A New Heart

I wanted to share with you a former frustration that I continually had when reading the bible. This frustration always took place while reading the Sermon on the Mount. For one of the basic messages of the Sermon on the Mount is the need for a righteous heart, for what matters is not simply what is going on the outside, but what is going on internally. What needs to be changed is not just our actions, but more importantly our heart.

This was a message I felt like it was impossible to meet. How can I change my heart? I can change my external actions, but can my heart really be changed? My mentality was that of Jeremiah 17:9 that says “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” For how can the Sermon on the mount tell me to be pure of heart in chapter 5, when Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is sick beyond measure. I didn’t know how to reconcile this, so when I read the Sermon on the Mount, I subconsciously skimmed over half of it, because much of it seemed impossible for me to do.

But I believe now there was a huge gap in my understanding of the heart. While reading Jeremiah 17:9 I failed to understand that that wasn’t the end of the story.

One of the greatest prophecies concerning our salvation is given in Ezekiel 36:26
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you: I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And while the heart of a new person still carries remnants of the old heart, Jeremiah’s picture of the heart in ch.17 is no longer the dominant picture of the new heart of the believer. There is the residue of that old sick heart that remains on the surface of our being, but in our core we are now bent towards righteousness.

Romans 6:17 says this “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed.

For now, thanks to God who has given us a new heart, we can now be obedient even in our heart.

I believe most Christians are like me and don’t realize what happened to them when they became a Christian. For if we believe that at our core, in our hearts we are sinners and sick beyond help, it is natural that we will sin. However If you believe you are a new person, that you have a new heart, which is the center of our being and you have at the core of your being new characteristics… I believe this individual will live a more righteous life. For the foundation of righteous living depends strongly upon who we believe we are, in this case in Christ Jesus.

One individual who believes that at their core they are a sinner and are sick, will read the Sermon on the Mount thinking it is beyond them. The other, the one who knows who they are in Christ, one with a new heart and spirit, will no longer need to skip any of it. For they know that “it is not I, but Christ who lives in me”. One lives by their own works and own power, the other lives by faith in the Word of God believing that the Holy Spirit is within, and that he is powerful.