While
I do not know what to make of these stories, there is a kind of
organ-transplant that does promise to give us the thoughts, feelings, and
desires of the one who gives it to us. In the Old Testament part of the Bible
God spoke to his people about these things when he said,
“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. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in
my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”[1]
At
the time God declared this, his people had a strong propensity to run after
idols, false gods, manmade religions, kind of like we see happening all around
us today. God said it was a problem with their heart, and they would need a
transplant.
However,
where would they get a heart from that did not have that propensity to go
astray, to do its own thing, to be self-centered and foolish, to fall in love
with false gods and man-centered religiosity? After all, everyone had the same
kind of heart.
God
said that he would give them a new heart, and he would put a new spirit in them.
He would personally remove their old heart, which was like a cold chunk of
rock, and he would put a living heart in them. He would even put his own Spirit
within his people so that they would have the desire and ability to walk in his
will and his ways.
By
the time we travel through the history of Jesus’ birth, his life, his ministry,
his death, his resurrection, and his ascension into heaven, we see that God had
accomplished the very thing he had earlier promised through his prophet. He had
fully satisfied all his own judgment against the sins of his hard-hearted
children, he had redeemed them by the blood of the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ,
and within a week and a half of Jesus’ triumphant ascension back into heaven,
he had poured out his Holy Spirit on his family, the church.
Once
people became this body of Christ, this household of God through their
receiving of the gospel, God described the fulfillment of his promise in this
way. He reminded them that they had been taught:
…to put off your old self,
which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful
desires, and to be renewed in the
spirit of your minds, and
to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness
and holiness.[2]
The
old, rocky heart was removed when the old self was “put off." The person was prepared for the new heart as they
were “renewed in the spirit of their minds."
And, they were given their new heart as they “put on the new self." And, this new self was able to walk in
God’s will and his ways because it was, “created
after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
The
thing that really worked into my new heart this morning is the way God has
given us his own Holy Spirit, just as he said he would do, and it is by this
personal presence of God in our lives that “we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”[3] Our old heart cried out like a self-centered, hard-hearted little
street rat, wanting the whole world to dance to our tune. Our new heart,
surrounded by the arms of Jesus in the person of the Holy Spirit, cries out
like happy little children who delight ourselves in our Father, and so receive
the greatest desires of our hearts.[4]
Along with some encouragement from my church family who
shared the work of God in their lives, this is the gist of how God ministered
to me this morning. The world most certainly conspires to lead us back into
hard-hearted self-dependence. However, God’s Holy Spirit is at work in us to
teach us, remind us, and testify to us, that we are now the children of God.[5]
That is what the Holy Spirit did for me this morning. I pray that the fullness of his ministry will
bless you with whatever you need from the throne of grace today,[6] both for your good, and for his glory.
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~
Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
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