Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 36:26
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
26. A new heart ] The “heart” is used here generally of the nature. Formerly their heart was strong, obdurate, unimpressible and rebellious (Eze 2:4, Eze 3:7); now they shall receive a “heart of flesh,” impressible and soft, sensitive to the divine admonitions and will. The phrase shews that in the Old Testament no idea of corrupt inclination attaches to the term “flesh” (Eze 11:19). According to usage “spirit” expresses the ruling principle in the mind, the force that gives direction and motion to the current of thought and conduct, or that prevailing current itself. The heart is more passive and receptive and but responds to influences, the spirit is active and regulative. Jer 32:37-39.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Eze 36:26
A new heart also will I give you.
The necessity of a new heart
I. The work which is here promised.
1. A work of spiritual purification. The gains of business, the pleasures and enjoyments of the world, the vanities and follies of time; of these we may, and of these many do, make a God. Now when the Lord takes a sinner to Himself, and calls him out of that state in which he is by nature, He says, From all your idols will I cleanse you. He cleanses, both from the power and the guilt of them. The love of sin is now destroyed, as well as the guilt of it taken away. The great end of the Gospel is thus accomplished (Eph 5:26-27).
2. As a work of inward regeneration. Man is often content with outward reformation, but the Lord goes to the seat of the evil. The heart of man is hard by nature. There may be, and there is, in many persons much kindness towards their fellow creatures; much affection towards their friends, and all around them; but the heart is hard towards God. How unfeeling is it under the Divine dispensations. Warnings and invitations are given; judgments from God of the most awful nature are pointed out; the dying love of Christ is preached and heard; the sweet and encouraging promises of the Gospel are held forth; but still these are met with cold indifference, or possibly with disdain! Melted by the love of Christ, he grieves over sin; he hates himself on account of it, and both prays and strives against it. A wrong temper causes him more sorrow now, than cursing or drunkenness did in former days. In short, old things are passed away, all things are become new.
3. A work of outward reformation. If the Lord gives a new heart, it follows as a necessary consequence that there must be a willingness to walk in His statutes. Was a man, before this change, addicted to sinful practices? They will be given up. Did be keep sinful company? It will be forsaken. He is not indeed perfect, for perfection is a plant which grows not in this lower world; it flourishes only in the paradise above. Sin will cleave to him, for it is his nature; but the sin which the Christian does, he allows not; it is his grief; he prays and he struggles against it. When the heart of stone is changed to a heart of flesh, there is a total alteration both in the motives and habits of a man.
II. The author of this work.
1. Man cannot be the author of it. It is far above human power. It is opposed to all the prejudices, passions, and inclinations of man.
2. God alone is the Author of it. He may, and does use instruments; and, in various ways, brings about this change; but the work is His.
III. The blessed privileges flowing from this work.
1. He acknowledges them as His people. They shall be My people, not in that general sense in which all the world belongs to Him by right of creation; but His peculiar people, His chosen ones; those over whom He delights to do good; over whom He rests in His love; making them His care, and enriching them with all spiritual blessings; and all this from His free grace and mercy.
2. They claim Him as their God. Mark the steps which lead to this blessed privilege. God sprinkles clean water; He purifies the heart of the sinner; He renews it, and puts into it right dispositions, and then they walk in His statutes. This promise then ensures a supply of all that His people can possibly need or desire. Are they weak? I will be their God to strengthen them. Are they guilty? I will be their God to pardon them. Are they ignorant? I will be their God to teach them. Do they mourn? I will be their God to comfort them. Are they mortal? and do they sometimes look upon the grave with trembling? What are the words of God on this subject? (Hos 13:14.) (J. G. Breay, M. A.)
The heart all wrong made all right
I. The rottenness of the human heart.
1. Every unregenerated heart is unclean. From your filthiness will I cleanse you. Our hands may be clean as water can wash them, and our garments as white as snow; and yet our inward nature be polluted. Sin is not like wine, that gets better by being kept. It gets worse and worse. The Arabs have a fable that once a camel came to the door of a tent and thrust in his nose. Not being resisted, he thrust in his feet. There being no hindrance, he came half way in. After a while he got all the way in. The Arab said to the camel, This tent is too small for two. Then the camel said to the Arab, If that be so, you had better leave. So sin comes into the heart further and further, until it takes full possession. It is not satisfied until it has pushed the soul into an eternal prison house, and slammed to the door, and shoved the bolts, and turned the locks of an everlasting incarceration.
2. The text represents the heart as idolatrous. From all your idols will I cleanse you. If we do not worship the God in heaven, we worship something on earth. This man worships pleasure. This one, applause. This one, money. This one, his family. That to which a man gives his supreme thought and affections is his idol. Like Dagon, how often it falls down, crushing its worshippers. God will have no rivals.
3. The text represents the heart as stony, or insensible. I prove it by the fact that we do not realise the truth of what we have already said. If we had any appreciation of our unclean and idolatrous nature, could we be as unmoved as we are? We are insensible. I saw men walking through the Louvre Gallery, in Paris, half asleep. No flash came to their eyes, no flush to their cheeks, no exclamation to their lips, amid the most thrilling triumphs of painters pencil and sculptors chisel. And so, until grace touches our soul, we walk through the great picture gallery of the Gospel; and the wonders of Christ and the glories of heaven strike no thrill through the heart.
II. The healing process that God proposes for everyone. I will sprinkle, etc. It is a change from black to white, from down to up, from the highway to hell to the highway of heaven. The whole nature made over again. Here are men who once rejected the Bible, cared not for God, talked against high heaven; but now all their hopes are hung on one strong nail: the Nail of the Cross. One Form is to them more glorious than any other: the Form of the Son of God. I take Him, they cry. Through joy and sorrow, through fire and flood, for time and for eternity. None but Jesus! They would stick to Him though the guillotine flashed its bloody knife in their faces. They have a new heart. New in its sentiments, hopes, affections, ambitions. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
The power and dominion of God over the heart
I. God hath supreme dominion over the hearts of men.
1. He furnishes the hearts of men with qualifications suited to their several offices and employments, which He assigns them in the course of His providence.
2. He moderates and controls the most unruly passions, and renders them subservient to His own glory.
3. He sends spiritual judgments into the hearts of men.
4. He also shows His supreme dominion over the hearts of men, by renewing and sanctifying the various powers of their souls.
5. He restores order to the affections, and places them upon their proper objects.
6. He likewise inclines the heart to those things which are well-pleasing in His sight, and brings it into a willing subjection to His law.
II. God mercifully removes every obstacle that might obstruct His powerful gracious operation. The stony heart, which God graciously promises to take away, is remarkable–
1. For insensibility.
(1) It is insensible to the majesty and glory of God, impressed on the works of His hands, and to His power and presence displayed in His providential dispensations.
(2) It is insensible to the spirituality and excellence of the Divine law, and to the wonderful discoveries made in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
2. For obduracy. The hearts of all men are naturally possessed of this bad quality, which is greatly augmented by sinful habits, which, when indulged, provoke God to permit them judicially to harden themselves more and more.
3. For inflexibility. The stony heart is not easily bent to comply with the gracious purposes which God hath in view to execute. It will not be persuaded to accept of the rich mercies which He offers to bestow, nor obey the directions of His Word.
4. For resistance. The stony heart strongly resists the instruments employed to soften and render it tender. The merciful designs of providence are counteracted. Even the convictions and impulses of the Holy Spirit are resisted.
III. God promises to work a great change in the hearts of his people.
1. The spiritual and gracious qualities conveyed to the soul, by the fulfilment of this promise, are called a new heart and a new spirit; because they come in place of the old things which pass away, and are very different from them. By the new heart and the new spirit, we are made partakers of the Divine nature, and renovation after the image of Christ is begun, which is afterward gradually carried forward under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The eyes of the mind are enlightened, and a new light shines into it, whereby it is filled with the knowledge of Gods will. Divine truths are seen in their native beauty, displaying the manifold wisdom of God, and the unsearchable riches of Christ; they penetrate to the bottom of the heart, they are embraced with sincere affection, and have a transforming influence on the heart and life.
2. God also promises to give you an heart of flesh–which seems to intend, a heart the reverse of the stony heart, which He takes away.
(1) The heart of flesh is a sensible heart, that perceives the great importance and excellence of spiritual and Divine things.
(2) The heart of flesh is a soft and tender heart, that is deeply impressed with a sense of the Divine goodness and the manifold mercies of God.
(3) The heart of flesh is likewise flexible and pliant to the holy will of God.
(4) The heart of flesh makes no resistance to God, as doth the stony heart.
3. And I will put My Spirit within you. By the Spirit may be meant, the Holy Ghost, who dwelleth in the people of God as in His temple, the Comforter whom Jesus Christ promises to send from the Father, that He may abide with them forever, even the Spirit of truth–who dwelleth with you and shall be in you (Joh 14:16-17). As a Spirit of power, He strengthens with all might in the inner man; as a Spirit of supplication, He helps their infirmities, and teaches them to pray; in every respect acting as a Spirit of holiness, sanctifying them wholly, and enabling them to perform duties in another and more spiritual manner than ever before. As the promised Comforter, He supports and comforts; so that as their sufferings abound, their consolations by Christ are made to superabound. As a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, He discovers the deep things of God, that we may know the things freely given us of God. As a Spirit of adoption, He enables us to cry, Abba, Father, and to draw near to God with filial freedom and confidence.
IV. The accomplishment of the precious promises which are here given, is attended with blessed effects and consequences. Those who have the Spirits of God put within them, shall be made to walk in Gods statutes, and to keep His judgments and do them. The statutes of God are the rule by which they shall walk, His judgments point out the work which they ought to do. By both expressions the Word of God is intended, which is given to be a lamp to our feet, and a light to our goings, and to show us what is good, and what the Lord our God requireth of us. In these statutes and judgments, God promises that those in whom He puts His Spirit shall walk. In Scripture, walking is often mentioned in a figurative sense, to denote a persons habitual temper and practice.
1. Walking in Gods statutes is a voluntary, agreeable employment to those who have received a new heart and spirit. They delight in the law of the Lord after the inward man, and in the ways of His commandments which they have loved. In doing the will of their heavenly Father, they find far more real pleasure and satisfaction than in sensual pleasures, worldly riches, and great temporal honours.
2. Walking in Gods statutes is a diligent and progressive business. There may be, no doubt, some accidental obstructions and checks made to growth in grace, and progress in holiness; still, however, faith and love, and other graces, increase and grow up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (W. MCulloch.)
The Lords New Years gifts to hardened sinners
It is recorded that when Sir Walter Raleigh knelt on the scaffold with his neck on the block waiting for the axe of the executioner to behead him, the latter said, Does your head lie easy, Sir Walter? The brave man replied, It matters not, my friend, how my head lies, provided my heart is right.
I. A new heart. The old heart is compared in this verse to a stone. What use is there then in preaching to such as are in heart senseless? The love of Christ is a solvent to soften the heart which is hard as a stone; and the Holy Spirit then shall mould it into the image of the Saviour. In a cathedral at Rome I saw what I thought to be most precious stone; but, placing my hand upon that huge slab, I found that it was wood, painted like marble. A stone is known by its coldness; and we know a man is unconverted by his coldness to God and to his fellow men. A few men possess natural benevolence; but many are as cold as a stone to the appeals of the helpless and the suffering. When the new heart is received their disposition is changed; they are tender and compassionate to the sufferer, and weep with the sorrowing. A man with a stony heart who loves money wonders why another gives his time and his money so generously, day after day, to the cause of God and of his fellow men; and he says to himself, Why, the Christian does this as if he really enjoyed it! I like to get money; but he seems to be most pleased when he is giving it! The reason is that the Christian has received a new heart; and, loving God and his fellow men, it is his delight to minister to them of his time and substance. The new heart does not grudge what it gives; because it loves.
II. A new spirit. The old spirit readily conforms itself to the world; and it seeks to run with the stream. But when God gives the new spirit, we are ruled by the mind that was in Jesus; and though there were only one Christian in an opposing world, that Christian would be against the world. The old spirit thinks it cannot resist sin, and it yields to it as a necessity of his nature; but when God gives the new spirit, it breaks the gyves of Satan, and cries, I am free; and will not longer submit to my besetting sin; I am to cast aside every weight, so that I may run the race that is set before me. The old spirit trusts in outward circumstances, in money, and in men; but when we receive the new spirit we trust in the power of our God. The old spirit does not know the sweetness of communion with God. But the new spirit delights to pray; it is a privilege rather than a duty. The old spirit also is corrupt. It is like the polished veneer that is placed over the decayed wood which smells with the dry rot. But when the new spirit is received the Christian is all glorious within.
III. A new pilot. I will put My Spirit within you.
IV. A new life. And cause you to walk in My statutes. We shall not be dragged to heaven: ours is a willing service. It is a walk, not a limp Christ heals perfectly.
