Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when God changes them. This daily devotional looks at how that happens.
Nuggets
- A heart of flesh is open to God’s calling because it has a tenderness toward sin.
- Once we gain salvation, we want to obey God’s laws and commandments.
- A heart of flesh convicts us when we do sin.
Devotions in the From a Wrong Heart to a Right Heart series
We started the From a Wrong Heart to a Right Heart series in the previous devotion. The foundation of this series is a verse in Ezekiel.
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36: 26 ESV)
We started off discussing the heart of stone. The heart is not only the source of our relationship with God, but it is also the original source of sin. With sin in our hearts, they became hardened.
God wants to change that and give us hearts of flesh.
Wait! What?
The flesh is our human, sinful nature. So, why would God want to give us a heart of flesh?
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.
Let's Put It into Context #2
A heart of stone is a soul without faith in God.
What Is a Heart of Flesh?
“It is clear that you are Christ’s letter, produced by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God — not on stone tablets but on tablets that are hearts of flesh” (II Cor. 3: 3 HCSB)
A heart of flesh is open to God’s calling because it has a tenderness toward sin.
It throws us when we see Ezekiel and Paul call them hearts of flesh. When we have talked about flesh being our sinful nature, it doesn’t compute that God would give us hearts of flesh.
But there is a different definition here. Spurgeon said, “A heart of flesh is known by its tenderness concerning sin.”
Resource
Tenderness? What???
A tenderness for sin means we see sin for what it really is. We finally can see what it does to us.
Sins are actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
Glossary
A stony heart cannot have this tenderness. Even though we all have different degrees of stoniness, we don’t worry about what sin is or isn’t.
Upon accepting God’s Plan of Salvation, our regenerated mind has changed us so that our stony, cold heart is now a warm heart. Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal requickening in us that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
In fact, M’Culloch said that a heart of flesh is 180 degrees from a stony heart. The stone is now flesh. It is now a living organ
Resource
God can now work with it.
Wanting to Follow God’s Will
“With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!” (Ps. 119: 10 ESV)
Once we gain salvation, we want to obey God’s laws and commandments.
Think of it another way. Our heart has to thaw so that we are receptive to salvation. It does begin within us.
Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
Glossary
Spurgeon wrote, “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.”
Resource
Changing from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh isn’t done accidentally. In other words, there is never going to be an, “Oops. That heart shouldn’t have changed.”
We are never going to change our stony hearts to hearts of flesh by doing random acts of kindness.
It is only through God’s grace do our stony hearts become hearts of flesh. It can only be done through salvation and God’s work through the new covenant.
Glossary
What we want is to follow God’s Will. We begin to fear the consequences when we we must battle God.
Our hearts become more sensible. It starts our wanting to follow God’s Will because it has seen why that is important. We realize the priority we should put on divine things.
Feeling It When We Don’t Follow God’s Will
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (I Jn. 1: 8-10 ESV)
A heart of flesh convicts us when we do sin.
There are going to be times when we don’t follow God’s laws and commandments.
We do the exact opposite of His Will for our lives. Since our hearts are no longer stony, we know when we have sinned. It means something to us.
With a heart of flesh, we grieve when we do sin. We grieve knowing that we still have the capacity to sin.
We know that we want to imitate God. We see His goodness and mercy, and we want that in us.
Glossary
Making the Connections
The sermons I read all said that our heart of flesh comes after conversion. I am not totally convinced of that.
If we don’t at least have some element of it, how are we ever saved?
With a heart of stone, we would never ask Jesus to be our Savior because we would never see the need to do so.
I see the heart of flesh and conversion being a chicken and egg sort of thing. It is really hard to definitively say which cones first.
How Do We Apply This?
All we know is we need to admit that mankind was separated from God after the original sin, making us sinners; believe Jesus paid the penalty for those sins to become our Savior and Redeemer; confess God as Sovereign God; and demonstrate that commitment by submitting to living our lives following His laws and commandments confessing God as Sovereign Lord.
We need to ABCD if we haven’t already.
Father God. We want our hearts of stone to be changed to a heart of flesh. That means You are working on our hearts, making them more like Yours. Help us to keep Your laws and commandments and live for You. Amen.
What do you think?
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