The Miraculous Heart Transplant, Part 5
From Section 7 of The Christian's New Heart
by Frank Allnutt

New Wineskin for New Wine
Our Lord’s analogy of wineskins illustrates that your new heart can be seen as a “container” in which there are contents: “Nor do men put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out, and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved” (Matthew 9:17).

At the time Jesus was ministering on earth, wine making involved the use of animal skins (usually goat hides) fashioned into leather bottles called wineskins. Grapes were picked, and the juice was squeezed out and poured into the wineskins. As the new wine fermented, it produced gases which caused the wineskin to stretch to its limit. After the wine was used, the wineskins were discarded. If new wine were placed in an old wineskin, the expansion would burst the seams of the already stretched wineskin, ruining it, and the wine would leak out and be lost.

Now, let’s consider how the analogy of the wine and wineskins correlates with your new heart.

Jesus was talking about containers (old wineskins and new wineskins) and their contents (old wine and new wine). He said the Pharisees’ old wineskins were their old, Adamic, stone-dead hearts which were spiritually dead to God and incapable of understanding the New Covenant of grace through Christ. Their old wine was a legalistic system, based on the Torah or laws of Moses, but supplemented over time with their own laws. Within their souls, there “fermented” erroneous notions about mixing law and grace, namely that grace could be appropriated through obedience to the law. But the Pharisees had it backwards, for through grace, believers are empowered and can be motivated by love to obey. Grace is not realized through law; rather, law is fulfilled through grace (which is love in action).

Pharisees, as well as all Israel, lived under the Mosaic economy or administration, which was based on Torah Law. Christians, however, are not under Torah Law, but live in God’s grace through the New Covenant of Jesus Christ.

At the Last Supper, Jesus took a cup of wine and said: “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the [new] covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:27, 28).

Just as the new wine of the New Covenant of grace could not be “poured” into the old wineskins (old hearts) of the Pharisees, you too were born with an old wineskin (heart) that could not be “filled” with the New Covenant. Paul writes that “a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Corinthians 2:14). But a Christian is not a “natural man”; he is a new creature!

New wine also symbolizes the Holy Spirit and things of the Spirit. Paul tells us, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). The natural man has an old wineskin (heart) that cannot be filled with the new wine (the Holy Spirit and “things of the Spirit,” which includes love [agape] and grace).

New wine, as Jesus taught, also represents His “blood.” And His blood is symbolic of His life. By drinking the sacrament of wine, we signify that Christ’s blood or life is the source of our life—we share His eternal life!

When you became a Christian, God exchanged your old wineskin for a new wineskin —your old heart for a new heart—because your old heart was not sanctified, and therefore was not an acceptable vessel for the indwelling and filling of His Holy Spirit.

The Lord's Supper
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul gave this insight regarding partaking of the wine and bread:

26For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

27Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

28But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

29For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not judge the body rightly.

30For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep” (1 Corinthians 11:26-30).

It is beyond our scope here to consider the totality of the Lord’s supper, but I bring it into our study to focus on two implications of Paul’s writing: First, Jesus said the wine represented His “new covenant”; second, Paul said to “examine” yourself and do not to partake of the wine and the bread in an “unworthy manner.” There are four things that could be construed to partake of the wine and bread in an “unworthy manner”:

1. The individual is unworthy if he does not understand or rejects any part of the New Covenant. For example: Does he understand and accept that part of the New Covenant is God’s promise to perform an ontological heart transplant in His chosen ones (Ezekiel 36:26, 27)?
   
   
2. The individual is unworthy because he is not truly a Christian, but is, ontologically speaking, an old wineskin which is unsuitable for new wine.
   
   
3. The individual is unworthy because he has a hardened heart that is divided by sin, and his flesh-like soul, while ontologically new, functions as an old wineskin in that it is filled with old wine (lies and impure thoughts, emotions, and desires). In effect, partaking of the wine and the bread is for the Whole-Hearted Christian, not for the CINA (Christian In Name Only) or for the Half-Hearted Christian.
   
   
4. The individual is unworthy because he does not “judge the body rightly”—his own physical body or way of living in the broader sense, or the state of other members within the body of Christ.

The Holy Spirit will not reside in a substantively unclean vessel—the elements of its makeup must be pure. When God gave us a new heart, it came with His total sanctification; no part of it was old or unclean. Understand, however, that the new heart can become conditionally unclean—superficially defiled by “debt” resulting from actual sin. Such a soul requires cleansing, restoration, renewal, and often times healing.

Wine from grapes can adversely affect the brain’s ability to function under control of the mind, but the wine that is the Holy Spirit enables the mind of the soul (and thus the brain) to function with supernatural efficiency. Here is my paraphrase of Paul’s advice: “And do not get drunk with wine from grapes, for that is dissipation of the soul and body, but submit your soul to be filled with the enabling new wine that is the grace-ministering Holy Spirit, who continually and forever dwells within your spirit” (Ephesians 5:18, paraphrased).

“Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I shall announce My words to you.” Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.

Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel” (Jeremiah 18:2-6).

The above passage illustrates that God chose to remake certain old vessels into new vessels. Our new hearts are like new clay jars. Our old heart (jar) was not suitable for God’s purposes, so He completely destroyed the old (through crucifixion with Christ) and replaced it with the new (through resurrection with Christ). God has given each of us a perfect and completely new heart, the ethical nature of which is substantively holy, righteous, and loving. He has placed His Spirit in the spirit of our new heart, but how we use our soul is a matter of our own choosing. We can cooperate with God by allowing His indwelling Spirit to fill our soul with His gifts and words, which are sweeter than honey (Psalm 119:103), or we can defile our souls by filling them with worldly and fleshly thoughts, feelings, and desires that are like deadly poison (James 3:8):

For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves... (2 Corinthians 4:6, 7).

A potter begins forming a new jar to his pleasing with a lump of formless clay. Spinning it ever so gently on a potter’s wheel, he skillfully shapes the lump of clay into a jar.

Now, understand that whether honey or rat poison is placed in the new jar, the contents do not change the jar’s substantive nature or physical properties; it remains an earthen vessel. However, if we defile our soul by allowing it to become superficially or conditionally unclean through sinful functioning and the storing up of sinful thoughts, feelings, and desires, we will be in conditional darkness and not bathed with God’s light. However, our soul’s substantive ethical nature remains absolutely (unchangeably) holy and righteous.

A dirty temple or a dirty jar must be cleansed before use. We must cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the emptying and cleansing of the contents and fleshly functioning of our souls. We empty through repentance, and the Spirit cleanses us through the filial or parental forgiveness (post-salvific forgiveness) of God through Christ Jesus.Such filial forgiveness restores fellowship. When God performed a miraculous spiritual heart transplant in you, He resurrected your personhood into newness of life and exchanged your old spirit-part and old soul-part for new ones.

When functioning in harmony with your new spirit of love and the indwelling Holy Spirit, your new soul has the capacity for the Holy Spirit to be functionally admitted into your soul to fill your soul and body with light that will cleanse them of conditional unrighteousness, and thus resume the process of functionally conforming you to the character of Christ.

The Computer—a Contemporary Analogy
The computer is patterned after the spiritual heart. Its hardware corresponds to the substantive components of the spiritual heart; its system and applications software correspond to the indwelling Spirit, gifts of the Spirit, and the faculties of the soul; and its operator-created documents correspond to the contents of the soul, such as memory, intellect, values, and so forth.

I recently purchased a new computer. I set up the system, installed the systems software and applications programs. I had previously copied my old computer files to disks, so next I loaded them into the new computer. I had a new computer with all of my old files.

Now, at the time of my salvation, I received a new heart, and it was “loaded” with my “old files.”

For several weeks after receiving my new computer, I was busy converting my old files to the new applications programs. In a similar way, after we receive our new hearts, our soul’s memories and other “contents” are subjected to the process of progressive sanctification—spiritual growth through the “renewing of your mind,” as God works to conform the functioning of our soul to the functional likeness of Christ. Paul alluded to this in his letter to Titus: “He [God] saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

History’s First Heart Donor
You might be wondering how God came up with a new heart for you. Where did He get it? Who was the donor? June Hunt, in her book, Seeing Yourself Through God’s Eyes, writes: “You have God’s heart!” Indeed, God has a heart. Several times in Scripture we read of David or someone else being “a man after God’s own heart.” He gave you a heart like His, which is also the heart of His Son—but He did not give you His personhood, which is unique Godhood. You were first born with an old-man, Adam-natured heart, and you were born again with a new-man heart like Christ’s!

Think of Jesus as history’s first heart donor. He literally gives His heart to every believer, past, present, and future, through regeneration. Those who are in Christ share His eternal life and the holy, righteous, and love characteristics of His life. Paul writes: “But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Corinthians 6:17). What closer relationship could there be?

The Christian, by virtue of a spiritual heart transplant, is like Christ in nature: holy, righteous, and endowed with a supernatural capacity to love. This is not to say the Christian shares Christ’s personhood or is equal to Christ in terms of deity, and it is not to say the Christian always behaves in holy, righteous, and loving ways; the Christian can neither be a god nor attain functional sinless perfection in his mortal existence.

God’s intent is not to make us gods, but to bring us into unity with Himself through Christ by sharing His heart and life with us, and conforming the functioning of our souls to the likeness of Christ.

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Section 7, Part:  1  2  3  4  5

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