V. New rules. Ye shall keep My judgments. The fingerpost points out your way at the corner of the road, and you do not hesitate to walk in the path pointed out, because you believe that fingerpost to tell the right direction. Likewise, the fingerpost of the Bible is a sufficient security for us to keep in the path of righteousness.
VI. New employment. And do them. How sweet to be assured that God will give us power to do His will! Pray with increasing faith, Thy will be done; and expect the ability and the resignation to do it. You shall do His will! Rejoice!
VII. Gods guarantee. I will do it: I will give it you. The Lord means what He says. Cannot you trust Him? Whosoever will may receive the gifts offered by our loving Father. (W. Birch.)
Covenant blessings
I. Observe, first, we have here to all Gods covenanted people, or in other words, to all believers, a promise of preparation for the Spirits indwelling. This promise is as a cluster of nuts, or a bough with many golden apples. Like the cherubim of Ezekiel it has four faces, all smiling upon the heirs of salvation. Like the New Jerusalem it lieth four-square. It is a quadruple treasure worthy of four-fold consideration.
1. The first of the four blessings is the gift of a new heart. Observe where the inward work of grace begins. All mans attempts at the betterment of human nature begin from without, and the theory is that the work will deepen till it reaches that which is within. They profess to emancipate the man from the grosser vices, trusting that the reform will go further, that he will be brought under superior influences, and so be elevated in mind and heart. Miserable physicians are they all. Their remedies fail to eradicate the deep seated maladies of humanity. Gods way of dealing with men is the reverse. He begins within and works towards the exterior in due course. Look at our brooks and rivulets which have been by a lax legislature so long delivered over to the tormentors to be blackened into pestiferous sewers; if we want to have them purged it is of small avail to cast chloride of lime and other chemicals into the stream; the only remedy is to forbid the pollution, to demand that manufactories shall not poison us wholesale, but shall in some other manner consume their useless products. The voice of common sense bids us go to the original cause of the defilement and deal with it at its sources. That is just what God does when He saves a sinner, He begins at the origin of the sinners sin and deals with His heart. Blessed be God, He is omnipotent enough to give Us new hearts, He has wisdom enough to renew us, He has purity sufficient to cleanse us, He has abounding mercy to bear with us.
2. Turn, now, to the second blessing–A new spirit will I put within you. The natural man is correctly and strictly speaking a compound of soul and body only. The first man, Adam, was made a living soul; and, as we bear the image of the first Adam, we are body and soul only. It is our own belief that in regeneration something more is done than the mere rectifying of what was there: there is in the new birth infused and implanted in man a third and more elevated principle,–a spirit is begotten in him; and, as the second Adam was made a quickening spirit, so in the new birth we are transformed into the likeness of Christ Jesus, who is the second Adam. The implantation, infusion, and putting into our nature the third and higher principle is, we believe, the being born again. Regarded in this light, the words before us may be regarded as an absolute and unconditional promise of the covenant of grace to all the seed that a new spirit shall be put within them. But, if we view it as some do, we shall then read it thus–the ruling spirit of mans nature shall be changed. The spirit which rules and reigns in Godless, Christless men, is the spirit of a rebellious slave, the spirit of self. But, when the Spirit of God comes upon us, to make our spirit a fit place for His residence, He takes away the spirit of the slave, and gives us the spirit of a child, and from that moment the service of God becomes a different thing: we do not serve Him now because we are afraid of the whip, but nobler motives move us; gratitude binds us to the Lords service, and love gives wings to the feet of obedience. Now the Lord is no more regarded as a tyrant, but as a wise and loving parent. Whatever He may do with us, we rejoice in His wisdom and goodness. We view Him no longer with suspicion and dread, but with confidence and joy.
3. A third and further blessing of the text is the removal of the stony heart. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh. I do not think the Lord removes at once the evil heart out of any mans flesh; there it remains to be fought with, like the Canaanites in Canaan when Israel had entered there, to prove us and to try us, but He does take away the stony heart at once. The stony heart is a hard heart. We have heard of many expedients for softening hard hearts, but none of them are of any avail. You may make a man weep over his dead child or his dead wife, till his eyes are red, but his heart will be black for all that. Mens hearts are changed by quite another agency than oratorical or rhetorical appeals to the natural affections.
4. The fourth promise of the preparation of the heart for the indwelling of the Spirit is this: I will give you a heart of flesh, by which is meant a soft heart, an impressible heart, a sensitive heart, a heart which can feel, can be moved to shame, to repentance, to loathing of sin, to desiring, to seeking, to punting, to longing after God; a tender heart, a heart that does not require a thousand blows to move it, but, like flesh with its skin broken, feels the very faintest touch,–such is the heart which the Holy Spirit creates in the children of God. It is a teachable heart, a heart willing to be guided, moulded, governed by the Divine will: a heart which, like young Samuel, cries, Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth:–an obedient heart, ready to be run into the mould, plastic beneath the sacred hand, anxious to be conformed to the heavenly pattern.
II. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost.
1. Observe, first, that the Lord says, I will put My Spirit within you. God Himself, the Eternal Spirit in propria persona, in His own person, resides and dwells within the renewed heart. The mystery of the incarnation is not greater than that of the Holy Ghosts indwelling, nor does it appear to me to involve more condescension. I marvel at Christs dwelling with sinners, and I marvel equally at the Holy Ghosts dwelling in sinners.
2. Note a little word also in the text worthy of your attention. I will put My Spirit within you. It is not the spirit of angels, it is not the spirit of good men, it is Gods own Spirit who takes up His residence in every sinners heart when God renews it. My Spirit. And, perhaps, this may allude to the fact that this is the self-same Spirit which abode without measure in our Lord Jesus Christ.
3. Observe also carefully the words, within you. This is marvellous. Augustine, when reflecting upon the various glories which come to God, and the benefits which accrue to men through redemption, none of which could have been revealed without the fall of Adam, exclaimed, O beata culpa! O happy fault; and I have the self-same expression trembling on my lips. Where sin abounded grace has much more abounded.
III. The blessed results which come from all this. The indwelling Spirit leads every man in whom He reigns into obedience to the ways of God. The soul that possesses the Spirit becomes active. It walks. It is not passive, as one carried by main force; it works because the Spirit works in it, to will and to do of His own good pleasure. The Holy Ghost leads us to holy habits, for, mark the phrase, I will cause you to walk in My ways. Mere excitement may produce momentary zeal, and transient morality, but habitual holiness is the fruit of the Spirit. Note, next, the delight it implies. I will cause you to walk in My ways, not as a man who toils, but as one who walks at ease. The believer finds it as sweet to walk in Gods ways as Isaac felt it sweet to walk in the fields at eventide, it implies, too, holy perseverance; the words have the meaning of continuing to follow after holiness. It is a small matter to begin, but to hold out to the end is the testing point. The text promises to us a complete obedience,–I will cause you to walk in My statutes, and to keep My judgments. A Christian man is obedient to God,–he minds the first table; he is just to man,–he does not despise the second table. And the Holy Ghost also works a holy care for righteousness in the soul. I will cause you to keep My judgments;–that is, to have an exactness of obedience, a precision, a deliberation, a willingness to find out Gods will, and a care to attend to it in every jot and tittle. Now, to what a delightful consummation has our text conducted us. It began with a renewed heart, and it ends in a purified life. It commenced with taking away the stone and giving the flesh; now it gives us the life of Christ written out, in living characters in our daily practice. Glory be to God for this! (C. H. Spurgeon.)
A new heart
1. No problem, whether of religion or philosophy, of nature or revelation, more transcends the power of human reason to solve than that of the existence of moral evil in the world.
2. In what consists the nature of this evil? What is its essence? In nature, it subsists in a heart not in accordance with the Divine law. In essence it is a moral depravity; a moral corruption; a perversion of the understanding and the affections in regard to moral truth and duty; a discord among the harmonies of our moral being, and a slavish subjection to the appetites of our bestial nature in opposition to the nobler promptings and requirements of our higher, our godlike, nature.
3. Is there any escape from this evil–any remedy for it on mans behalf. And if so, in what, and where, and how may it be obtained? A new heart will I give you. God makes for us a way of escape; God provides the remedy, and we are made the beneficiaries of it by Gods bestowal upon us of a new heart.
I. This gift of God, a new heart. A new heart contrasts with the old. The old heart is alienated from God; the new heart cleaves to God with supreme affection of love. The old heart is sold under sin; the new heart is redeemed from all iniquity. The old heart is accompanied by carnal-mindedness, which is death; the new heart by spiritual-mindedness, which is life and peace.
II. How does God bestow this gift? God gives this new heart, not by destroying the freedom of human will and agency, but by emancipating it from every condition of slavery. By the unspeakable gift of His Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins, by the influence and agency of His Holy Spirit, enlightening us in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, and regenerating our natures, and by His blessing upon the means of grace which He has appointed, God confers this gift of a new heart upon all those who believe in Jesus, and who walk by the Spirit, according to revealed truth, in the use of the appointed means of grace, and in obedience to Gods law.
III. How does the new heart manifest itself in the life and character of its recipient? It effects an entire change in them. There are new objects of life and new attributes of character consequent upon the desires, affections, and purposes of a new heart. His life is a continual proof and illustration of the power of the Gospel to save, and his character is a beautiful example of purity of thought, simplicity and integrity of purpose, kindliness of demeanour, beneficence of deeds, and faithfulness in the discharge of every duty toward God and man. (W. T. Findley, D. D.)
A new heart
I. A new heart is a contrast to the old.
II. A new heart is productive of new effects.
1. Repentance.
2. Holiness.
III. A new heart is connected with new privileges (verse 28). If Jehovah be our God, there is not a real good that is not ours. We have Him for the portion of our souls. We are interested in the exercise of all His perfections. His love is inviolably and eternally fixed upon us. His wisdom is incessantly engaged in making all things work together for our good. His power is ever operating to defend us from essential injury. His universal presence becomes an uninterrupted source of peace and a never failing occasion of comfort. We have access to Him and communion with Him. He is our Father, our Guide, our Friend.
IV. A new heart is the work of God.
V. A new heart is the gift of God. Application–
1. What an important subject on which to examine ourselves. It is possible to be mistaken–and a mistake here is fatal.
2. How vain are the attempts men make to do without a new heart.
3. Let the most guilty be encouraged to seek this blessing as the gift of God in Christ Jesus; and the most hardened to hope for it as the work of God, if He be sought as the Author of it.
4. Let every man know that he inevitably and justly perishes if he neglects it–despises it–or presumes that he can be saved without it.
5. Let us adore God for having made known so wonderful and gracious a method of restoring our fallen nature. (Essex Remembrancer.)
The new heart
Behold a wonder of Divine love. When God maketh His creatures, one creation He regardeth as sufficient, and should they lapse from the condition in which He has created them, He suffers them, as a rule, to endure the penalty of their transgression, and to abide in the place into which they are fallen. But here He makes an exception; man, fallen man, created by his Maker, pure and holy, hath wilfully and wickedly rebelled against the Most High, and lost his first estate, but behold, he is to be the subject of a new creation through the power of Gods Holy Spirit.
I. The necessity for this great promise. You will notice that God does not promise to us that He will improve our nature, that He will mend our broken hearts. No, the promise is that He will give us new hearts and right spirits. Human nature is too far gone ever to be mended. If only a wheel or two of that great thing called manhood were out of repair, then He who made man might put the whole to rights; He might put a new cog where it had been broken off, and another wheel where it had gone to ruin, and the machine might work anew. But no, the whole of it is out of repair; there is not one lever which is not broken; not one axle which is not disturbed; not one of the wheels which act upon the others. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot, to the crown of the head, it is all wounds and bruises and putrifying sores. Consider for a moment how bad human nature must be if we think how ill it has treated its God. I remember William Huntingdon says in his autobiography, that one of the sharpest sensations of pain that he felt after he had been quickened by Divine grace was this, He felt such pity for God. I do not know that I ever met with the expression elsewhere, but it is a very expressive one; although I might prefer to say sympathy with God and grief that He should be so evil entreated. Let us look back upon our past lives–how ungrateful have we been to Him! We have never returned His mercies into His bosom with gratitude and thankfulness; but we have let them lie forgotten without a single hallelujah, from our carelessness concerning the Most High, that He had entirely forgotten us, and that therefore we were trying to forget Him. It is so very seldom that we think of Him that one would imagine that surely He never gave us occasion to think of Him. But worse than this, we have not only been forgetful of Him, but we have rebelled against Him. We have assailed the Most High. Oh! it is a mercy that He is God and changeth not, or else we sons of Jacob would long ago have been consumed, and justly too. You may picture to yourselves, if you like, a poor creature dying in a ditch. I trust that such a thing never happens in this land, but such a thing might happen as a man who had been rich on a sudden becoming poor, and all his friends deserting and leaving him; he begs for bread and no man will help him, until at last, without a rag to cover him, his poor body yields up life in a ditch. This, I think, is the very extreme of human negligence to mankind; but Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was treated even worse than this. Ah, if you think of human nature as it acts towards God, you will say indeed it is too bad to be mended, it must be made anew. Again, there is another aspect in which we may regard the sinfulness of human nature: that is its pride. It is the very worst phase of man–that he is so proud. What a strange thing it is to see a sinful, guilty wretch proud of his morality! and yet that is a thing you may see every day. A man who is an enemy to God, proud of his honesty, and yet he is robbing God; a man proud of his chastity, and yet if he knew his own thoughts, they are full of lasciviousness and uncleanness; a man proud of the praise of his fellows, while he knows himself that he has the blame of his own conscience and the blame of God Almighty. Ah, human nature, this is, then, thine own condemnation, that thou art insanely proud, while thou hast nothing to be proud of. Write Ichabod upon it. The glory has departed forever from human nature. Let it be put away, and let God give us something new for the old can never be made better. It is helplessly insane, decrepit, and defiled. Furthermore, it is quite certain that human nature cannot be made better, for many have tried it, but they have always failed. A man trying to improve human nature, is like trying to change the position of a weathercock, by turning it round to the east when the wind is blowing west; he has but to take his hand off and it will be back again to its place. But, once again, you will easily perceive we must have a new heart when you consider what are the employments and the enjoyments of the Christian religion. The nature that can feed on the garbage of sin, and devour the carrion of iniquity, is not the nature that ever can sing the praises of God and rejoice in His holy name. And yet once again God hates a depraved nature, and therefore it must be taken away, before we can be accepted in Him.
