When you believed the gospel message of Jesus Christ … you received a NEW HEART.
Just like your new creation, your new heart is not a remodeled or improved or cleaned up old heart. As Watchman Nee writes in The Normal Christian Life, “The heart, God says, is ‘desperately sick’, and He must do something more fundamental than cleanse it; He must give us a new one.”
You have a new heart that is soft toward God; a new heart with God’s ways written upon it. Never let a minister, preacher, or teacher tell you that you have a “deceitful and desperately wicked heart” (Jer 17:9). It is not true. That wicked old heart is long gone. In fact, your new heart is literally the repository, the fuel, the energy, for your righteous living.
“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26.
“I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Jeremiah 31:33
“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” Luke 6:45