Covenant Contrasts Part 15
(The old covenant verses that you will read in this series are true. They are God-breathed Scripture. But their time is over. They have no bearing on our new covenant lives with Jesus. Yet they are taught Sunday after Sunday as words to live by. They fill our Christian books, devotionals, and sermons. This mixed covenant message leads to confusion, frustration, angst, and a huge lack of confidence in our life with Jesus. And this way of teaching must come to an end. May you grow in the knowledge and grace of the new covenant as we study these covenant contrasts together.)
Anther contrast between the old and new covenants is a change of heart. Yes, a real change of heart. Under the old covenant, that heart was an entity that needed to be wrangled and tamed and renewed. “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). This describes the old covenant heart.
Unfortunately, I have heard this passage preached as a description of the believer’s heart more times than I can count. I say “unfortunately” because I don’t believe this is the heart that beats inside you and me. We have a clean heart. We have a new heart.
Watchman Nee reminds us 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.” And a new heart is what we received when we believed the gospel message of Jesus Christ.
This new heart is the promise of the new covenant found in the prophets. “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). The new heart is a clean heart. Peter reported to the church in Jerusalem regarding the gospel coming to the Gentiles, “And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:8-9).
And finally, the new heart is an obedient heart. “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed” (Romans 6:17).
As with all of our new covenant promises, embracing your new heart is an act of faith. Your new heart has a natural bent toward God. You may not feel it all the time. In fact, there may be times where you think, “This feels a lot like my old crummy heart.” But we believe BY FAITH in the gifts of God that we cannot see with our eyes or feel with our skin. And one of these gifts is a new clean obedient heart.