II. The nature of this great change which the Holy Spirit works in us.
1. It is a Divine work from first to last. To give a man a new heart and a new spirit is Gods work, and the work of God alone. We have heard of some kind of insects that have lost their limbs, and by their vital power have been able to recover them again. But take away the seat of the vital power–the heart; lay the disease there; and what power is there that can, by any possibility, rectify it, unless it be a power from without–in fact, a power from above?
2. It is a gracious change. When God puts a new heart into man, it is not because man deserves a new heart–because there was anything good in his nature, that could have prompted God to give him a new spirit. The Lord simply gives a man a new heart because He wishes to do it; that is His only reason.
3. It is a victorious effort of Divine grace. God will have the sinner, if He designs to have him. God never was thwarted yet in any one of His purposes. Man does resist with all his might, but all the might of man, tremendous though it be for sin, is not equal to the majestic might of the Most High, when He rideth forth in the chariot of His salvation. He doth irresistibly save and victoriously conquer mans heart.
4. It is instantaneous. To sanctify a man is the work of the whole life; but to give a man a new heart is the work of an instant. Other parts of salvation are done gradually; but regeneration is the instantaneous work of Gods sovereign, effectual, and irresistible grace.
III. Hope and encouragement to the vilest of sinners.
1. There are some who are seeking after mercy; for many a day you have been in prayer in secret, till your very knees seemed sore with the oftenness of your intercession. Your cry to God has been, Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me. Let me comfort you by this reflection, that your prayer is already heard. You have a new heart and a right spirit: perhaps you wilt not be able to perceive the truth of this utterance for months to come, therefore continue in prayer till God shall open your eyes, so that you may see that the prayer is answered; but rest assured it is answered already. The Lord hath begun a good work in thy heart, and He will carry it on even unto the end. All these feelings of thine are more than thou ever couldst have attained of thyself. God has helped thee up this Divine ladder of grace, and as sure as He has brought thee up so many staves of it, He will carry thee to the very summit, till He grasps thee in the arms of His love in glory everlasting.
2. There are others, however, who have not proceeded so far, but you are driven to despair. The devil has told you that you cannot be saved; you have been too guilty, too vile. Any other people in the world might find mercy, but not you, for you do not deserve to be saved. Have I not tried to make it as plain as the sunbeam all through this service, that God never saves a man for the sake of what he is, and that He does not either begin or carry on the work in us because there is anything good in us? The greatest sinner is just as eligible for Divine mercy as the very least of sinners. He can take you, a thief: a drunkard, a harlot, or whoever you may be; He can bring you on your knees, make you cry for mercy, and then make you lead a holy life, and keep you unto the end. Oh! says one, I wish He would do that to me, then. Well, soul, if that be a true wish, He will. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
A new spirit will I put within you.
The invaluable gift
The gifts of God are unspeakably great; should we attempt the enumeration they would appear like the stars of heaven, or the sands on the shore for multitude. When the author of the Spectator recovered from a dangerous illness he penned a delightful hymn, in which he expresses the transports of his soul, and the wonder, love, and praise which a sense of the Divine mercies awakened in his grateful mind. But if such language was the result of a survey of Gods providential goodness, how should the believer exult in the gift of a Saviour, and in that last, best blessing, the enlightening and sanctifying Spirit by which He is revealed to the heart!
I. What this invaluable blessing includes and what we are to understand by a new spirit.
1. God engages to bestow that grace upon us of which we were altogether undeserving.
2. In the bestowment of this blessing we invariably see the providence and word of God preparing the way for its reception.
(1) It includes a renewed and sanctified mind.
(2) A sorrowful and penitential disposition.
(3) A humble, resigned, and obedient spirit.
II. The reasons and grounds of encouragement we have to seek this blessing.
1. Think of the character of Him who gives this new spirit.
2. Consider that this is a free gift.
3. Reflect on the many instances in which this blessing has been conferred on individuals as undeserving as ourselves.
4. The perfection of our moral character depends on obtaining it. Enriched with this treasure, we can never be poor or unhappy; nor is it in the power of men or devils to make us miserable.
5. By individually seeking this precious gift we shall be instrumental in promoting the advent of Christs kingdom, and in hastening that blessed consummation which the Church of God so earnestly desires. (Essex Remembrancer.)
The new heart bestowed
I. The old heart removed.
1. The senselessness of the unconverted heart.
2. The resistance of the unconverted heart.
3. The impenetrableness of the unconverted heart.
4. The coldness of the unconverted heart.
An unconverted man will have a very tender and warm heart about earthly things. If he loses a wife, or a child, or some valuable property, oh, what intense warmth of feeling do we instantly behold! But when we tell him about the death of Christ, or the love of the Holy Spirit, he takes no more notice of what we say than the cold pavement of the street would listen to a beggars petition.
II. The new heart given.
1. Your new heart is sensitive. The spiritual man, we are told, discerneth all things. You are sensitive of spiritual pains and of spiritual pleasures. You are especially sensitive with respect to sin.
2. Your new heart is flexible. It can bend in accordance to Gods will.
3. Your new heart is easily impressed. Its fleshy tablets are always waiting to receive the writing of the Lords commands.
4. Your new heart is well known for its warmth of feeling. Once it saw no beauty nor comeliness in Jesus; but now that it is renewed, it cries, Thou art the King of glory, O Christ: Thy name is as the ointment poured forth: In Thee, O Jesus, have I righteousness: Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee: Thou art the chiefest among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.
III. The author of the change. Clean water is here used as the emblem of the blood of Christ, and of the work of the Holy Spirit. When the blood of Christ is applied to our conscience through faith, it cleanses us from all dead works; and the Holy Spirit, when applied to all the powers of your soul, purifies it from the love and dominion of sin. Conversion work is all Gods work; insomuch that, wherever Gods Spirit converts men by the ministry, He there may be said to raise up children to Abraham out of stones. There He makes water to gush out of rocks; and there He makes dead and dry bones to live. (C. Clayton, M. A.)
A new heart
I. The old principle which must be got rid of. A stony heart. Of course this is a figure when you speak of a mans heart, because you do not speak of that which beats in a mans frame, but of his will and affections. Likewise a stony heart is a figure used to describe one who knows not Christ, and cannot until it is removed. What is a stone? A stone is a thing upon which you can make no impression. You may strike it with a hammer, or a sword, or any other weapon, but you can make no impression upon it; so with a stony human heart, no arguments or anything we can do will influence it. There are some hearts we cannot reach, they seem harder than the nether millstone. Until God touches the hard heart it has no feeling; and there are men and women now who figuratively go to that stony rock of Calvary, whereon Christ died for our sins, and even come to services like these in which we literally go there with Him, and yet do not feel touched in their hearts.
II. A new principle which is to be given us. There are two ways in which people may be said to have anything new. First, when it is absolutely new. When the Ark of God was to be brought back, a cart was to be made by the Divine Will, and it has to be a new cart, entirely out of new materials. So in the New Testament we are told Joseph of Arimathea laid our Lord in a new tomb, wherein yet never anyone had lain. There is another sense in which a thing is made new, that is, when it is renewed, for that comes to the same thing. This is what happens when a mans heart is renewed, and turned to God. You may meet a man, and say, I see no change in him, and yet that man has been renewed by the Spirit of God. This, then, is the new principle that God will give; and it is a new heart, and when that happens the whole man is changed. Again, when a mans will is renewed he is made to say, Not my will, but Thine be done. And a mans affections are renewed, and even his memory is renewed. That memory, that used to be running off on other things, now returns to God.
III. The Divine Giver. It is the work of Omnipotence. He can make the heart love and glow with life. When He does this work it is done in an instant. A man at the receipt of custom, who was as busy as any of you, was called by Christ, and Matthew arose and followed Him in a moment. He said also to Zacchaeus, Make haste and come down, and he made haste and came down. It was done in a moment. And when Lydia sat listening to Pauls address we are told that the Lord opened her heart, and then she attended to the words spoken by Paul. And when Saul was entering into Damascus to persecute the Christians in that city, carrying with him letters from the high priest at Jerusalem, a voice asked him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? God touched his heart, and it was done in a moment.
IV. It brings great glory to God. It is greater than creating a world. Someone has said. It was great to speak a world from nought; but it is a greater work when He comes down to that heart which He first made in His own image, and which sin has marred and ruined, and promises to dwell there, than the work of creation. (Canon Fleming.)
I will take away the stony heart.—
The stony heart removed
I. The stony heart and its dangers.
1. Why is the heart of man compared to a stone at all?
(1) Like a stone it is cold. You may heat a stone for a little season if you thrust it into the fire, but for how short a time will it retain its heat; and though it glowed just now, how very soon it loses all its warmth, and returns again to its native coldness. Such is the heart of man. It is warm enough towards sin; it grows hot as coals of juniper towards its own lusts, but naturally the heart is as cold as ice towards the things of God. You may think you have heated it for a little season under a powerful exhortation, or in presence of a solemn judgment, but how soon it returns to its natural state!
(2) Like a stone it is hard. You get the hard stone, especially some sorts of stone which have been hewn from granite beds, and you may hammer as you will but you shall make no impression. I have seen the great hammer of the law, which is ten times more ponderous than Nasmyths great steam hammer, come down upon a mans heart, and the heart has never shown the slightest signs of shrinking.
(3) Again, a stone is dead. You can find no feeling in it. Talk to it; it will shed no tears of pity, though you recount to it the saddest tales; no smiles will gladden it, though you should tell it the most happy story. Now, though mans heart is not like this as to natural things, yet spiritually this is just its condition.
(4) Mans heart is like a stone, because it is not easily to be softened. Lay a stone in water as long as you will and you shall not find it readily subdued. There are some sorts of stone that yield to the stress of weather, especially in the smoky atmosphere and the sulphurous vapours of London; certain stones crumble to decay, but the stone of a mans heart no climate can affect, no weather can subdue; it grows harder whether it be the soft sunshine of love or the harsh tempest of judgment that falls upon it.
(5) It is utterly senseless, incapable of receiving impressions. I remember an anecdote of Dr. Gill which hits this nail on the head. It is said that a man came to him in the vestry of his chapel and said, Dr. Gill, you have been preaching the doctrine of human inability; I dont believe you. I believe that man can repent and can believe, and is not without spiritual power. Well, said the doctor, have you repented and believed? No, said the other. Very well, then, said he, you deserve double damnation. And so I say to the man who boasts that he has not such a hard heart as this–have you laid hold of Christ? have you come to Him? if you have not, then out of your own heart be you condemned, for you deserve double destruction from the presence of God for having resisted the influences of Gods Spirit and rejected His grace.
2. The danger to which this hard heart is exposed.
(1) A hard heart is exposed to the danger of final impenitence. If all these years the processes of nature have been at work with your heart, and have not softened it, have you not reason to conclude that it may be so even to the end? And then you will certainly perish.
(2) Hearts that are not softened grow harder and harder; what little sensibility they seemed to have at last departs.
(3) Then further, a man who has a hard heart is Satans throne. There is a stone, they tell us, in Scotland, at Scone, where they were wont to crown their old kings: the stone on which they crown the old king of hell is a hard heart; it is his choicest throne; he reigns in hell, but he counts hard hearts to be his choicest dominions.
(4) Then again, the hard heart is ready for anything. When Satan sits upon it and makes it his throne, there is no wonder that from the seat of the scorner flows all manner of evil.
