© AD2004-2011
Frank Allnutt
Legal and
Acknowledgements
| Home | Frankly Speaking | New Heart Min. | Bookstore | Art Galleries | About Us | Contact |
|
Easter Sunday, April 24, AD 2011 The Ancient Remedy for Heart Disease A Christian, like everyone else, is born with incurable heart disease—an inherited spiritual heart disease that is cause by sin. The Bible tells us that “The [spiritual] heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9). “Desperately,” here means incurable—terminally sick! Many Christians don’t know it, but an effective remedy for spiritual heart disease has been around for 2,000 years—when Jesus Christ rose from His tomb in victory over sin and death, Satan and his fallen world system. The “old man” or fallen humanity, characterized by the “desperately sick” heart, was crucified with Him, and the “new man” or new humanity, characterized by the new, Christ-like heart, came into existence through His resurrection. The Apostle Paul wrote: “do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4). The Christian’s crucifixion and resurrection with Christ is partial fulfillment of God’s New Covenant promise to those who are saved by faith through grace in Jesus Christ: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the [spiritually dead] heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh [i.e., spiritually alive heart]. 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”—God (Ezekiel 36:26,27). As a Christian, you have undergone what could be called a spiritual heart transplant as part of your crucifixion and resurrection with Christ. Your new heart and all that came with it make you a “new man”—a member of the new humanity, a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). Because Christ dwells in the new heart of the believer (Ephesians 3:16,17), Paul could write:”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). That miraculous transformation, which Jesus refered to as being “born again” (John 3:1-7), can be seen in several biblical analogies, among them: • the circumcised heart Those and more are explained in more detail in my Advanced Study No. 1: The Christian’s New Heart. As a learning aid, I have attempted to illustrate the first four of those graphically, and I have inserted some of those captioned illustrations as follows: The Circumcised Heart
The Circumcised Heart Circumcision of the heart by the Holy Spirit amounts to a spiritual heart transplant. The old, fleshly components of heart (soul and spirit procreated in the sinful likeness of Adam) are removed, and new, God-created soul and spirit, created by Him in the likeness of Christ, are implanted. In the process, God-created personhood undergoes the transformation of being co-crucified and co-resurrected with Christ. The Grafted Olive Branch
The Grafted Olive Branch Through sharing Christ’s eternal life in our new spirit-part, we partake of the divine nature. And through receiving a new soul-part, we receive substantively Christ-like faculties of mind, emotion, and will. The branch is the one chosen of God to be grafted into the cultivated olive tree from which the branch derives its new life, nature, identity, and nourishment. The olive tree illustration of Paul helps us better understand being “placed in Christ,” being “baptized into Christ” (Romans 6:3), being “born again” (John 3:1-6), and being vitalized by His eternal life. Before salvation, we had identity in Adam and his “family tree.” With our salvation came new unity and identity in Christ and His “family tree.” The Vine and branches “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:1-5). In this allegory of the vine and branches, we can see Jesus as the vine and therefore the source of life and nourishment that enable the chosen and pruned branch to abide in Him.
The New Temple
The New Temple After the cross, on the day of Pentecost, a dramatic change took place with regard to God’s Temple. He moved out of the old Jerusalem Temple and established residence in a new Temple—in the new hearts of believers. Understand that the old heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26) was defiled by sin and therefore unsuitable for a temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, prior to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, it was necessary for the chosen ones to undergo a spiritual heart transplant. That accomplished, then the Holy Spirit indwelt the new temple in the new hearts of the elect. And He continues to make the hearts of all new believers His Temple. Paul writes: “Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Paul writes that Christ dwells in the heart (Ephesians 3:17), and we understand this to be in the spirit chamber-part because He is our very life and the spirit is our life center. And yet, the whole person is to be considered God’s Temple. Paul reveals this truth with a rhetorical question, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you...?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).
_______________ For further reading (FREE and without registration or log-in): The Ways of the Heart ©Copyright AD2011 Frank Allnutt. All rights reserved. Content herein may be quoted, subject to the "fair use" doctrine of U.S. Copyright Law. |
