Make You a New Heart

Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? EZEKIEL 18:31

Of all Finney’s sermons, the one that best explains his theology is Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts, which is in the Ochorus library. It was one of his earliest printed sermons, and it set out plainly the ideas that made him both a great evangelist and a controversial theologian. Its text is the command of Ezekiel: make you a new heart. Its question is simple. If God commands the sinner to make a new heart, can the sinner do it? Finney’s answer was yes. The sermon’s last word on the matter is unforgettable: “God commands you to do it, expects you to do it, and if it ever is done, you must do it.”

What a new heart is not

Finney began by clearing away what he thought were false ideas. A new heart is not a new physical organ, and not a new soul. It is not the creation of new faculties, or a change in the substance of the mind. We already have all the powers of moral agency, he said; we are just as God made us. Some people, he complained, speak of a change of heart as something miraculous, for which the sinner must wait passively in the use of means, as he would wait for a surgical operation or an electric shock.

If regeneration were the implanting of a new nature, he argued, holiness would be a mere appetite with no moral value, backsliding would be impossible, and the sinner would have an excuse: he could not help his heart, and must simply wait.

What a new heart is

Positively, Finney defined the heart as the deep governing choice of the soul — that preference which lies behind all its other choices and gives them their character. The sinner’s heart is a settled choice of his own interest above God’s glory. The new heart is the reverse: “a change from selfishness to benevolence,” from making oneself the supreme end to making God and His kingdom the supreme end. It is a change in the choice of a ruler, like a rebel coming back to his king, or a man changing sides in politics.

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well. ISAIAH 1:16–17

Such a change is something a person can do, because it is a choice. And it is something he must do, because God commands it. Finney drove the point home with an illustration. Suppose God commanded a man to fly without wings, and then threatened to punish him for not flying. The man could never blame himself; he would throw the command back in his Maker’s face. So if God commands sinners to make a new heart, that is the strongest possible evidence that they are able to do it. A man’s obligation, Finney held, is only commensurate with his ability.

God, the preacher, the truth and the sinner

How then does this fit with the many passages that say God gives the new heart? Finney answered that Scripture ascribes conversion to four agencies — God, the truth, the preacher and the sinner — and all are true at once. He told of a man walking in a daze towards the brink of Niagara Falls. Someone shouts, Stop! He turns just in time. Afterwards he says, That man saved my life. Then, That word saved my life. Then, If I had not turned I would be dead. Then, O the mercy of God! Each is true. So the Spirit, through the preacher, uses the truth to persuade the sinner, and the sinner turns. The Spirit is the efficient cause; the sinner is the one who acts.

Turn ye unto me, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will turn unto you. ZECHARIAH 1:3

On this view, the sinner depends on the Spirit — but not for power. “The Spirit’s agency is not needed to give him power, but to overcome his voluntary obstinacy,” Finney wrote. Sinners are so unwilling that without the Spirit none would ever turn. But they are not unable.

What is right in this

It is important to see what Finney got right. He had sat under preaching that told sinners, in effect, that they could not repent until God changed their nature. That turned the gospel invitation into a riddle and gave the unconverted a comfortable excuse. Scripture never speaks that way. It commands, pleads and warns, and treats the refusal to come as guilt, not misfortune.

And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. JOHN 5:40

Jesus did not say ye cannot come, but ye will not. The sinner’s problem is a perverse will, not a lack of equipment. Finney was right that sinners must be told to repent now, that they are responsible for refusing, and that no one should sit under the gospel waiting to be zapped.

Where it goes wrong

But Finney went a long step further than Scripture, and the church’s best teachers have said so.

He treated a command as proof of ability. Yet Scripture often commands what fallen people cannot, of themselves, perform, in order to show them their need. The same prophet who said make you a new heart also recorded God’s promise to do it: A new heart also will I give you (Ezekiel 36:26). The command shows what is required; the promise shows who supplies it. Augustine answered Pelagius on exactly this point fifteen centuries earlier.

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him. JOHN 6:44

He also made the Spirit’s work in conversion essentially persuasion — moral influence by the truth, however powerful. But Scripture describes the natural man as dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), unable to receive the things of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14), and with a mind that is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be (Romans 8:7). The new birth is not only a change of mind persuaded from outside; it is a work of God within, as much a creation as the first.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

Jonathan Edwards had already given the church a better way through this problem. He distinguished natural ability, which sinners have — they possess understanding, will and every faculty needed to obey — from moral ability, which they lack, because their hearts are set against God. That distinction lets the preacher press the command with full force, as Finney did, while still honouring God as the One who gives the new heart. Finney borrowed the first half and discarded the second.

The practical danger is subtle. If conversion is simply a change of choice that the sinner can make at will, preaching becomes the art of securing that choice, and a decision is easily mistaken for a new birth.

Hold both

The right response is not to preach less urgently than Finney did, but to preach with fuller hope. Call sinners to repent now, as he did. Tell them they have no excuse. And pray for them, because only God can give what He commands.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask whether you have ever hidden behind the thought that you could not change, when the truth was that you would not.

2. Read Ezekiel 18:31 and 36:26 side by side. Thank God for both the command and the promise.

3. If you are not yet a Christian, do not wait for a feeling. Turn to Christ today, and ask Him to give you the new heart He commands.

4. If you share the gospel, speak with Finney’s directness — but pray as one who knows that only God gives life.

5. Consider whether your church ever treats a decision as if it were the same as the new birth. How could you guard against that?

A PRAYER

Lord God, You command me to make a new heart, and You promise to give me one. I have no excuse for my stubbornness, and no power without Your grace.

Where I have said I cannot, when the truth was that I would not, forgive me.

Take away the heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh. Put Your Spirit within me and cause me to walk in Your ways.

And make me urgent with others, calling them to turn, and praying that You would turn them. Amen.