(5) Besides that, the hard heart is impervious to all instrumentality. John Bunyan, in his history of the Holy War, represents old Diabolus, the devil, as providing for the people of Mansoul a coat of armour, of which the breastplate was a hard heart. Oh! that is a strong breastplate. Hard hearts are the devils lifeguards. When he once gets a man in an armour of proof–that of a hard heart–Now, says he, you may go anywhere.
II. A heart of flesh and its privileges.
1. What is meant by a heart of flesh? It means a heart that can feel on account of sin–a heart that can bleed when the arrows of God stick fast in it; it means a heart that can yield when the Gospel makes its attacks–a heart that can be impressed when the seal of Gods word comes upon it; it means a heart that is warm, for life is warm–a heart that can think, a heart that can aspire, a heart that can love–putting all in one,–a heart of flesh means that new heart and right spirit which God giveth to the regenerate.
2. But wherein does this heart of flesh consist; wherein does its tenderness consist?
(1) There is a tenderness of conscience. Men who have lost their stony hearts are afraid of sin, even before sin they are afraid of it. The very shadow of evil across their path frightens them. And then, after sin–here comes the pinch–the heart of flesh bleeds as though it were wounded to its very core. Before sin, and in sin, and after sin, it smarts and cries out to God.
(2) In duty as well as in sin the new heart is tender. Only let me know my Masters will and I will do it.
(3) A heart of flesh, again, is tender with regard to suffering. A heart of flesh would give its very life blood if it might but snatch others from going down to the pit, for its bowels yearn and its soul moves toward its fellow sinners who are on the broad road to destruction. Have you, oh, have you such a heart of flesh as this?
3. The privileges of this renewed heart are these. Tis here the Spirit dwells, tis here that Jesus rests. The soft heart is ready now to receive every spiritual blessing. It is fitted to yield every heavenly fruit to the honour and praise of God. A soft heart is the best defence against sin, while it is the best preparative for heaven. A tender heart is the best means of watchfulness against evil, while it is also the best means of preparing us for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The nature of the change in conversion
I. The old heart is taken away and a new one put in its place. The head was justly considered by ancient philosophers to be the residence of the intellectual faculties, where the soul, presiding over all, sat enthroned, as in a palace. On the other hand, they regarded the affections as having their home in the heart, that other great organ of our system. Within the breast, love and hatred, grief and joy, aversion and desire, generosity, jealousy, pity, revenge were supposed to dwell; and thus (to dismiss the metaphor), that substitution of one heart for another which is promised in the text, just implies a thorough change in the character and current of our affections. Now, a change may be simply a reform; or, extending deeper and taking a wider range, it may pass into a revolution. Conversion is not a mere reform. No. It changes the heart, the habits, the everlasting destiny of an immortal being. To be sensible of our need of a new spirit, to feel that this old heart will not mend nor make better, is one of the first steps in salvation; and the deeper our impression of this truth, the more diligently shall we labour, and the more earnest shall be our prayers to be renewed day by day.
II. The view which our text gives of the natural heart. It is a heart of stone. I will take the stony heart out of your flesh.
1. A stone is cold. Coldness is its characteristic. Hence, the lapidary, by using his tongue to test the temperature, can tell whether the seeming jewel is paste or a real gem. Hence, also, when our eye has been deceived by the skill of the artist, the sense of touch has informed us that what seemed a marble pillar was only painted wood. There is reason, therefore, in the common saying, As cold as a stone. But what stone so cold as that which sin has lodged in mans breast? We are by nature lovers of pleasure, not of God. He is not the object of our love, but of our aversion. And what return do we make to Jesus for His warm and matchless affection? The carnal mind is enmity against God; is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
2. A stone is hard. Fire melts wax, but not stone; water softens clay, but not stone; a hammer bends the stubborn iron, but not stone. It resists all these agents; and, emblem of a heart crushed, but unsanctified by affliction, a stone may be broken into fragments, or ground to powder, yet its atoms are as hard as ever. The man who remains unmoved under a ministry of mercy, who is insensible at once to the most appalling and appealing lessons of providence, who fears no more than a rock the thunders that peal and the lightnings that play round his brow, and feels no more than a rock the influences that fall like summer sunbeams from the face of a gracious Saviour, is manifestly beyond all human power. I would despair of his salvation, but for the omnipotence and benevolence of God; and because I know that He, who of the stones of the street could raise up children to Abraham, can change that heart of stone into a heart of flesh.
3. A stone is dead. It has no vitality, nor feeling, nor power of motion. Look at this statue; however skilful the sculptors chisel, there is no life here; no speech breaks from these cold lips; the limbs seem instinct with power, yet they never leave their pedestal; no fire flashes in these dull grey eyes, nor passions burn within that stony breast; the stone is deaf, and dumb, and dead. Spoken to, it returns no answer; wept over, it sheds no tears.
III. In conversion God gives a new spirit.
1. By this change the understanding and judgment are enlightened. Time and eternity are now seen in their just proportions, in their right relative dimensions; the one in its littleness, and the other in its greatness. When the light of heaven rises on the soul, oh, what grand and affecting discoveries does she make of the exceeding evil of sin, of the holiness of the Divine law, of the infinite purity of Divine justice, of the grace and greatness of Divine love. On Sinais summit and on Calvarys Cross, what new truths and what sublime scenes open to her astonished eyes!
2. By this change the will is renewed. Bad men are worse, and good men are better than they appear. Yes, better; for in conversion the will is so changed and sanctified that, although a pious man is in some respects less, in other respects he is more holy than the world gives him credit for. The attainments of a believer are always beneath his aims; his desires are loftier than his deeds; his wishes are holier than his works. Give other men their will, let them have full sway and swing for their passions, and they would be worse than they are; give him the hill power to do as he would, and he would be better than he is. And thus, if you have experienced this gracious change, it will be your daily grief that not only are you not what you know you should be, but what you wish to be. The fruits of holy peace are reaped with sharp swords on the field of war; and this conflict within you proves that grace, even in its infancy a cradled Saviour, is engaged in struggling with and strangling the old Serpent.
3. By conversion the temper and disposition are changed and sanctified. It is with the believer under the influences of the Spirit as with fruit ripening beneath the genial power of dews and sunbeams. Hard at first, its substance grows soft; sour at first, its juices become sweet; green at first, it assumes in time a rich and mellow colour; at first adhering tenaciously to the tree, when it becomes ripe it is ready to drop at the slightest touch. So with the man who is ripening for heaven. His affections and temper grow sweet, soft, mellow, loose from earth and earthly things.
IV. In conversion God gives a heart of flesh. I will give you a heart of flesh.
1. In conversion man gets a warm heart. Let us restrict ourselves to a single example. When faith embraces Him, how does the heart warm to Jesus Christ! There is music in His very name. His name is as an ointment poured forth. All the old indifference to His cause, His people, and interests of His kingdom has passed away; and now these have the warmest place in a believers bosom, and are become the objects of its strongest and tenderest affections.
2. In conversion a man gets a soft heart. As flesh, it is soft and sensitive. It is flesh; and can be wounded or healed. It is flesh; and feels alike the kiss of kindness and the rod of correction. It is flesh; no longer like a stone, hard, obdurate, impenetrable to the gentle influences of heaven. To change the figure, once a hard block of ice, it has been melted by the beams of the sun, and turned into flowing water.
3. In conversion a man gets a living heart. The perfection of a saints life is death; is to be dead to sin, but alive to righteousness, alive to Christ, alive to everything which affects His crown and kingdom. With Christ living in his heart, the believer feels that now he is not his own, and belongs no longer to himself. As anothers, and purchased at a great price, the grand object of his life is Christs. He wishes that he could look on the seductions of the world, and sins most voluptuous charms, with the cold, unmoved stare of death; and that these had no more power to kindle a desire in him than in the icy bosom of a corpse.
4. By conversion man is ennobled. Religion descends like an angel from the throne of God, to burst our chains. She raises me from degradation, and bids me lift my drooping head and look up to heaven. Yes, it is that very Gospel, by some supposed to present such dark, degrading, gloomy views of our destiny, which lifts me from the dust and the dunghill to set me among princes, on a level with angels, in a sense above them. To say nothing of the nobility grace imparts to a soul which is stamped anew with the likeness and image of God, how sacred, how venerable does even this body appear in the eye of piety! Angels hover round its walls, and the Spirit of God dwells within. What an incentive to holiness, to purity of life and conduct, lies in the fact that the Body of a saint is the temple of the living God!–a truer, nobler temple than that which Solomon dedicated by his prayers, and a greater even than Solomon consecrated by his presence. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
The heart of stone; or, the soul without religion
I. The soul of man is, like the stone, a mystery. Here is a stone. I see it, weigh it, feel it. But what is it? Colour, weight, and tangibility are not entities. These are mere qualities which belong to entities. By these qualities we may recognise the entities and form an opinion respecting them. In this sense the stone, itself a mystery, may be looked on as a type or picture of every soul, saved or unsaved. Every soul feels, reasons, and think;–and yet the soul is neither feeling, reason, nor thought: these are mere qualities which form no part of its essence. In itself it is a mystery.
II. The soul of the unregenerate, however, is, like the stone, very hard.
1. All stones are not equally hard, though hardness is a characteristic of each.
2. Neither are all souls equally without feeling or moral susceptibility, though all are sadly deficient in this respect. This is illustrated–
(1) By the cruel practices of Pagan nations. Infanticides, parricides, self-torture, human sacrifices, Sutteeism etc.
(2) By the indifference of those who are not Pagans–even Christians, to the welfare of others.
(3) By the difficulty invariably found of awakening the soul to an earnest inquiry for its own personal and highest interest.
III. The soul of the unregenerate is, like the stone, not what it originally was. The stone has not been always as hard as it is now. Every pebble or grain of sand was once a part of a great rock, and that rock itself a soft material; but heat, pressure, and time combined made it hard. Even flint existed in a soft and pulpy form. Similar is the history of your soul, my unregenerated brother. It was once soft, tender, and full of felling, though now it is hard. This is proved–
(1) From the universal traditions of men.
(2) From mans intuitive ideas of the moral nature of God.
(3) From the infallible testimony of the Scripture.
IV. The unregenerated soul has, like the stone, been gradually hardened. Even Nero, who assassinated his mother, set fire to the Roman capital, and brought to an untimely grave in misery thousands of men, women, and innocent children, had once a tender heart, like others. Would to God I could not write! was his feeling exclamation once when a death warrant was presented to him for signature.
V. The unregenerated soul, like the stone, bears in itself a faithful record of all the powers which have helped to make it what it is. In the stone, some of its particles are spherical, showing that once, after having been broken from the mother rock, they were for centuries under the action of flowing water; others are crystallised, showing that once they were in a state of solution; others are organic, showing that they were once the seat of vegetable or animal life. In the form and composition of these particles we find a record of the various changes through which the stone has passed, as well as the numerous influences which have been at work in the effecting of those changes. The soul of man is similar. In eternity it may be possible to trace distinctly in every soul in heaven or hell a faithful record of all the influences which, on earth, have ever tended to elevate or degrade it.
VI. The unregenerated soul, like the stone, may be softened by the application of appropriate elements. The flint, may be reduced to pulp by chemical reagents, and moulded like the clay to any form. The hardest metals may be dissolved. So may also the hardest heart. The love of Christ is the dissolving element for souls. (Evan Lewis, B. A.)
Change of heart
I. The old and stony heart. There are some who tell us that the heart of man by nature is like a sheet of white paper or parchment, that you may inscribe on it whatever you please. We are bound to say, from our experience, this is not the condition of our hearts. We are conscious in ourselves that we were born with inclinations to evil; and that, as the fruit of inward corruption and depravity, our lives have been exceedingly defective and blemished everywhere, and that we have been disobedient to the Lord. The heart is said to be stony, that is, to be hard; and it remains so although we try it by every system, every principle, and every revelation of God, which would be adapted to impress and to make it feel, feel deeply and poignantly, if it were not a stone. Take the stone and bring it out to the light of heaven, and let the sunbeam fall on it–it does not feel; bring it again and let the dews of heaven distil on it, the rain of Divine mercy baptize it, take it to a fountain and let the waters play on it–it is a stone still; carry it into the Garden of Eden, and let all that is lovely there, all that is blooming in that place, created by Divine wisdom and goodness, be presented before it–it is a stone; shiver with lightning, it is a stone still; grind it to powder, it is a stone still–and that is the figure of the heart. It must be changed: God must take away the heart of stone and give the heart of flesh.
II. The change and renovation of the heart is the work of God.
1. We do find, we think, the doctrine in question very strongly stated in this passage: it looks as if God were all in all in this matter. The word I occurs four times.
2. The agency of heaven upon the heart of man is, without doubt, silent and inscrutable, and in many respects mysterious. But then, we ask, is it not equally so in elemental nature–in the world by which we are surrounded–in all the animal tribes–in our own bodies?
