likeness of Christ.
   
   
5. God exchanged your old spiritual heart for a new spiritual heart. Through your crucifixion with Christ, your personhood died (was not annihilated, but separated through “circumcision” of your heart from the flesh and old man human nature). Your personhood was resurrected with Christ, given new life, a new spirit, and a new soul—all of which comprise the new heart.
   
   
6. God exchanged your old spirit chamber-part for a new spirit chamber-part.
   
   
7. God exchanged your old, spiritually dead, natural or Adamic life for Christ’s supernatural and eternal life.
   
   
8. God exchanged your old sinful nature for a holy, loving and righteous new nature.
   
   
9. God exchanged your old sinner identity in Adam for a new saintly (holy) identity in Christ.
   
   
10. God exchanged your old soul chamber-part for a new soul chamber-part.
    
    
11. God exchanged your old faculty of mind for the mind of Christ.
    
    
12. God exchanged your old faculty of emotion for the emotion of Christ.
    
    
13. God exchanged your old faculty of will for the will of Christ.
    
    
14. God exchanged your old spirit (Adamic disposition of fleshliness and sinfulness) for a new spirit (Christlike disposition of love).
    
    

There are two other important things God did to make you a new creature. He placed His Holy Spirit in your new spirit chamber-part and made several changes to your body. He gave Christ’s life, holiness, and righteousness to your body as a “down payment” toward your future, glorified body. Paul writes of “The new self [new man or new species of human that belongs to the age of the New Covenant], which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth” (Ephesians 3:24).

Regardless of what you think, how you feel, what your desires and intentions might be, and how you behave, if you are a Christian, you are a new creature. Paul wrote:

"So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam [Christ] became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. And just as we have born the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly" (1 Corinthians 15:45-49).

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).

All of the above exchanges give you the potential for living as God wants you to live. But the choice to realize that potential is yours. Simply stated, it is exchanging an old-man way of living for the new-man way of living. Sometimes called the deeper life, the Spirit-filled life, and the Christ-centered life, it is experiencing Christ as life. This dynamic of experiencing Christ living His life in you and through you can only be realized through a change of heart by which you forsake fleshly living for spiritual living out of love-motivated, whole-hearted obedience to the will of God.

This subject is dealt with extensively in The Ways of the Heart (the Second Advanced Study Book) and The Christian’s New Heart Series of Booklets.

What God did not exchange
At the time you became a Christian, you probably did not sense all the exchanges that God made in you. In addition to the exchanges and changes to your body, even more changes or transformations were in store for you. At the time of your salvation, God began the process of teaching you how to function out of your new heart, His love, and His Spirit. He also began the process of transforming or changing some of the old contents and features of your new heart: Your beliefs and values, your personality and character, your intellect and memories, your feelings about people and things, your social ways, your desires and intentions, your life-style, and your response to old and new spirit masters (which are discussed in The Ways of the Heart, Advanced Study No. Two in The Christian’s New Heart Series).

God exchanged those things which are absolutes (are unchangeable)—things about your positional, relational, and ontological self. All the rest—the contents and functionality of your heart—are changeable. And their changing to the functional likeness of Christ is partly your responsibility and partly the responsibility of the Holy Spirit. The two of you must work together to bring about those changes. And you can only do this out of a whole heart—when your soul and spirit are united by love, and function in harmony with the indwelling Spirit of Christ.

While your exchanged attributes are innately and irreversibly sanctified, your changeable attributes are sanctified through a harmonious process involving you and the Holy Spirit that is sometimes referred to as spiritual growth, or, in more scholarly terms, progressive sanctification. It is accomplished through walking in the Spirit and being filled by the Spirit. Through this lifelong process, the condition, contents, and functionality of your soul will be renewed in Christlikeness, transforming your functional self into closer conformity with your ontological new nature. (This is a subject of The Ways of the Heart.)

Figure 6:2: The Adam-Hearted Man and the Christ-Hearted Man
In the very last chapter of the Bible we read that “there shall no longer be any night; and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall illumine them; and they shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5). This truth is amplified in other places in the scriptures, particularly in the writing of John: “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Jesus proclaimed of Himself: “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).

