What does the Bible mean when it says that we will receive a new heart?

Having read it, we note that the passage speaks of what the Lord will do when at last He gathers Israel His people out of the lands of their dispersion and brings them into their own land. Then He will sprinkle "clean water" upon them and they shall be clean. All their filthiness and their love of idols shall be gone, for He will thereby have put "a new heart" and "a new spirit" within them. The cleansing effected by the water will be of so radical and fundamental a nature that their whole nature will be different. Once this mighty work has taken place they will look back on that which formerly they were with disgust — "Then shall ye remember your own ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations" (verse 31). A moral renovation will have been accomplished.

By discarding bad habits and acquiring good habits, men sometimes achieve a considerable measure of that kind of moral alteration which lies on the surface. The moral renovation which Ezekiel predicts goes down to the deepest foundation; putting a man into possession of a new heart and a new spirit, so that instinctively he desires what is good and walks in obedience. Verse 27 shows this. No wonder then that the Lord Jesus spoke of it as a new birth; inasmuch as it is not the altering of a nature already existing, but the impartation of a nature which is entirely new. The new heart is "given." The new spirit is "put within you." It is to start anew from the very first.

Verse 27 speaks of "My Spirit" which is to be put within born-again Israel in that day. Though not printed with a capital in our Bibles, it clearly should be, as it refers to the Spirit of God, and hence is to be distinguished from "a new spirit" in the previous verse. So the prophet clearly shows us that only when Israel is born again and receives the Spirit of God will they see and enter into the kingdom of God.

If you turn to Ezekiel 36 verse 26, you will find that speaking of how He will presently gather Israel to their own land under the new covenant, God says, "A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh." The children of Israel, of whom we read so much in the Old Testament, were, as to their hearts, terribly like the stone on which the law was written. There was something very appropriate in the law being written on tables of stone, for though you can smash tables of stone, you cannot stretch them or twist them as though they were rubber. The law was written upon tables of stone and was as inflexible as the substance on which it was written. Alas! Israel proved itself to have a heart of stone. The material was not there upon which anything could be written, and so in this book of Ezekiel the Lord as it were says, "I am going to recreate Israel, I am going to work by My Spirit so that they shall be capable of receiving what I am going to write in a coming day." Consequently He is going to have some new material on which to write.

The one whom the Lord Jesus cleanses is changed, not only on the outside, but also on the inside, when he is born again. The Lord gives him a clean heart, a new nature that hates and loathes and abhors sin, and is never happy if the one in whom that nature dwells has fallen into sin, until he is restored.

In Jeremiah's beautiful prophecy there is no "if." Rather the characteristic words are, "I will." Israel and Judah come into the picture it is true, but as passive recipients and not as important actors. The new covenant will come to pass when God acts in the sovereignty of His mercy upon the righteous basis laid down in the sacrifice of Christ of which Isaiah has spoken. God will so put His law within them and so write it on their hearts that it will be as natural for them to keep it, as formerly it was natural for them to break it. They will come into the light of the knowledge of God with all their sins forgiven and the very remembrance of them dismissed. And all by an act of God's sovereign mercy, as is made so plain in the closing verses of Romans 11.

Next, I would refer to the passage in 2 Corinthians, ch. 3, and I wonder whether we have clearly seen the wonderful change that has come about in connection with what is brought out there. It is the promise of Jeremiah 31. "I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts". Before we received the gospel we had to charge ourselves with the fact that those things which are pleasing to God we had not done, and those things which are displeasing to God we had done. In sins of omission and sins of commission we had flouted the holy law of God, and His will had not been done in us and through us. Then we receive the blessed truth that on the ground of this one sacrifice our sins and iniquities are remembered no more. Would any of us think that God had given up the fact that He must be obeyed? Would anyone believe that God has given up looking, and in His heart yearning, for a response and for fruit from those people upon whom His love has been set? A thousand times NO. But God has taken a new way to bring it about, by the work of Christ which is the basis of it, and by the gift of the Spirit consequent upon the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of bringing this about, or instead of establishing a covenant directed to bring this about, by writing His will in the book of the covenant in ink or in the tables of stone by His own finger, God has given us in our inward parts, a new nature, which empowered by the Spirit of God, delights to do His will.

Here you have the new covenant, and there are two characteristics. The old covenant was upon the condition of obedience. What is the new covenant upon condition of? No condition on their part whatever. Israel will have no glory in connection with the new covenant, but there are two features of it that go together. First, it is the writing of God's law in the heart, instead of writing it upon the tables of stone. That is new birth, as you have it in Ezekiel; as our Lord said to Nicodemus, "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?" — the need of regeneration, of a new heart, which delights in the law of God, had been spoken of already.

But there is a further and clearer proof that it has not yet been fulfilled, for it is added, "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean, from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you: and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do [them]. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God." (Ver. 25-28) Was the Jew, not to speak of Israel, then cleansed from all his filthiness? Malachi tells a different tale; and so in fact did our Lord prove in person. Here when 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 cause that they shall walk in holy obedience, they His people, and He their God. It is the grossest exaggeration to assume that this has ever yet been accomplished, though in addition to this is an allusion to these verses in our Lord's words in John 3:5: most real, yet wholly distinct from its predicted application.

The sprinkling of clean water upon the people is symbolic of the new birth. This is followed by what emphasizes it, viz: a new heart and a new spirit granted to them.

Putting His laws into their minds and writing them in their hearts is a miracle of mercy. Does it not plainly speak of the new birth, a complete changing of the heart in true repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Nothing short of this will do for Israel. and it is just as necessary for every soul of man today. "Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God" (John 3:3). It is the goodness of God that leads to repentance (Rom. 2:4), and it is by the Word of God that new life is given (1 Pet. 1:23).

Though the covenant is linked up with the gospel in the second epistle, the new birth is taken for granted, for apart from a work of grace in a man, he is incapable of taking in anything of God. In Ezekiel 36, the first step is the removal of the stony heart which is replaced by a heart of flesh. • It is that that is impressionable and upon which the Spirit of God writes.