3. Throughout Scripture the change in the heart is ascribed to God.
4. This presents to our mind a very beautiful and important view of genuine religion. It is not of mans creation–it is not the product of human genius–it is not that with which we can invest you, or you have any power to invest yourselves. You must receive it as the gift of Divine power–as the operation of Divine love–as the creation of Gods mercy.
5. God has promised to exert His power, and to give His Spirit, in order to this end.
III. When God undertakes it, he makes it new and renders it alive to every divine and celestial impression. But what is the change, what is the new heart which God gives? The man with a new heart will say, in penitence, humility, and shame, I have broken the law, I have gone astray, I have done what I ought not, I have left undone that which I ought to have done, to me belong shame and confusion of face. There is the heart changed. Bring him to judgments, those which happen round about him, and it will awake him from his slumber, and induce him to trim his lamp, and gird his loins, and to stand ready and prepared for whatever the will of God may be. There is a feeling heart in that man. Bring him to Gods mercies, mention them, recount them, let them be enumerated, and he exclaims, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name. I am not worthy the least of them all, and yet He makes them towards me to abound. Bring him to nature, show him the creation, and he will say, the heavens declare Gods glory, and I am glad of it, and the firmaments show forth His handiwork; and he will recognise Deity everywhere, and in all this. Tell him of Gods dispensations towards him in his own life, and he will be thankful for every deliverance that has been wrought, and for every seasonable and remarkable interposition.
IV. The advantages and the blessedness of this renewed state.
1. In the changed state itself there is incomparable enjoyment.
2. And if we have this change of heart we shall certainly be victorious at the last. We shall find the new nature struggling with the old; the old will grow weaker and weaker, and the new stronger and stronger; but the time draweth near when that which is corrupt and depraved and defiled shall fall of itself and be dropped forever, and the new nature shall be revealed in its refulgence and beauty, not as delinquent to be punished, but as victorious to receive the crown of life. (J. Stratten.)
Gradual hardening of the heart
Many of you have no doubt seen the dripping wells at Matlock Bath. The caves are like an old curiosity shop. There are all kinds of objects. Drop by drop the water falls, until things that once were soft, and could have been bent as easily as a cane, have become as stiff and hard as stone. Slowly and surely the work goes on. And so it is with our life. The heart does not become hard all at once.
The stony heart
The stony heart refers obviously to a curious custom of the ancient Egyptians. When a dead body was embalmed, the heart along with the other internal organs was taken out, and in the cavity where it had been a large scarab was placed. This was a representation in stone of a beetle that was worshipped by the Egyptians, because it sprang from the fertilising mud left behind by the annual overflow of the waters of the Nile. It seemed to be created directly by the rays of the sun, and was therefore regarded as a symbol of life springing from death. Myriads of this sacred beetle wrought in all kinds of material have been found in Egyptian tombs. Ezekiel, as is abundantly evident in his prophecies against Egypt, was intimately acquainted with the manners and customs of that country. He therefore borrows his image from an Egyptian source It suggests to us not only the hardness and lifelessness of a common stone, but also the peculiar shape and superstitious use of a special sacred stone. It was with the Jews as it was with an Egyptian mummy. They were spiritually dead, and the tender living heart had disappeared and a heart of stone had been substituted. (Hugh Macmillan, D. D.)
Transformed to stone
We read in ancient Greek fable of the Gorgons, who had the power of turning mortals into stone by a look. There are still Gorgons in existence that can turn to stone the hearts of those who look upon their alluring forms and listen to their flattering speeches. The love of money, the love of pleasure, are great Medusas that change by their evil spells the warm heart that cherishes them into a piece of rock, without sensibility or sympathy. (Hugh Macmillan, D. D.)
And I will give you an heart of flesh.–
A heart of flesh
A heart of flesh is known by its tenderness concerning sin. To have indulged a foul imagination, or to have allowed a wild desire to tarry even for a moment, is quite enough to make a heart of flesh grieve before the Lord. The heart of stone calls a great iniquity nothing, but not so the heart of flesh.
2. The heart of flesh is tender of Gods will. My Lord Will-be-will is a great blusterer, and it is hard to subject him to Gods will; but when the heart of flesh is given, the will quivers like an aspen leaf in every breath of heaven, and bows like an osier in every breeze of Gods Spirit. The natural will is cold, hard iron, which is not to be hammered into form; but the renewed will, like molten metal, is soon moulded by the hand of grace.
3. In the fleshy heart there is a tenderness of the affections. The hard heart does not love the Redeemer, but the renewed heart burns with affection towards Him. The hard heart is selfish, and coldly demands, Why should I weep for sin? Why should I love the Lord? But the heart of flesh says: Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee; help me to love Thee more! Many are the privileges of this renewed heart; Tis here the Spirit dwells, tis there that Jesus rests. It is fitted to receive every spiritual blessing, and every blessing comes to it. It is prepared to yield every heavenly fruit to the honour and praise of God, and therefore the Lord delights in it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The heart of flesh
It is a peculiar feature in our holy religion that it begins its work within, and acts first upon the heart. The Holy Spirit does not attempt to improve human nature into something better, but lays the axe at the root of the trees, and declares that we must become new creatures, and that by a supernatural work of the omnipotent God. True religion begins, then, with the heart, and the heart is the ruling power of manhood. The heart is more nearly the man than any other of the faculties and powers which God has bestowed upon our nature. The heart, when renewed by grace, is the best part of manhood; unrenewed, it is the very worst. AEsop, when his master ordered him to provide nothing for a feast but the best things in the market, brought him nothing but tongues, and when the next day he ordered him to buy nothing but the worst things in the market, still brought nothing but tongues; and I would venture to correct or spiritualise the story, by exchanging hearts for tongues, for there is nothing better in the world than hearts renewed, and nothing worse than hearts unregenerate.
I. The tenderness here intended is absent in the unregenerate. They frequently have a natural sensitiveness; some persons who are not converted are very tender indeed, as mothers to their children, as fathers to their offspring, as friends to friends; and God forbid that we should say anything amiss concerning that which is good in human nature after its kind, but that is widely different from the spiritually tender heart. In all unregenerate men there is a lack of the real spiritual tenderness of which I have to speak, though all are not equally hardened. In all, for instance, there is a natural stoniness of heart. We are not born into this world perfect, so that when sin meets us it receives a kindly reception, and is not dreaded and shunned as it should be. The heart by nature is like the nether millstone, and its hardness is increased by contact with the world. Familiarity with sin doth not breed contempt for it, but often causes a measure of contempt for the law which forbids it. This world is a petrifying spring, and all who are of the world are being petrified in its stream, and so are growing harder and harder as the years roll on. Moreover men harden themselves by their own sins. Like a stone falling, sin gains impetus and increased velocity. As labour renders the hand hard, so sin makes the heart callous, and each sin makes the stony heart yet more like adamant. At the same time, all the circumstances around an unregenerate man will be perverted to the same result. If, for instance, a man prospers, nothing is more hardening to the heart than long prosperity. The opposite condition of circumstances will, through sin, produce the same result. Affliction hardens those whom it does not soften. And, alas! alas! that we should have to add it, holy influences will come to complete this hardening, and carry it to a still higher degree. The sunlight of the Gospel shining upon hearers either melts them into repentance or else hardens them into greater obstinacy. Yet, further, when an unregenerate man dares to put on a Christian profession, this is perhaps the most rapid and certain process for consummating the devils work; for if a man will be audacious enough to join himself with the saints while he is indulging in private sin; if he will continue to come to the communion table when he knows that his basest lusts are still indulged; and if, moreover, he has the face to boast of being a child of God when he knows that he is an utter stranger to Divine grace, why, such a man is the raw material out of which Satan can make a Judas.
II. Wherever true tenderness is found it is a special gift of the new covenant. A heart of flesh is a boon of sovereign grace, and it is always the result of Divine power. No heart of stone was ever turned into flesh by accident, nor by mere providential dispensations, nor by human persuasions. Neither is such a change wrought by mans own actions. How shall a stone, being a stone, produce in itself flesh? The Spirit of God must change the nature, or the heart of stone will never become a heart of flesh. Note that the first works of the Spirit of God upon the soul tend towards this tenderness, for when He comes to a man He convinces him of sin and so softens him; the man convinced of sin does not laugh any longer at sin, neither does he despise the wrath of God on account of it. When the soul comes to be really saved, and to obtain peace through Jesus Christ, one great mark of its salvation is tenderness in heart. Oh, what a place for tenderness the Cross is! When for the first time oar eye beholds the Saviour, we, weep; we look and live, but we also look and mourn that we pierced the Lord. The fact that He loved us and gave Himself for us is enough to dissolve a heart of iron, if it could once know it. Now, as these first works of the Spirit of God in conviction and conversion lead to tenderness, so is it true of all the Divine operations which follow in due course. The whole tenor of the Gospel is towards tenderness. I cannot recollect a promise, I cannot recall a doctrine, I cannot remember a fact connected with the Gospel, which could make a believer hard-hearted. Can you? So is it with every Christian grace. All the Christian virtues promote warmth and tenderness of heart. You cannot be strong in piety unless you are tender in heart. Are you a child? Can a child be good if it be indifferent, haughty, obstinate, and stony-hearted towards its parents? Are you a servant? Who is a good servant but he that is tender of his masters reputation, and anxious to fill his lords command? Are you a soldier? Where is there a good soldier that is not jealous of his captains honour, and careful lest by any means he should break the martial law? There must be tenderness. It is an essential point.
III. This tenderness, when it is given, is observable under several aspects. The man who has a heart of flesh given him becomes sensitive to fear. He trembles at the thought of a holy God in arms against him. The renewed heart is afraid of what other men call little sins, and flees from them as from a serpent. Again, a tender heart becomes sensitive as to the decisions of its enlightened conscience. The Christian feels that it is a horrible thing to sin against God, against the Saviours love, and against the influence of the indwelling Spirit, and he starts back from sin, not only because he is afraid of the punishment, but because he is wounded by the sin itself. As smoke to the eyes, as thorns to the flesh, and as gall to the palate, such is sin to the heart of flesh. Then, again, the new heart, the fleshy heart, becomes sensitive of the Divine love. The renewed heart feels that the love of Christ constraineth it, and it judgeth that if Christ died for all, then were all dead, and that He died for all, that they which live should not live henceforth to themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again. Moreover, the heart becomes sensitive henceforth to holy grief. When it has erred it chastens and humbles itself for having grieved the Saviour: it takes revenge upon itself if sin has been indulged. Withal it becomes sensitive to joy, and oh the joy which a Christian feels, to which the ungodly man must forever be a stranger! Heaven itself seems to flash along every nerve when the heart is steeped in fellowship with Jesus. And so we become sensitive with pity for others. I would give nothing for your religion if you do not desire others to share in it; if you can, without emotion, think of a soul being damned, I fear that it will be your own lot. Where this tenderness of heart is carried to a high point, as it ought to be in every Christian, the believer becomes delicately sensitive concerning the things of God. A Christians heart should resemble a sensitive plant, which the moment it is touched folds up its leaves, as a sailor reefs his canvas; or like a wound in a mans flesh, which is pained by the faintest brush. Spiritual sensitiveness is fulness of life; insensibility is death. To feel the slightest motion of the Holy Spirit is a sign of high spirituality.
IV. Tenderness of heart is to be greatly prized and earnestly cultivated. Beloved, do not try to get rid of soul alarm and conviction and sin, except in Gods way. You will never prize the Saviour until you loathe yourself; you will never love His blood until you have been ashamed of the crimson of your own sin. Go to Jesus and put your trust in Him, and harden not your heart against Him. Next, I speak to you, O child of God. Cultivate tenderness of heart more and more. Be very humble, lie very low: be more and more conscious of your natural guilt, and repent daily more earnestly. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 26. A new heart also will I give you] I will change the whole of your infected nature; and give you new appetites, new passions; or, at least, the old ones purified and refined. The heart is generally understood to mean all the affections and passions.
And a new spirit will I put within you] I will renew your minds, also enlighten your understanding, correct your judgment, and refine your will; so that you shall have a new spirit to actuate your new heart.
I will take away the stony heart] That heart that is hard, impenetrable, and cold; the affections and passions that are unyielding, frozen to good, unaffected by heavenly things; that are slow to credit the words of God. I will entirely remove this heart: it is the opposite to that which I have promised you; and you cannot have the new heart and the old heart at the same time.
And I will give you a heart of flesh.] One that can feel, and that can enjoy; that can feel love to God and to all men, and be a proper habitation for the living God.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
A new heart; a renewed frame of soul, a disposition and mind changed from sinful to holy, from evil to good, from carnal to spiritual. See Eze 11:19. A heart in which the law of God is written, as Jer 31:33. It is a sanctified heart, in which the almighty grace of God is victorious, and turns it from sin to God.
Will I give you; God takes it to himself, as indeed it is his only work, see Eze 11:19.
