Jesus went to the cross to save you from sin and death, to redeem you, to justify you, to
sanctify you, and to reconcile you to God. Thoseare among the things He did for you. God’s plan also called for doing a number of things to you—the “exchanges” we mentioned in the previous chapter. All of those are for His purpose of making you a new creature so that Christ might live His life in you and through you. Central to making you a new creature is the act of giving you a new spiritual heart. As a Christian you have already received this new heart. Now, in this chapter, we will consider how God performed this miraculous spiritual heart transplant within you.

Your spiritual heart transplant is a critical aspect of who you are in Christ. And, you will come to a deeper understanding of this when you consider these teachings of Scripture:

• the circumcised heart
• the grafted branch
• the vine and branches
• the new temple
• the new wineskin
• the potter’s new jar

But before we delve into those teachings, let’s consider the broad biblical context and define some terms along the way.

The Fulfilled Promise of a New Heart
At the instant of your salvation, God fulfilled His promised to give you a new spiritual heart:

“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, 27).

As a Christian, you have undergone a miraculous heart transplant: As God promised, He removed your old, Adamic spiritual heart and gave you a new spiritual heart like Christ’s!

Some Terms Defined
The Ezekiel 36:26, 27 passage contains words whose intended meanings are crucial to understand in order to accurately interpret what God promised. The broad range of meanings of the English words “heart,” “spirit,” and “new” open the passage to many interpretations. The most widespread faulty exegesis of those verses identify the “new heart” as a new love for God and others, and a “new spirit” as reference to the Holy Spirit. However, as we have discussed earlier, the “new heart” is a major characteristic of the “new man”—your new self in Christ; and “new spirit” refers to your new disposition of Godly love (agape) that is the chief ethical characteristic of your new life (Christ’s life).

A closer examination of the Hebrew terms translated as “love” and “spirit” can bring us into better understanding of the intended meaning of God’s promise.

As we already have discussed, the biblical words for “heart” can refer to the inner self or any of its parts or functions. The Hebrew word for “spirit” (ruach) can also refer to the soul and spirit chamber-parts of the heart, or life, or mental disposition. The word “new” (châdâsh in Hebrew) has two meanings: “fresh” or “new thing.” Its root is the same term, but with different accent (châdash); it means “new” in the sense of “rebuilt,” or “renewed.” But God’s plan was not to “rebuild” or “renew” your ontological heart, but to replace it with a new heart. Nor was His plan to turn your old, sin-principled “spirit” into a love-principled “new spirit.” Rather, He replaced your Adamic spirit with a totally new Christ-like spirit of discernment.

Pre-Cross Promise
The promised new spiritual heart, new spirit, and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, was prophetic in that it would be fulfilled under the New Covenant through Jesus. There are two phases to this. First, the old man, with his Adamic heart, was crucified with Christ, and the new man, with a new heart, came into existence through the resurrection of Christ. Second, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit came at the time of Pentecost (Acts 2).

Pre-cross fulfillment
While the promised new heart, new spirit, and indwelling of the Holy Spirit would become an ontological reality to believers in the Church age, the promise had partial and conditional application to the children of Israel prior to the cross. A similar promise quoted by Jeremiah appears to be directed specifically to the children of Israel:

“And I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart” (Jeremiah 24:7).

Notice that God’s promise in Jeremiah was for “a heart to know Me,” and that in Ezekiel 36:26 the promise is to bestow “a new heart.” The two are quite different. “A heart to know Me” speaks of desire coupled with enablement, similar in meaning to the “new spirit” promised in the Ezekiel passage; it does not indicate a substantively or ontologically new heart as does the new heart promise in Ezekiel, which mentions the removal of the old heart of stone and its replacement with a new heart of flesh.

In pre-cross times, a repentant person’s heart was made “new,” not substantively or ontologically, but conditionally—cleansed and filled through the abiding (not indwelling) Holy Spirit.

David went before God with “a broken and a contrite heart” (Psalm 51:17) and prayed: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). Remember that David had an old Adamic heart—as did all Old Testament saints. His heart was unregenerate, and he possessed natural life and a sin nature. Even so, his soul could be conditionally, but not substantively or ontologically, cleansed of sin-debt.

When David asked God for a “steadfast spirit,” he was not requesting a “replacement part” or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but rather a renewed attitude of faith, hope, and love. David had gone astray in his heart, and now wanted God to help him get back on the right path so they could resume fellowship together. God gave David a conditional or temporary new spirit of love through the ministry of the abiding Holy Spirit; but also through circumstances which were brought about through his focus and dependency on God, repentance, rest in God, prayer and meditation. All of that served to change David’s mental disposition from wayward to “steadfast” and “willing”—focused, faithful, and right with God. Before, David’s mind was centered in self; afterward, it was centered in God. This made his heart conditionally right with God; indeed, he was a man after God’s own heart.

