And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
These words sit inside a promise God makes to Israel, a nation scattered and beaten: He will bring them home and change them from the inside. Two questions follow — when does this happen, and what is a "heart of stone"?
Israel came home from exile in Babylon, and many read that return as the fulfilment. Commentators point out that the details of the passage rule it out.
But there is a further and clearer proof that it has not yet been fulfilled... Was the Jew — let alone all Israel — cleansed from all his filth then? The book of Malachi tells a different story, and the Lord Himself proved it when He came in person. What is promised here, when it is fulfilled, is nothing less than the new birth of the Jewish people. God will give them a new heart and a new spirit, take away the heart of stone, and give a heart of flesh. He will put His Spirit within them, and cause that they shall walk in holy obedience, they His people, and He their God.
The image is not random. God had already given Israel His law carved into stone tablets.
In their hearts, the people of Israel were much like the stone the law was written on. It fits that God wrote the law on tablets of stone. You can smash a stone tablet, but you cannot stretch it or bend it like rubber... Israel proved itself to have a heart of stone. There was no surface left to write on. So in this book the Lord says, in effect, "I am going to make Israel new. I am going to work by My Spirit, so that they will be able to receive what I will write in a coming day."
Commentators insist this promise is not an improvement of what is already there.
The change Ezekiel predicts goes right down to the foundation. It gives a person a new heart and a new spirit. Then he wants what is good, and he walks in obedience. Verse 27 shows this. No wonder the Lord Jesus called it a new birth. It does not adjust the nature a person already has. It gives a nature that is completely new. The new heart is "given." The new spirit is "put within you." It is to start again from the very first.
The verse names two steps, and their order matters.
In Ezekiel 36, the first step is the removal of the stony heart, which is replaced by a heart of flesh. It is that which is impressionable and on which the Spirit of God writes.
But the heart God gives is not passive.
The heart of giving your life to God is that it must be willing... that surrender must come from the heart, or it is not surrender at all... "And I will give you a new heart," says the Lord. But the new heart He gives is a heart that freely chooses to serve its Master.
Read the chapter and count the promises. God also gives His reason for making them.
Did you notice in that passage in Ezekiel, how God says, "I will," "I will"? It is God speaking of what He will do of Himself and for Himself. It goes with a new covenant. God is no longer demanding what people ought to be for Him. He is saying what He will do for them Himself, and for His own glory.
Two lines in the chapter say why God acts.
But though the Lord could do no more for Israel, He can still do the wonderful work of turning their hearts to Himself, for His own sake... "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy name." (v. 22.) "It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord God; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel." (v. 32.)
Verse 26 gives a new spirit; verse 27 gives another gift, and the difference is easy to miss.
Verse 27 speaks of "My Spirit" which is to be put within born-again Israel in that day. Some Bibles print it without a capital letter, but it should have one. It means the Spirit of God, and it is different from "a new spirit" in the verse before.
If the promise is Israel's, the condition it addresses is not theirs alone.
The law proved that they were beyond correction. In the same way we learn that "nothing good dwells in me (us)" and that "sin dwells within me (us)" (Rom. 7:17, 20). Our hearts, then, are not less stony than theirs. God must act before a heart can take an impression. This He has done in new birth.
- Stone diagnosed. The law was written on stone because Israel's heart was stone — unbending, and offering nothing for God to write on.
- Stone removed. The first move is removal, not repair; a heart of flesh is one that can take an impression.
- Spirit given. Verse 26's "new spirit" and verse 27's "My Spirit" are two gifts, not one; only with both does obedience follow.
- Grace sovereign. Every promise in the chapter is "I will," and God states the reason: His own name, not their deserving.
- Still future. Commentators say the return from exile fell far short. This is the new birth of a nation still to come — and the same stony heart, and the same cure, apply to every person now.
And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and keep mine ordinances, and ye shall do them.
This promise closes a chain of "I will" statements. God cleanses, gives a new heart, then puts His own Spirit inside His people. Who is it for? When does it happen? And how does God make obedience instead of demanding it?
Commentators say this promise is still future. It describes far more than the return from Babylon.
Here, when it is fulfilled, we have no less a blessing promised than the new birth of the Jewish people. God will give them a new heart and a new spirit, take away the heart of stone, and give a heart of flesh. He will put His Spirit within them, and make them walk in holy obedience — they His people, and He their God. To claim this has ever yet happened is the grossest exaggeration.
The chapter gives the reason. It is not that Israel improved. It is the honour of God's own name, and the work is His to do.
The Lord could do no more for Israel. Yet for His own sake He can still do the wonderful work of turning their hearts to Himself. And this will happen. He says, "I do not do this for your sakes, house of Israel, but for My holy name's sake." "It is not for your sakes that I do this, says the Lord God. Know this: be ashamed and humiliated for your own ways, house of Israel." The Spirit gives life. God alone has life in Himself; He alone can communicate life.
The verse before speaks of cleansing with water. This verse adds the Spirit. Jesus joined the same two when He spoke with Nicodemus, a respected teacher in Israel, and expected him to know where they came from.
As a picture, water stands quite simply for moral cleansing, as we find it in Ezekiel 36. The Lord Jesus pointed back to this scripture when He spoke to Nicodemus in John 3. Nicodemus asked, "How can these things be?" The Lord answered, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?" He should have known them. They were right there in Ezekiel 36, which mentions both the "water" and "My Spirit."
The phrase "cause you to walk in my statutes" turns God's earlier dealings with Israel around completely.
It is important to notice also the entire change as to the law, when God shall set up the millennial kingdom. Under the law God commanded and required everything. In the kingdom of God He produces everything by the new nature and the Spirit. Even repentance comes only after He gives them new birth in the land.
The new covenant promise draws the same contrast. God's laws move from stone to the inside of a person.
The first blessing named here is that the Lord gives His laws into the mind, and also writes them on the heart. This stands in sharp contrast with the first covenant, which was written on stones… The laws stood outside the Israelite. They were not written on his heart.
The gift is not an end in itself. The verse ties it to something you can see: keeping and doing.
Because of this there will be spiritual life in Israel. That life will show itself in active obedience to God's will. As God directs, so they will do… We shall see, however, that the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost has a fulness and permanence that Old Testament times barely pictured.
The promise itself belongs to Israel's future. Yet writers apply its principle to believers today.
In Ezekiel 36:27, along with the heart of flesh, He says, "I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My ways." We have the Spirit now as the Spirit of His Son, sent into our hearts crying, "Abba, Father." He is also the bond that unites us with Christ in glory, and with one another. And along the way, the righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in us who walk not according to flesh but according to the Spirit.
One writer draws a sharp line between the Spirit poured out and the Spirit living inside believers.
We must tell two things apart. One is the pouring out of God's Spirit, mighty and gracious an effect of divine power as it is. The other is the Holy Spirit Himself sent down to live in believers… God will, no doubt, dwell among His people. But that will be blessing under His rule — a very different thing indeed.
- Cause. God acts for His holy name's sake, not because Israel deserves it. He says, "It is not for your sakes that I do this."
- Gift. He does not repair the old heart; He removes the stone, gives a heart of flesh, and puts His own Spirit inside.
- Reach. Jesus used the same water-and-Spirit words with Nicodemus. Israel is not the only one who needs new birth.
- Result. The law once commanded from outside; now God produces obedience from within — even the repentance comes after the new birth.
- Timing. Commentators hold that the promise is still future for Israel. Since Pentecost, believers already have the Spirit living in them — a fulness the Old Testament barely pictured.