A new spirit: this is exegetical, and tells us what the new heart is; it is a new holy frame in the spirit of man, which is put in him, not found in him; given to him, not wrought by his own power.
The stony heart; stubborn, senseless, untractable heart, that receives no kindly impressions from the word, providences, or Spirit of God in its ordinary operations and influences, that hardens itself in a day of provocation, that is hardened by the deceitfulness of sin; this evil heart shall be taken away, and this God will do, who only can do it.
Out of your flesh, put for the man. An heart of flesh; that is, a heart different from the stony, hard heart, quite of another temper and frame, hearkening to Gods law, trembling at his threats, by gentlest providences mounded to a compliance with his will; to forbear, do, be, or suffer what God will, receiving the impress of God, as softened wax receiveth the impress of the seal.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
26. new heartmind and will.
spiritmotive andprinciple of action.
stony heartunimpressiblein serious things; like the “stony ground” (Mat 13:5;Mat 13:20), unfit for receivingthe good seed so as to bring forth fruit.
heart of fleshnot”carnal” in opposition to “spiritual”; butimpressible and docile, fit for receiving the good seed. In Eze18:31 they are commanded, “Make you a new heart, anda new spirit.” Here God says, “A new heart will I giveyou, and a new spirit will I put within you.” Thus theresponsibility of man, and the sovereign grace of God, are shown tobe coexistent. Man cannot make himself a new heart unless God givesit (Phi 2:12; Phi 2:13).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you,…. A “new heart” and a “new spirit” are one and the same; that is, a renewed one; renewed by the Spirit and grace of God; in which a new principle of life is put; new light is infused; a new will, filled with new purposes and resolutions; where new affections are placed, and new desires are formed; and where there are new delights and joys, as well as new sorrows and troubles; the same which in the New Testament is called the “new man”, and the new creature, Eph 4:24. The Targum paraphrases it,
“a heart fearing, and a spirit fearing;”
where the true fear of God is, a truly gracious heart; and which is purely the gift of God, and is the fruit of his rich grace, abundant mercy, and great love:
and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh; the Targum is,
“and I will break the heart of the wicked, which is hard as a stone;”
this is a heart hardened by sin, and confirmed in it; destitute of spiritual life and motion; senseless and stupid, stubborn and inflexible; on which no impressions are made; and which remains hard and impenitent: now this is in “the flesh”, in corrupt nature; and this hardness of heart is natural to men; and all who have it are after the flesh, or are carnal; and it requires omnipotence to remove it; it cannot be taken out by men of themselves: nor by ministers of the word; nor by the bare mercies and judgments of God; but by the powerful and efficacious grace of God; giving repentance unto life; working faith in the soul, to look to a crucified Christ; and shedding abroad the love of God in the heart, which softens and melts it; all which is done by the Spirit, and frequently by means of the word. This is interpreted, in the Talmud n, of the evil imagination, or corruption of nature; and is one of the names of it, a stone; and it refers, it is said o, to the time or world to come, the days of the Messiah:
and I will give you an heart of flesh; a heart sensible of sin and danger; a penitent one, soft and tender, through the love and fear of God; a spiritual and sanctified heart; submissive to the will of God; flexible and obsequious to the commands of Christ; on which impressions are made by the grace of God; where the laws of God are written, the Gospel of Christ is put; where Christ himself is formed; where are the fear of God, faith, hope, and love, and every other grace.
n T. Bab. Succah, fol. 52. 1. o Debarim Rabba, fol. 242. 2. & Shirhashirim Rabba, fol. 3. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(26) A new heart.Comp. Eze. 11:18-20, where the same promise is given, although somewhat less fully than here. On the expression heart of flesh, see Note there on Eze. 36:19. With this prophetic preaching of the Gospel comp. Jer. 31:31-34, and particularly the connection of that passage with the temporal promises in its continuation (Eze. 36:35-38).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
26. New heart The “heart” represents the real inner nature of man as against mere external manifestation of desire and purpose. Though externally worshiping Jehovah the old heart of this people had been hard and unfeeling (Eze 2:4; Eze 3:7).
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Eze 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
Ver. 26. A new heart also will I give you. ] For the old heart will never hold out the hardship of holiness; the old fabric must be taken down, and a new set up. See Eze 11:19 . A “new man” both in constitution and conversation one must be, or else he is no man in Christ. 2Co 5:17
And I will taks away the stony heart.
And I will give you an heart of flesh,
a Augustine.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
new heart. Not the old heart improved, but a new heart created and “given”. The old one “taken away”.
spirit. Hebrew. ruach. App-9.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
A New Heart
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.Eze 36:26.
1. God deals with nations much as He deals with individuals. We may read the Old Testament as addressed to the many or to the one. Very often a man stood for his tribe or class; often the whole were regarded, irrespective of the doing of the few or of the single soul. A nation was looked on as having a character, and a heart, just as much as a person. It was held to be as strictly accountable for its conduct as any member of the body politic for the exercise of his powers. In this chapter the prophet is speaking to Israel. Colossal sins, grossest idolatries, shameful infidelities, had been long persisted in. Warnings, faithful and constant, had been uttered by the servants of Jehovah, only to be ridiculed and disregarded. At length the cup of the nations iniquities was full. Affliction, sad and terrible, came. War and pillage, famine and pestilence, and finally captivity and exile, were their portion.
They became indeed a nation scattered and peeled. They were a shepherdless flock now, in the cloudy and dark day. Victorious foes exulted over them, holding now in possession their ancient high places. Heathen orgies were celebrated in the very shrines which they themselves had polluted, and the care and power of Jehovah over His own people were despised. To the sorrowing prophet on the distant plains of Chebar there had been given searching messages to be spoken to the false and wicked ones who had led the nation into impiety. The flaming vision of the cherubim had stirred Ezekiel to valiant witnessing. When judgment had wrought its purpose and the repentant were ready to serve the Lord, then the prophets face was turned toward them in mercy. Of that blessed change and renewing we have here the promise. It is like a sun-burst through thick and angry clouds that have been pouring their fury on the shuddering earth, which, scattering them, discloses a smiling landscape. The grand mountain ranges of his native land loom up before the imagination of Ezekiel now purified, glorified, and Jerusalem becomes again a praise in the earth. As the energizing cause of this return and restored condition of things, we have the distinct assurance of a new heart and a new spirit in the children of God.
2. In the verse preceding the text, Ezekiel speaks of the spiritual process of regeneration by which Israel is to be transformed into a true people of God. The prophets analysis of the process of conversion is profoundly instructive, and anticipates to a remarkable degree the teaching of the New Testament. The first step in the process is the removal of the impurities contracted by past transgressions. This is represented under the figure of sprinkling with clean water, suggested by the ablutions or lustrations which are so common a feature of the Levitical ritual. The truth symbolized is the forgiveness of sins, the act of grace which takes away the effect of moral uncleanness as a barrier to fellowship with God. The second point is what is properly called regeneration, the giving of a new heart and spirit. The stony heart of the old nation, whose obduracy had dismayed so many prophets, making them feel that they had spent their labour for nought and in vain, shall be taken away, and instead of it they shall receive a heart of flesh, sensitive to spiritual influences and responsive to the Divine will. And to this is added in the third place the promise of the Spirit of God to be in them as the ruling principle of a new life of obedience to the law of God.
The prominence of heart as a psychological term in the Bible and in other ancient books is due, doubtless, to the centrality of the physical organ which it primarily denotes, and which, according to the view of the ancients, bulked so much more in the human frame than the brain. Since, in Bible phrase, the life is in the blood, that organ which forms the centre of the distribution of the blood must have the most important place in the whole system. By a very easy play of metaphor, therefore, heart came to signify the seat of mans collective energies, the focus of the personal life. As from the fleshly heart goes forth the blood in which is the animal life, so from the heart of the human soul goes forth the entire mental and moral activity. By a sort of metaphorical anticipation of Harveys famous discovery, the heart is also that to which all the actions of the human soul return. In the heart the soul is at home with itself, becomes conscious of its doing and suffering as its own. It is therefore the organ of conscience, of self-knowledge, and indeed of all knowledge. Now, because it is the focus of the personal life, in the heart lies the moral and religious condition of the man. Only what enters the heart forms a possession of moral worth, and only what comes from the heart is a moral production. On the one hand, therefore, the Bible places human depravity in the heart, because sin is a principle which has penetrated to the centre, and thence corrupts the whole circuit of life. On the other hand, it regards the heart as the sphere of Divine influences, the starting-point of all moral renovation. A new heart will I give you.1 [Note: J. Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man, 121.]
I
A New Heart
1. How wonderfully the Book of God proclaims the doctrine of the new! It speaks of a new covenant, and a new creature, and a new song: it even asserts that there shall be a new heaven and a new earth. It proclaims that He that sitteth upon the throne purposes to make all things new. It is the unique claim of the gospel that it makes men new. It professes to alter character, not as all other religious and ethical systems in the world have done, by mere influence of reason or of motives, or by a discipline of the flesh; it professes to alter human character by altering human nature. It brings truth, indeed, to satisfy the reason, and powerful motives of every sort to tell upon the will, as well as law to stimulate the conscience; but in the very act of doing so, it pronounces all these external appliances to be utterly insufficient without a concurrent action of God from within the man. The real change it proclaims to be a change of heart or spiritual being; and that is the work of God.
All mens attempts at the betterment of human nature begin from without, and the theory is that the work will deepen till it reaches that which is within. They profess to emancipate the man from the grosser vices, trusting that the reform will go farther, that he will be brought under superior influences, and so be elevated in mind and heart. Theirs is an outward ointment for an inward diseasea bandage upon the skin to stay the bleeding of the heart. Miserable physicians are they all! Their remedies fail to eradicate the deep-seated maladies of humanity. Gods way of dealing with men is the reverse. He begins within and works towards the exterior in due course. He is a mere quack who, seeing in a man the signs of disease, operates upon the symptoms, but never looks to the root of the mischief. It is very possible that by potent poisons an empiric may check unpleasing indications, and he may kill the man in doing so; but the wise physician looks to the fountain of the disease, and if it be possible to touch the core and centre of it, he leaves the symptoms to right themselves.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]
2. The spiritual change indicated in the text is spoken of under the metaphor of the substitution of an heart of flesh for a stony heartstony, meaning hard, lacking sensitiveness to Gods mystic touch, unresponsive to the calls Divine. Who that has a glimmer of insight into his own heart but will recognize that heart as stony? Bishop Lightfoot in pathetic apostrophe speaks of my sullied heart, and he speaks for us all. John Bunyan, in his Grace Abounding, says, I thought that every one had a better heart than I had: I could have changed hearts with anybody. A stone, to which the natural heart is compared, is a thing upon which one can make little impressioninsensitive, cold and heavy, one can do nothing with it. It feels nothing; do what we may, it gives no response; so the heart of man is by nature irresponsive to Gods love and to the gospel of His grace. It takes more than a knife to cut a stone; we may put a stone in water as long as we like, but the water does not penetrate it. The rock of the hills seems impervious to the wind, the rain, and the storm. Heat does not melt it; cold does not make it any harder; it is impenetrable. This world is like a petrifying spring, and the worldly heart is being petrified in its stream, and so grows harder and harder as the years roll on. Moreover, men harden themselves by their own sins. Every time a man sins it becomes more easy for him to sin again. As labour renders the hand hard, so sin makes the heart callous, and each sin makes the stony heart yet more like adamant.
In contrast to this stony heart, God offers to give man an heart of flesh, by which is meant a soft heart, an impressible heart, a sensitive heart, a heart which can feel, can be moved to shame, to repentance, to loathing of sin, to desiring, to seeking, to panting, to longing after God; a tender heart, a heart that does not require a thousand blows to move it, but, like flesh with its skin broken, feels the very faintest touchsuch is the heart that the Holy Spirit creates in the children of God. It is a teachable heart, a heart willing to be guided, moulded, governed by the Divine will; a heart which, like young Samuel, cries, Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth; an obedient heart, ready to be run into the mould, plastic beneath the sacred hand, anxious to be conformed to the heavenly pattern.
As flesh, the heart is no longer hard, obdurate, impenetrable to the genial influences of heaven. Once like a hard block of ice, it has now yielded to the beams of the sun, and been melted into flowing water. How it is moved now, by truths once felt no more than dews falling out of starry heavens, in soft silence upon the rugged rock! The heart of grace is endowed with a delicate sensibility, and vibrates to the slightest touch of a Saviours fingers. How the truth of God affects it now! A stone no longer, it melts under the heavenly fire; a stone no longer, it bends beneath the hammer of the Word; no longer like the rugged rock on which rains and sunbeams were wasted, it receives the impression of Gods power, and retains the footprints of His presence.
