A New Heart

“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.” — Ezekiel 36:26 (ESV)

Some people get the idea of being forgiven, Spurgeon says, and their problem is something else: they can’t stop sinning. They try to tame their own nature and it won’t be tamed. Their thoughts run off, their desires are wild, their temper flares, and they feel as if they have “a den of wild beasts” inside. Like a stone thrown in the air, they get lifted up by a good sermon and then drop straight back down. If that’s you, he says, then good — because salvation that didn’t deal with this wouldn’t be salvation at all. “We want to be purified as well as pardoned.” Forgiveness without change would be like declaring a leper clean and leaving him to die of the disease.

Jesus came to deal with sin three ways, he explains: its penalty, its power, and, one day, its presence. The penalty is dealt with at the cross. The power can be broken now. And for that, God makes a promise in Ezekiel — notice it’s all “I will”: I will give you a new heart, I will take away the heart of stone. You can’t change your own heart. God knows that. He also knows he can. Spurgeon compares it to standing at the bottom of Niagara Falls and speaking a word that makes the whole river run back up the cliff. That’s the size of the change when God reverses the direction of a human life.

Then a homely picture he borrowed from another preacher. Watch a cat: she washes herself carefully with her paws and tongue. Have you ever seen a pig do that? You can scrub a pig, but it will run straight back to the mud — it’s against its nature to stay clean. “The only way in which you can get a sow to wash itself is to transform it into a cat.” Same with us. You can teach someone good habits and set a good example, but until they get a new nature, holiness feels like swimming upstream. Once God changes the heart, it starts to go the other way naturally. One convert told Spurgeon, “Either all the world is changed, or else I am.” He’d seen it himself — thieves made honest, drunkards sober, liars truthful.

He describes the change in pictures: “The lion of anger shall give place to the lamb of meekness.” Where everything was hard, things become tender. “I cannot make this change,” someone says. Spurgeon’s answer: “Who said you could?” The promise isn’t about what you will do. It’s about what God will do. And if you ask exactly how God will do it, he is blunt again: “What business is that of yours?” The one who made the promise is responsible for keeping it.

Now — what is this actually about? Christianity isn’t a self-improvement plan; it’s God giving you a new heart. Most of us approach our worst habits with willpower: a new rule, a promise, an app, a fresh start on Monday. Sometimes that helps for a while. But Spurgeon is honest that you can’t white-knuckle your way into a different nature. The pig can be hosed down; it’s still a pig.

That isn’t an excuse to give up the fight. It’s a change in where your hope sits. Instead of “I have to become someone else before God will accept me,” it’s “God accepts me in Christ and has promised to make me someone new.” The change may feel slow. But if the heart is new, the direction is new — and a heart God has made soft, he says, he won’t let harden back into stone.

One thing to do this week: pick the one sin you’re most tired of losing to. Instead of only making another promise to yourself, pray Ezekiel 36:26 about it, by name, every day this week: “You said you will give me a new heart. Do it here.” Then watch for small changes in what you actually want, not just what you do.