New Testament Confirmation of the Believer’s
Miraculous Spiritual Heart Transplant
Let’s look at New Testament confirmation that God has performed a spiritual heart transplant in His children. We’ll examine these six teachings:

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

Following those, I will offer my own contemporary analogy: the computer.

The Circumcised Heart
Most people are familiar with the procedure of circumcision. Male infants are circumcised for one or two reasons: hygienic purposes, and as a Jewish ritual ordained by God that has to do with identity with Him.

The Bible addresses the practice of ritual circumcision, but also another kind of circumcision: circumcision of the spiritual heart. Paul wrote of this to the Christians in Rome: “Circumcision is that which is of the [spiritual] heart, by the Spirit” (Romans 2:29). And to the Colossians he explained: “In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions” (Colossians 2:11-13).

What the Bible says about the “circumcised” heart gives us another perspective of the removal of our old heart and the implantation of our new heart. Let’s first look at an analogy from a seemingly unlikely source: secular television.

“Cut to the Heart” was aired on Public Broadcasting’s Nova. It was one of those surgery programs that took the viewer inside the operating room to observe surgeons removing diseased heart tissue. Had the patient not undergone surgery, the disease, in time, would have overtaken the entire heart, impairing its ability to function properly, and eventually causing the death of the patient.

There are similarities between that procedure and God’s giving you a new spiritual heart. Your old spiritual heart was “desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9). It was in the flesh, and therefore “disease-ridden” with sin to the very core of its substantive nature, which rendered it spiritually dead. The Bible describes the “diseased” spiritual heart of natural man as an “uncircumcised heart” (Leviticus 26:41; Jeremiah 9:26; Ezekiel 44:7, 9; Acts 7:51). The new spiritual heart, of course, is a “circumcised heart” (Deuteronomy 10:16, 30:6; Jeremiah 4:4; Romans 2:29.

Just as physical circumcision involves the removal of foreskin, circumcision of the spiritual heart involves the removal of a spiritual kind of flesh (Colossians 2:11). Physicians surgically remove diseased tissue from a biological heart, and God removes the “diseased” portions of the natural spiritual heart. Your old fleshly spirit and soul were removed from you—“circumcised” from your personhood. Your personhood was crucified and resurrected in newness of life with Christ and enjoined to a new spirit and a new soul.

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.

In the process, the Spirit of Christ was placed in your spirit part and imparted Christ’s eternal life to you, along with His holy, righteous, and love nature; this gave you unity and identity in Christ. Your new soul has a mind, emotion, and will that are substantively Christ-like and are immune to every spiritual “disease” in that they will never die or become separated from God. All of that happened to you ontologically, as part of becoming born again.

The result of all of this: You are a new creation 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).

Positionally, God also took you out of the realm of flesh and darkness, and placed you in the realm of the Spirit and light, and you are now seated with Christ in the heavenly places.

God did not cure your “desperately sick” old heart—it was spiritually dead and beyond cure. He did not fix it by repairing it, or patching it up, or upgrading it. Nor did He make it become spiritually alive. Instead, as He promised, He removed your old heart and gave you a new heart. It was the only means by which He could take you out of the flesh, place His Spirit in you, and give you new life in Christ.

In order for you to be placed “in Christ,” God first had to take you out of Adam. In order for you to be placed in the Spirit, God first had to take you out of the flesh. And, in order for God to place you in the realm of light, He had to take you out of the realm of darkness. And He did this when you were crucified with Christ and resurrected with Him as a new-hearted, new creature.

You were still you, but in the resurrected state of newness. Since your old soul and spirit are no longer in you, they cannot function within you. No spiritual part of you is old—no spiritual part of you remains “in Adam” or in the darkness or the flesh. Spiritually, you are a totally new creature, a truth that Paul gave great importance (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15).

You may recall my earlier reference to The Random House Dictionary definition of regenerate: “to cause to be born again spiritually.” It also defines unregenerate: To be born spiritually dead and separated from God; “not renewed in heart.” An unregenerate heart is an old uncircumcised heart, and a regenerate heart is a new circumcised heart.

Figure 7-4: Your spiritual heart transplant:

_______________

Section 7, Part:  1  2  3  4  5

Next >

Section Index >
______________

Click here for further reading on this web site as well as available books, booklets and DVDs.