Do not mistake natural tenderness for that heart of flesh which God gives. A heart of wax is soft, but it is not a heart of flesh. The softness of nature is not the sensitiveness of grace. Often some persons who are religiously sensitive are equally sensitive the other way, and, while you can influence them for good, others can as easily influence them for evil. Mere religious impressibility is not grace, it is nature alone. Some persons are like india-rubber, and every time you put your finger on them you leave a mark; but it is wasted time, because they get back into the old shape again as soon as you have done with them. I was preaching once in a certain city, and a very worthy but worldly man went out of the congregation while I was in the middle of the sermon, the third sermon he had been hearing from me during the week. One who followed him out asked him why he left, and he frankly replied that he could not stand it any longer, for, said he, I must have become religious if I had heard that sermon through. I was nearly gone. I have been, added he, like an india-rubber doll under this man, but when he goes away I shall get back into the old shape again.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]
3. A new heart can come only as the gift of God. I will give you it, saith Jehovah. Can any man renew his own heart? Let a host of poor disappointed attempters tell us their doleful story. Nay, let each of us recount his own pitiful endeavours. Who can renew a heart but God only? Nor priest, nor prophet, nor friend can effect this miraculous transformation. God speaks without reservation. He says that He will give a new heart and that He will give it to you. Not one of His people need know the deplorable impoverishment of being without this gift Divine. It is assured to all who desire it. God says, I will, and yet again, I will. It is not I will if, or I will perhaps, or I will upon certain conditions, butI will give. He speaks in a Godlike tone. It is the very word of Him who of old said, Let there be light and there was light. He who spoke the world into being now speaks the new world of grace into being in the self-same majestic voice, which here promises the gift of a new heart.
God called for my life and I offered it at His footstool; but He gave it me as a Prey, with unspeakable addition. He called for my will, and I resigned it at His call, but He returned me His own in token of His love. He called for the world and I laid it at His feet, with the crowns thereof; I withheld them not at the beckoning of His hand. But mark the benefit of Exchange! For He gave me, instead of Earth, a Kingdom of Eternal Peace, and in lieu of the Crowns of Vanity a Crown of Glory. He gave me Joy which no tongue can express and Peace which passeth understanding. My heart was melted with the Height of Comfort; my Soul was immersed in the Depth of Love; my eyes overflowed with tears of greatest pleasure I begged Himself and He gave me All.2 [Note: A Journal of the Life of Thomas Story, 20.]
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterances ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.1 [Note: Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings), 1.]
4. This gift which God promises is something we all need. We can do without anything else, but a new heart is absolutely requisite. A nature is fundamental. All acts, words, thoughts, are effluences of the nature. The heart is the root and fount of all things. With what finality and power our Lord described the fundamentality of the heart! Out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings. How radical is the teaching of Jesus in this as in all matters! He never treats things superficially. He will not rest in second causes. He traces all evil to the heart of man. And the Bible is equally thorough in all its teachings. It focusses all attention, all prayer, all endeavour, upon the heart. It will not allow that any man is right except his heart be right. Always its deep solicitude is concerning the heart. Hence all manner and types of heart are described in Scripture: a wicked heart, a pure heart, a true heart, a broken heart, a clean heart, a perfect heart. A new heart also will I give you. A needed gift indeed, for till the heart is rectified the life is all astray.
In this precious gift of a new heart lies the secret of a wealthy inner life. Inward peace depends upon a new heart. Self-negation depends upon a new heart. Prayer and thanksgiving and praise depend upon a new heart. All generous impulses, all sublime ideals, all lofty and strenuous purposes depend upon a new heart. No inward rightness can be attained unless Gods promised gift of a new heart be received.
Mr. MCullaghs Recollections of my Ministry in East London contains an account of two or three remarkable conversions which followed his mission sermons in Poplar and Limehouse. At one service a stranger presented himself as a penitent. He complained that he did not and could not feel. I have a great stone here, said he, putting his hand on his breast. He was reasoned with in vain. He repeated several times his complaint of the stone. Then the preacher quoted to him the promise to take away the stony heart. The man could not believe it was in the Bible, until a copy was shown to him, for it seemed as though made to suit his case exactly. He, too, believed and entered into rest.1 [Note: Thomas MCullagh, by his eldest Son, 81.]
Describing some of the remarkable conversions among the boatmen who had been induced to attend his Water Street Mission in New York, Jerry McAuley says, I asked one of them who was saved at that time, when he was testifying, How do you know you were converted?
Well, Ill tell you, he replied: I went from here to my boat, and, locking the door, just made up my mind never to open it until converted. And I kept my word!
How could you tell when it was done?
Well, Ill have to explain that in my own way, he answered, but it seems to me the Lord just took, as it were, something like a barnacle-scraper [a keen, sharp-edged, three-cornered piece of steel, fastened to a long handle, and used to scrape off the shell-fish and other deposits that gather on the bottom of vessels] and scraped my heart all out clean, and I havent felt anything wrong there since! 2 [Note: Jerry McAuley: An Apostle to the Lost, 75.]
That rare thing, the real Christian, is a genuinely new creation; not an ordinary man with a new and inspiring creed. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, said St. Paul; and described in those words a most actual phenomenon, the perennial puzzle of the religious psychologist. The re-birth which is typified by the Churchs sacrament of initiation, and the participation in the Divine Life which is dramatized in its sacrament of communionthe food of the full-grownthese are facts, these are things which really happen to Christian mystics; to all those, in fact, who follow this path of development, whatsoever their theological creed. The authentic documents of Christianitythose produced by minds which have submitted to the discipline and experienced the growthspeak with no uncertain voice as to the actual and unique character of this life. Its result, they say, is no splitting up of personality, no isolation of the spiritual sense; but the lifting of the whole man to new levels of existence where the soul has fulhead of perception by divine fruition; where he not only knows, but is, not only is, but acts. My life, said St. Augustine, looking forward to that existence in God which he recognized as his destiny, shall be a real life, being wholly full of Thee. The naked will, says Ruysbroeck of that same consummation, is transformed by the Eternal Love, as fire by fire. The naked spirit stands erect, it feels itself to be wrapped round, affirmed and affixed by the formless immensity of God, since our being, without losing anything of its personality, is united with the Divine Truth which respects all diversity. Here is the authentic voice of Western mysticism; and here we indeed recognize spirit pressing forward in a new direction towards new conquests, bringing into expression deeper and deeper levels of life.1 [Note: Evelyn Underhill, The Mystic Way, 33.]
II
A New Spirit
The gospel claims to make human nature new. This is to recognize what no other religion ever recognized, but what all experience demonstratesthat less than this is not enough. Out of the fact of the Incarnation springs the hope of our renewal. God now is not outside of mankind, but inside. From the inside He can work, and does work, renewingly. The race has within itself a Fountain of renewal, an endless, unfathomable Source of re-creating energy.
1. The text reveals to us how God effects the great change that is promised under the figure of a new heart. I will put my spirit within you. The new life-principle is the effluence of the Spirit of God. The promise does not offer merely the influence of a Divine spirit, working on men as from without, or coming down upon them as an afflatus, but the actual planting of Gods Spirit in the deep places of theirs. We fail to apprehend the most characteristic blessing of the gospel if we do not give full prominence to that great gift of an indwelling Spirit, the life of our lives. Cleansing is much, but it is incomplete without a new life-principle which shall keep us clean; and that can only be Gods Spirit, enshrined and operative within us; for only thus shall we walk in his statutes, and keep his judgments. When the Lawgiver dwells in our hearts, the law will be our delight; and keeping it will be the natural outcome and expression of our life, which is His life.
Within you! This word of our text is one of the keywords of the New Covenant. I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it. I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. God created mans heart for His dwelling. Sin entered, and defiled it. Four thousand years Gods Spirit strove and wrought to regain possession. In the Incarnation and Atonement of Christ the Redemption was accomplished, and the Kingdom of God established. Jesus could say, The kingdom of God is come unto you; the kingdom of God is within you. It is within we must look for the fulfilment of the New Covenant, the Covenant not of ordinances but of life: in the power of an endless life the law and the fear of God are to be given in our heart, the Spirit of Christ Himself is to be within us as the power of our life. Not only on Calvary, or in the Resurrection, or on the throne, is the glory of Christ the Conqueror to be seen,but in our heart: within us, within us is to be the true display of the reality and the glory of His Redemption.1 [Note: A. Murray, The Spirit of Christ, 21.]
2. With a new life, cut off from the dreadful moral continuity with the past, eased of ones inheritance of self-reproach, and made quick within with the seed of a new future, all things seem possible to a man. The whole world changes when we change. Old things pass away; all things become new. But it is not in an instant that the old things pass away. Even to get a beginning made, and a seed of newness let into the old life through the first coming of the Holy Ghost, may ask long, sore waiting, with many tears and groans over the sins of the past, and an agony of wrestling desire, and a letting go of ones loved things, even of ones loved self, which is like the spasm of dissolution. And when the new heart begins to beat, and the new-won Holy Spirit begins to breathe in us, the young life must be fostered continually, and the Holy Spirit must not be grieved. The process of renewal in Christ Jesus is a work of every day. Every day the old has to become older and more obsolete; the new, newer and more mighty.
It is here that so many of us blunder. We think of regeneration as a fait accompli, a thing past and done; and we forget that the inward man needs to be renewed day by day. No man can be a new creature except in Christwithin the circle of Christs life and influence. Keep there, in that charmed circle, in personal intimacy with that Living One, and we are in the Life and in the Light; all is new, all is strength, sunshine, and gladness. Go out of it for an instant, and everything is cold and dark as death. But stay not out of it. At all cost get back to Jesus; eye to eye with Him, hand in hand, heart to heart. It is from Him the new being streams into us, and everythingyes, everythingmust be sacrificed to have that contact maintained. Is it not worth it? To be ones old self, with ones old bondage, and spiritual incapacity, and dreary remorse, and vain struggles to be good, is to be dead. He alone lives who lives in Christ; and for that true life it is worth while to die to everything beside.
As the self-expression of the Divine life in the world conforms to a rhythm too great for us to grasp, so that its manifestation appears to us erratic and unprepared; so is it with the self-expression, the emergence into the field of consciousness, of that fontal life of man which we have called the souls spark or seed, which takes place in the spiritual adolescence. This emergence is seldom understood by the self in relation with life as a whole. It seems to him a separate gift or grace, infused from without rather than developed from within. It startles him by its suddenness; the gladness, awe, and exaltation which it brings; an emotional inflorescence, parallel with that which announces the birth of perfect human love. This moment is the spiritual spring-time. It comes, like the winds of March, full of natural wonder, and gives to all who experience it a participation in the deathless magic of eternal springs. An enhanced vitality, a wonderful sense of power and joyful apprehension as towards worlds before ignored or unknown, floods the consciousness. Life is raised to a higher degree of tension than ever before; and therefore to a higher perception of Reality.1 [Note: Evelyn Underhill, The Mystic Way, 50.]
The feeling of Gods forgiveness, the freedom from the sense of sin, prominent at the critical point in conversion, is one of the most frequently expressed characteristics of sanctification; but the form of expression has changed. While the former was a mere act of pardon, this is usually described as a complete cleansing. These are typical: I felt pure and clean so that I wished I were made of glass, so that everyone could look within my heart. I had the witness of Gods Spirit that a clean heart had been created within me. Self-mastery and a real purification of my nature became manifest in me. The work of forgiveness seems to be more thorough; it involves ones entire being; the person feels not only that his sins have been forgiven, but that he has been made wholly pure.
The specific ways in which sanctification is a culmination of conversion are along the lines of the changes wrought then in ones nature. Evil habits are more completely broken up. For example: At conversion I experienced pardon for sin, a new heart, a disposition to do right, although an evil tendency remained. Sanctification took away this tendency. The feeling of harmony with God is heightened. Sanctification brought a fuller consciousness of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification brings with it a fulness, an all-aroundness of experience which is new. The joy at conversion has been enlarged so that it approaches a state of ecstasy in which ones whole nature participates. I was cleansed from all sin and filled with the fulness of God as I had not been at conversion. Conversion was a consecration to God; sanctification was an exalted state of soul, an indwelling of power. In these instances one sees the heightened subjectivity of experience which is one of the distinguishing aspects of sanctification.1 [Note: E. D. Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, 379.]
For him, in this sensitiveness of surface and texture, there arose one of the perennially fresh springs of interest for every working day. No method was entirely satisfactory. There were ever fresh discoveries to be made, and the joy of for ever seeking made him glad to be up with the first streak of daylight. Every day is a birthday, every moment of it is new to us, he said cheerfully; we are born again, renewed for fresh work and endeavour.2 [Note: George Frederic Watts, ii. 91.]
III
A New Life
1. When a man receives a new heart his temper and disposition are changed and sanctified. A kind, gentle, loving nature is one of the most winning features of religion; by its silent and softening influence one may do more real service to Christianity than by the loudest professions, or by the exhibition of a cold and rigid orthodoxy. The heart that has room in it for God grows so large that it finds room for all that He loves, and for all that He has made. While the love of sin acts as an astringentcontracting the natural heart, shutting and shrivelling it upthe love of God expands and enlarges its capacity. Piety quickens the pulse of love, warms and strengthens our heart, and sends forth fuller streams of natural affection toward all that have a claim on us, just as a strong and healthy heart sends tides of blood along the elastic arteries to every extremity of the body.
