A New Heart

^“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26 NIV2011). Ezekiel prophesied of a time when that heart of stone—that hardened wicked heart—would be replaced. God would replace it with a new soft, pliable heart. Paul says this is the believer. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NASB).

We could almost say that God took out the heart of rock and replaced it with a heart of gold. Therefore, we must come to the conclusion that the wicked heart is the unbeliever, and the new heart is the believer. No longer do we say that we have a wicked heart which no one can figure out. We might not yet have our minds renewed and our behavior straightened out, but we have a heart right with God—righteousness.