In Book One of this series, The Christian’s New Heart, I told the story of Bob Morris, a
man who underwent a successful heart transplant. I posed the question, “Wouldn’t it be silly and tragic for a man with a healthy heart to continue living as if he still had his old diseased and damaged heart?” And then I drew an alarming parallel: God has performed a miraculous spiritual heart transplant in each of His children; yet, most do not understand they have a new heart.

Now, in this second Advanced Study of the Christian’s new heart, I draw upon Scripture to show that such believers are prone to continue struggling through life out of self-sufficiency, functioning out of unholy alliances with fleshliness, Satan, sin, the world system, and law. Consequently, they are missing the blessings of wholehearted living in Christ.

God’s Model of the Heart
In the first book in our study, I introduced God’s Model of the Heart. We traced the origin of man’s heart to Adam, analyzed God’s promise to give His children new hearts (Ezekiel 36:26, 27), and considered the place of our new heart in our salvation experience and being made new creatures in Christ. This second book expands our study of God’s Model of the Heart. It takes us deeper into the role of the heart in matters of spiritual relationships, spiritual warfare, concepts of truth and reality, heart functions, behavior, and life-style.

This book draws heavily on Paul’s teachings of duality: flesh verses spirit, Satan verses God, the world system verses God’s Kingdom, and the law system verses the grace system.

“Spiritual Heart Examinations”
In this study, we will conduct “Spiritual Heart Examinations” of Adam, Adam-Hearted Man, and Christians, and compile their biblical profiles. These profiles will be helpful in learning God’s doctrine of the heart, in teaching it, and in applying it in the course of discipling and counseling.

As in the first book in the series, this one includes numerous illustrations, diagrams and charts that are helpful in visualizing and comprehending sometimes abstract and complicated biblical concepts. For example, they help us more clearly perceive man from the six biblical perspectives introduced in my first book: the positional, relational, ontological, conditional, functional, and behavioral.
It is my hope and prayer that God will use this study to enrich your life, and that it will be a useful resource to you in teaching, discipling, and counseling others.

Frank Allnutt

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