The promise of a substantively or ontologically new heart was not fulfilled before the cross, but was part of the Old Testament believer’s inheritance which would come through the cross.

The atonement of Christ’s death ultimately dealt with the sins of Old Testament believers (Romans 3:25; Hebrews 9:15). Their sins had been covered by the blood of animal sacrifices (Genesis 3:21; Leviticus 17:11), but not at the time in a final or permanent way (Hebrews 10:4, 11). This is why they did not receive the promised inheritance of going to heaven when they died (Hebrews 9:15-17, 11:8-16).

Instead, they temporarily went to hades (“Abraham’s bosom”) until the time of Christ’s atonement at the cross (Luke 16:22). Following the cross, Jesus joined those Old Testament saints in Hades, and upon His resurrection and ascension into heaven, took them with Him. And, it was at the time of their resurrection that God completed the fulfillment of His promise to give them substantively or ontologically new spiritual hearts. Those pre-cross saints now have new hearts and are in heaven, awaiting the resurrection of their bodies unto glory (see Ephesians 4:8).

Post-Cross Fulfillment
Now, let’s consider how God fulfilled His promise of a new heart to post-cross believers.

The first part of God’s promise tells us He will give us a new spiritual heart, and the second part explains how He would do it: through replacement (See Figures 7-1a and 7-1b).

Figure 7-1a:

Figure 7-1b:

God removes the old heart and replaces it with a substantially or ontologically new heart.

He performed this miraculous heart transplant through the old man’s crucifixion with Christ and the new man’s resurrection with Christ (Romans 6:3-9; Galatians 2:20).

This became experiential for us Christians at the time of our salvation. It was then that God also placed His Spirit in our new hearts, and imparted Christ’s eternal life and the gift of Godly love (agape) to us—the promised “new spirit” of Ezekiel 36:26.

The love-gift of the Spirit can motivate us to walk in the Spirit. And through walking in the Spirit, we undergo God’s process of progressive sanctification by which we are more closely conformed to the conditional and functional likeness of Christ.

Progressive sanctification (also called spiritual maturity and spiritual growth) develops through love-motivated obedience from the heart (Romans 6:17), and our being controlled or led by Christ through His love for us (2 Corinthians 5:14).

As nonbelievers, we were basically controlled by the motivational principle of sin; as believers we have the new heart ability to function out of the motivational principle of love. But the activation of love is a choice on our part. And when we choose to repent of sin and to walk in love, our new heart’s new spirit-part and new soul-part become functionally united by love and operate in loving harmony with the indwelling Holy Spirit. (The duality of sin and love is discussed in Advanced Study No. 2 in The Christian's New Heart Series, The Ways of the Heart.)

Now, there are three more words in God’s promise we will consider: “remove,” “stone,” and “flesh.” God promised, “I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” The King James Version renders it this way: “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh....”

The word “remove” is a translation of the Hebrew sûwr, which means “take away” or “pluck out.” Had God intended to change the heart rather than exchange it by removal and replacement, He might have used the Hebrew term mûwr to better convey that idea. But God did not merely change your heart, He “plucked out” the old one and replaced it with a new one!

The “heart of stone” is a metaphor for your old spiritual heart. God plucked it out of you and gave you “a heart of flesh”—not in a biological sense but in a spiritual one. The old heart of stone was spiritually dead, separated from God, and hardened toward Him. Stones are inanimate, hard, and incapable of having a spiritual relationship of any kind. Your old heart, to use an old expression, was spiritually “stone-cold dead.” A heart of stone can no more relate to God or express Godly love than a lifeless stone! By contrast, “flesh” is a biological metaphor here that is used to convey the idea that the spiritual heart is spiritually alive—as our flesh and bones are alive. The heart of flesh, in this sense, is capable of relating with God; loving Him, others, and ourselves; and, undergoing functional spiritual growth or progressive sanctification.

Note that the new alive “heart of flesh” is an ontological reality, while a believer’s “fleshly” (carnal or divided) heart refers to the condition and functionality of the heart.

Do Believers Receive Literal New Hearts?
Given all of this, you still might be wondering whether the spiritual heart transplant is literal or figurative, or whether the new heart comes by transformation rather than replacement. I’ll offer one more brief argument in support of what I believe the Bible teaches: We must view the whole promise—for a new heart, a new spirit, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit—as either literal or figurative. Thus, if the new heart is figurative and not actual, so would the indwelling of the Holy Spirit be figurative and not actual. There is ample biblical evidence for the actual indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

But, it might be asked, could part of the promise be literal and another part be figurative? Look at the illogic of this: Could the Holy Spirit literally indwell a new heart that is figurative and not actual? And finally, if under the healing hand of God, man can perform biological heart transplants, could there be any doubt that the Great Physician himself performs spiritual heart transplants?

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