Facets of Salvation #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 our punishment for rebelling against God; he also saves us from our proclivity to continue rebelling. This is good news! In the earliest days of human history God observed that “the wickedness of human beings was great, and that every intention of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” Much later, after he had selected Israel as his special people, Jeremiah declared that each person’s “heart is deceitful above all things, and incurably sick; who can understand it?” Still later Paul commented, “We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were, at our core, angry people.” In order for us to live as citizens of God’s kingdom, something had to change. To make us alive together with 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 our Lord. And Jesus himself gives us the Holy Spirit—the personification of the Father’s and Son’s delight in one another—so we will be powerfully motivated to extend God’s grace to the world around us. With new human spirits and the Holy Spirit we become saints instead of sinners. Now instead of foolishly thumbing our noses at God, we can join hands with him in doing good.

O Lord, with David I pray: Keep my heart clean and my spirit steadfast. Sustain me with a willing spirit as I rejoice in your salvation.