You were born into Satan’s domain of darkness, and you were born again into God’s kingdom of light. Your position or realm of existence has been exchanged, one for the other.

Notice in Figure 6-2 that your old self was of the earth and your new self is of heaven (see 1 Corinthians 15:47, 48). In contrast to the fleshly darkness of your old self, your new self is spiritually white. God has made us new creatures, filled with and characterized by His holy light. He “has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). When you function out of a whole heart, “your whole body will be full of light” (Matthew 6:22). Paul tells us: “You were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8).

Because God’s light is in every believer, we are called “children of light” and children “of the day,” and His light and life enable us to walk in His light: “You were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth)” (Ephesians 5:8); “But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day [of the Lord] should overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him” (1 Thessalonians 5:4-10).

You Were Crucified to the Flesh
Adamic man belongs to the old age, to the earth, and to spiritual darkness because he was conceived in Adam, and is without God and His holy light. His life, symbolized in Figure 6-2 by the apple in his heart, is Adam’s spiritually dead life, his Adamic nature is that of a sinner, and his identity is in Adam. He has a fleshly heart (evil-principled human nature) with spiritually depraved faculties of mind, emotion, and will.

Paul tells us it was through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection that in Himself He might replace the old-hearted, Adamic line of human being with a new-hearted, Christlike species of human being (Ephesians 2:14-16, 4:22-24). In doing this, God also took you out of the flesh and placed you in the Spirit of Christ through spiritual baptism.

Actually, you set yourself up to be crucified to the flesh when you received Christ by faith. Paul writes that, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). Those fleshly passions and desires were rooted in the old man’s old spirit or fleshly and sinful predisposition of the fallen nature of Adamic life. While you are no longer positionally, relationally, or ontologically in the flesh, in the functional sense you must always be on guard not to walk according to the flesh, but choose instead to walk in the Spirit.

You were Resurrected in the Spirit
The Christian is of the new age of the New Covenant, of the light, and of the Spirit. This is because he was born again of Christ (1 Peter 1:23); is indwelt by the Spirit of Christ (Ephesians 3:17); is characterized by Christ’s eternal life and holy nature of love and righteousness; and his identity is in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). Paul writes that, “You were formerly darkness [sin], but now you are light [holy] in the Lord; walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). Christians are “sons of light and sons of day” (1 Thessalonians 5:5).

Paul writes that, “you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Romans 8:9a).

You Now Belong to a “Chosen Race”
As a new creature in Christ, you now belong to the new-man family of humanity. In the words of the Apostle Peter, you now belong to a new “race” (1 Peter 2:9) or “generation” (NIV). In the original Greek, the term translated as “race” or “generation” (genos) literally means “kin,” “offspring,” or “stock.” You are a new breed of human being, born of the seed of Christ.

You are a “chosen one,” called out of the world for a special purpose. You belong to a whole family of called-out ones: the Church (which means “called-out ones” in the Greek). You have been chosen to serve Christ in a very special capacity for the purpose of glorifying Him: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

New creatures in Christ are chosen by God from all ethnic, national, social, and economic backgrounds. None of us was worthy; all of us were sinners. As Paul reminds us: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Ephesians 2:8, 9).

All God asks of us that we return His love by giving our hearts back to Him, in a manner of speaking—to place Christ first in our lives, and He will live His life in us and through us. Not only is Jesus our Savior and Lord, He is our very Life, residing in the spirit of our heart. And He should be the central focus of our life. I believe this is what Paul had in mind when he so eloquently proclaimed: “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21).

It was out of our faith and through God’s faithful and gracious promise-keeping that He gave each of us a new heart and made us new creatures in Christ. It is out of our new heart and the gift of the new spirit of love that we can truly love Him, love others, and love ourselves. Indeed, to love God is the highest function of our new spiritual heart. If we truly love God out of a whole heart, we will worship Him, obey Him, praise Him, and live for Him in every way. The result of all of this is that we will give Him glory through our very lives and life-styles.

As we grow in this deepest level of spiritual fellowship with Him, we will also grow in our love for others and for ourselves in the ways He intends. In doing so, we will fulfill the Greatest Commandments taught by Jesus: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.... You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no greater commandment than these” (Mark 12:30, 31).