This new heart, however, consists mainly in a change of the affections as they regard spiritual objects. Just look at the heart and feelings of an unconverted man. His mind, being carnal, is enmity or hatred against God. This may be latent, not at first sight apparent or suspected, but how soon does it appear when put to the proof. Fairly tried, it comes out like those unseen elements which chemical tests reveal. Let God, for instance, by His providences or laws, thwart the wishes or cross the propensities of our renewed naturelet there be a collision between His will and oursand the latent enmity flashes out like latent fire when the cold flint is struck with steel.
2. Conversion restores not only God to the heart, but also reason to her throne. Time and eternity are now seen in their just proportionsthe one in its littleness, and the other in its greatness. When the light of heaven rises on the soul, what grand discoveries does she makeof the exceeding evil of sin, of the holiness of the Divine law, of the infinite purity of Divine justice, of the grace and greatness of Divine love. The Saviour and Satan, the soul and the body, holiness and sin, have competing claims. Between these reason now holds the balance even, and man finds what the demoniac found in Jesus advent. The man whose dwelling was among the tombs, whom no chains could bind, is seated at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind. By this change the will is renewed, changed, and sanctified. The attainments of a believer are always beneath his aims; his desires are nobler than his deeds; his wishes are holier than his works. Give other men their will, full swing to their passions, and they would be worse than they are; give that to him, and he would be better than he is. And if we have experienced the gracious change it will be our daily grief that we are not what we know we should be, nor even what we wish to be. To be complaining with Paul, When I would do good, evil is present with me; the good which I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do, is one of the best evidences of a gracious, saving change.
3. It has been said, change the man and you change his world. The new self will make all around it as good as new, though no actual change should pass on it; for, to a very wonderful extent, a man creates his own world. We project the hue of our own spirits on things outside. A bright and cheerful temper sees all things on their sunny side. A weary, uneasy mind drapes the very earth in gloom. Lift from a man his load of inward anxiety, and the aspect of the universe is changed to that man; for, if to the pure all things are pure, it is no less true that to the happy all things are happy. Especially is the world revolutionized and made new to a man by a noble and joyous passion. Any great enthusiasm which lifts a man above his average self for the time makes him like a new man, and transfigures the universe in his eyes. Now, this power of human nature, when exalted through high and noble emotion, to make its own world, will be realized in its profoundest form when the soul is re-created by the free Spirit of God. Let God lift us above our old selves, and inspire us with no earthly, but with the pure flame of a celestial, devotion; let Him breathe into our hearts the noblest, freest of all enthusiasms, the enthusiasm for Himself; and to us all things will become new. We shall seem to ourselves to have entered another world where we breathe lighter air, see an intenser sunlight, and move to the impulses of a more generous spirit.
One peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often appears to undergo. An appearance of newness beautifies every object, the precise opposite of that other sort of newness, that dreadful unreality and strangeness in the appearance of the world, which is experienced by melancholy patients. This sense of clean and beautiful newness within and without is one of the commonest entries in conversion records. Jonathan Edwards thus describes it in himself:
After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. Gods excellency, His wisdom, His purity, and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunderstorm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoices me.1 [Note: W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 248.]
Billy Bray, the Cornish evangelist, whose wonderful work in the West of England is well known, speaks thus of the sense of newness that he experienced on his conversion:I said to the Lord: Thou hast said, they that ask shall receive, they that seek shall find, and to them that knock the door shall be opened, and I have faith to believe it. In an instant the Lord made me so happy that I cannot express what I felt. I shouted for joy. I preached God with my whole heart. I think this was in November, 1823, but what day of the month I do not know. I remember this, that everything looked new to me, the people, the fields, the cattle, the trees. I was like a new man in a new world. I spent the greater part of my time in praising the Lord.2 [Note: F. W. Bourne, The Kings SonA Memoir of Billy Bray, 9.]
O glory of the lighted mind
How dead Id been, how dumb, how blind.
The station brook, to my new eyes,
Was babbling out of Paradise,
The waters rushing from the rain
Were singing Christ has risen again.
I thought all earthly creatures knelt
From rapture of the joy I felt.
The narrow station-walls brick ledge,
The wild hop withering in the hedge,
The lights in huntsmans upper storey,
Were parts of an eternal glory,
Were Gods eternal garden flowers.
I stood in bliss at this for hours.3 [Note: John Masefield, The Everlasting Mercy, 97.]
Literature
Bonar (H.), Family Sermons, 311, 319.
Campbell (J. M.), Bible Questions, 155.
Carroll (B. H.), Sermons and Life Sketch, 149.
Cooper (E.), Fifty-Two Family Sermons, 204.
Farindon (A.), Sermons, i. 497; ii. 1.
Finney (C. G.), The Way of Salvation, 254.
Gibbon (J. M.), Evangelical Heterodoxy, 61.
Gibson (E. C. S.), The Old Testament and its Messages, 194.
Kennedy (J.), in Modern Scottish Pulpit, i. 231.
Kirk (J.), Sermons, 185.
Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., i. 136.
Lewis (H. E.), By the River Chebar, 62.
Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, ii. 487.
Spencer (I. S.), Sermons, ii. 285.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxx. (1884), No. 1795.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxiii. 17 (H. S. Holland).
Homiletic Review, xvii. 341 (J. D. Freeman).
National Preacher, xiii. 17 (J. Fuller); xvi. 145 (E. Pond).
Plain Sermons by Contributors to Tracts for the Times, ii. 233.
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
new heart: Deu 30:6, Psa 51:10, Jer 32:39, Joh 3:3-5, 2Co 3:18, 2Co 5:17, Gal 6:15, Eph 2:10, Rev 21:5
the stony: Eze 11:19, Eze 11:20, Zec 7:12, Mat 13:5, Mat 13:20, Mat 13:21, Mar 4:16, Mar 4:17, 2Co 3:3
Reciprocal: Lev 3:3 – the fat Deu 27:2 – great stones Deu 29:4 – General 1Ki 8:58 – incline 2Ch 30:12 – the hand of God 2Ch 34:27 – thine heart Psa 34:18 – such as Psa 119:35 – Make me Pro 16:1 – preparations Pro 19:8 – wisdom Isa 30:23 – shall he Jer 31:19 – Surely after Jer 32:40 – but I Eze 18:31 – make Hos 14:2 – away Mat 13:23 – good Mar 4:5 – General Luk 5:38 – General Luk 8:6 – General Luk 8:15 – in an Joh 3:6 – that Act 11:18 – granted Rom 7:6 – serve Rom 8:9 – But ye Rom 12:2 – be ye 2Co 7:1 – let Gal 3:14 – might Eph 4:23 – be Col 3:10 – the new 2Ti 2:25 – if Heb 8:10 – I will put 1Pe 3:21 – the putting
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A NEW HEART
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.
Eze 36:26
I. If your soul is open and recepitve, it is marvellous how full the world becomes to you of Divine voices.They come upon you unexpected, unsought, sending through your heart some illuminating flash of surprise, so that you wonder at your previous dullness; they strike you with the sudden shock of some new knowledge or insight, and make you feel, as never before, the true nature of your daily conduct or your duty and your relation to other men; or they come as the unresting presence of some new thought, which, once roused, haunts and troubles you with questions which you cannot answer, or feelings which you cannot get rid of.
Sometimes these Divine voices in our ears bring it home to us how much we are losing out of our lifes higher possibilities, if from sinful or selfish habit, from dullness of spirit, or lack of sympathy, we cut ourselves off in thought and feeling and interest from the great needs, the great sorrows, the great pulsations of the larger world.
These calls that come to you, whether invited or not, and that stir your heart, speaking to you out of the multitudinous life of the time you live in, are like the watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, which never hold their peace day nor night.
If you hear no such voices, if the phenomena of life make no such impression upon you, if you are deaf to all these calls, and care for none of these things, then it is clear that your soul is not yet awake in you; you are living with a dull or darkened heart. It is a sort of cave life, or subterranean life, you lead in such a case, a life of lower rank and lesser hopes.
Yet these voices from above, that come as the witness of the Divine Spirit with our spirit that we are the children of God, never fail us. They do not belong only to times far off. We are not to think of them merely as enshrined in the Bible and peculiar to it; but as living voices that are speaking to us to-day out of the depths of the Divine life, in which our life is sustained.
II. But we have always to bear this in mind, that the Divine voices speak to men with most stirring effect in every generation when they speak to them through the pressing needs of their own day.To the Jews the voice of God came in the inspired language of their deliverers and prophetsin their unceasing warnings, and their impassioned appeals, and their revelations of new truth. To the first generation of Christians these same voices came in the shape of strong Advent hopes.
Christ was very near to the Apostolic Christians. As the eastern sky brightened every morning they felt that it might be the light of His coming; and so it came to pass that this expectation made those first believers, those humble followers of Christ, those Galilan fishermen, those obscure provincials, instinct with that great life which lifts men above the world, and constitutes them a new power in it.
Our lives are largely influenced by the thought of slow development; but we miss a great deal of the secret of all higher life if we forget this wonderful exaltation of the poor and ignorant and obscure by this gift of the Spirit and the inspiration of Divine hope. It was not by any method which we could have forecast that those men found out this charm which takes the heart captive and regenerates the life. In their presence we feel the force of the prophets words, Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.
III. But then there rises the question, How are these Divine influences to become powerful in us also?There are two things which we should keep clear in our minds concerning them. One, that they must be based upon our feeling of the living influence of Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit; and the other is that the voices of the Spirit must come to us out of the needs of our own life and of the time we live in if they are to lead us to practical issues. When we look out upon the world and its life we feel that Advent hopes must take some new form if they are to preserve reality and to be fulfilled.
We have these hopeful signs for the future rising around us, even where things look darkest, that the great problems of humanity are felt in our day to be above all things its social and religious problems. And seeing that the aspirations of the timethe feelings, the purposes, the aims, and hopes that lift mengrow out of the needs of the time and the problems of its life, we look forwardwe have good ground for looking forwardto a generation of men who shall be distinguished by religious earnestness and by social enthusiasm.
But if this be so, what will your share be in this coming life?
Bishop Percival.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Eze 36:26, A complete change of heart is the meaning of this verse. We know that the human heart as to the body is literally flesh, therefore we must understand this language to he figurative. It means their heart (mind) had become hardened in sin and the captivity was going to humbl6
them and make them yield to the law of God.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Eze 36:26-27. A new heart also will I give you A new disposition of mind, excellent in itself, and vastly different from what it was before; a frame of soul changed from sinful to holy, from carnal to spiritual; a heart in which the law of God is written, Jer 31:33; a sanctified spirit, in which the almighty grace of God is victorious, and turns it from the world to God, and from all sin to all holiness; a state of mind which is the supernatural gift of God, and not wrought in any man by his own power. And I will take away the stony heart The hard, senseless, unfeeling, inflexible heart; the heart unapt and averse to receive any divine impressions, and to return any devout affections. Out of your flesh That is, out of you. And I will give you a heart of flesh A soft and tender heart, that has spiritual senses exercised, and is conscious to itself of spiritual pains and pleasures; a heart of quite another temper, hearkening to Gods law, trembling at his threats, moulded into a compliance with his whole will; disposed to do, to be, or to suffer what God wills; receiving the divine impress as soft wax receives the impress of the seal. I will put my Spirit within you My enlightening, regenerating, and sanctifying Spirit; that Holy Spirit which is given to and dwells in all true believers; and cause you Sweetly and powerfully, yet without compulsion; to walk in my statutes In all my ordinances and commandments, and that from judgment, choice, and affection. For our spirits, when renewed by Gods Spirit to a disposition conformed to his holiness, readily comply with his will in all things, concur with his designs, and become workers together with him. And ye shall keep my judgments, and do them Ye shall be willing and able to perform all acceptable obedience, and to live a life of universal holiness and righteousness.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
He would, third, give them a new heart and spirit and would remove their hardness of heart and give them soft hearts (i.e., regenerate them; cf. Eze 11:19; Eze 18:31; 2Co 3:3-6). Perhaps this passage was in the Lord Jesus’ mind when He spoke to Nicodemus about the new birth. [Note: Cf. Kaiser, p. 242.] The heart stands for the whole person-mind, will, and emotions (cf. Eze 2:4; Eze 3:7)-and the spirit describes the motivation that drives thought and conduct.
"The temptation to find the fulfillment of the ’new heart’ and ’new spirit’ of Eze 36:25-27 exclusively in Christian conversion in this age should be resisted. New Testament conversion is only a preview of the massive spiritual revival God has in store for all of true Israel and Gentiles who believe." [Note: Cooper, p. 317.]