Benefit #2 — New Heart

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; …. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. Ezekiel 36:26-27

Jesus saves us not just from the punishment that sinners deserve, he also saves us from ourselves. This is good news! Before God sent the Flood, he saw that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Even after the Flood Jeremiah says that each person’s “heart is deceitful above all things, and incurably sick; who can understand it?” So “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,” says Paul. To make us alive together in Christ, God graciously replaced our hard, rebellious hearts with willing, compliant ones—hearts that are inclined to delight in all that he is for us in Jesus. And Jesus also gives us the Holy Spirit, the embodiment of the Father’s and Son’s delight in one another, so we will be more powerfully motivated to extend God’s grace to the world around us. Now instead of foolishly thumbing our noses at God’s commands to love, we can succeed in the obedience of faith.

O Lord, with David I pray: Keep creating in me a clean heart, O God, and renewing a right spirit within me. Amen.