The New Heart | AdventAI

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Feb 8, 1915

“The New Heart”

“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.” Eze. 36: 26.

Observe how this property of “new” runs through the whole economy of grace. When man first rose upon this world, an attribute of Divinity appeared which was new to the eyes of men and angels. Again: the Saviour was born of a virgin; and he who came forth from a womb where no child had been previously conceived, was sepulchered in a tomb where no man had previously been interred. The infant had a new birthplace, the crucified had a new burial place. Again: Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant, the author of a new testament, the founder of a new faith. Again: the redeemed receive a new name; they sing a new song; their home is not to be in the old, but in the new Jerusalem, where they shall dwell on a new earth, and walk in glory beneath a new heaven. Now it were surely strange, when all things else are new, if they themselves were not to partake of this general renovation. Nor strange only, for such a change is indispensable. A new name without a new nature were an imposture. It were not more an untruth to call a lion a lamb, or the rapacious vulture by the name of the gentle dove, than to give the title of sons of God to the venomous seed of the serpent.

Then, again, unless man received a new nature, how could he sing the new song? The raven, perched on the rock, where she whets her bloody beak, and impatiently watches the dying struggles of some unhappy lamb, cannot tune her croaking voice to the rich, melodious music of a thrush; and, since it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaketh, how could a sinner take up the strain and sing the song of saints? Besides, unless a man were a new creature, he were out of place in the new creation. In circumstances neither adapted to his nature nor fitted to minister to his happiness, a sinner in heaven would find himself as much out of his element as a finny inhabitant of the deep, or a sightless burrower in the soil, beside an eagle soaring in the sky, or surveying her wide domain from the mountain crag.

God Gives “a Heart of Flesh”

He says, “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.”

Near by a stone—a mass of rock that had fallen from the overhanging crag—which had some wild flowers growing in its fissures and on its top the foxglove, with its spike of beautiful but deadly flowers, we once came upon an adder as it lay in ribbon grass, basking on the sunny ground. At our approach the reptile stirred, raised itself, and, raising its venomous head, with eyes like burning coals, it shook its cloven tongue, and, hissing, gave signs of battle. Attacked, it retreated, and making for the gray stone, wormed itself into a hole in its side. Its nest and home were there. And in looking on that shattered rock—fallen from its primeval elevation—with its flowery but fatal charms, the home and nest of the adder, where nothing grew but poisoned beauty and nothing dwelt but a poisoned brood, it seemed to us an emblem of that heart which the text describes as a stone, which experience proves is a habitation of devils, and which the prophet pronounces to be desperately wicked.

A Warm Heart

When faith receives the Saviour, how does the heart warm to Jesus Christ? There is music in his name. “His name is an ointment poured forth.” All the old indifference to his cause, his people, and the interests of his kingdom, has passed away; and now these have the warmest place in a believer’s bosom, and are the object of the strongest and tenderest affections. The only place, alas! that religion has in the hearts of many is a burial place; but the believer can say with Paul, “Christ liveth in me.” Nor is his heart like the cottage of Bethany, favored only with occasional visits. Jesus abides there in the double character of guest and master, its most loving and best loved inmate; and there is a difference as great between that heart as it is and that heart as it was, as between the warm bosom where the infant sleeper slept or smiled in Mary’s arms and the dark, cold sepulchre where weeping followers laid and left the Crucified.

Is there such a heart in you? Do you appreciate Christ’s matchless excellences? Having cast away every sin to embrace him, do you set him above your chiefest joy? Would you leave mother, wife, children, to follow him, with bleeding feet, over life’s roughest path? Rather than part with him, would you part with a thousand worlds? Were he now on earth, would you leave a throne to stoop and tie his shoes? If I might so speak, would you be ready to carry his shoes? Then, indeed, you have got the new, warm heart of flesh.

A Living Heart

The perfection of this life is death. The child of God is dead to sin, but alive to righteousness, alive to Christ, alive to everything which touches his honor, and crown, and kingdom. With Christ living in his heart, the believer feels that now he is not himself, not his own; as another’s, the grand object of his life is to live to Christ.

It is a mark of grace that the believer, in his progress heavenward, grows more and more alive to the claims of Jesus. If you “know the love of Christ,” his is the latest name you will desire to utter; his is the latest thought you will desire to form; upon him you will fix your last look on earth; upon him your first in heaven. When memory is oblivious of all other objects, when all that attracted the natural eye is wrapped in the mists of death, when the tongue cleaves to the roof of our mouth, speech is gone, and the right hand, lying powerless by our side, has lost its cunning, Jesus! then may we remember thee!

If the shadows of death are to be thrown in deepest darkness on the valley, may it be ours to die like that saint, beside whose bed wife and children once stood, weeping over the wreck of faded faculties, and a blank, departed memory. One had asked him, “Father, do you remember me?” and received no answer; and another, and another, but still no answer. And then, all making way for the venerable companion of a long and loving pilgrimage, the tender partner of many a past joy and sorrow, his wife draws near. She bends over him, and as her tears fall thick upon his face, she cries, “Do you not remember me?” A stare, but it is vacant. There is no soul in that filmy eye; and the seal of death lies upon those lips. The sun is down, and life’s brief twilight is darkening fast into a starless night. At this moment, one calm enough to remember how the love of Christ’s spouse is “strong as death,” a love that “many waters cannot quench,” stooped to his ear, and said, “Do you remember Jesus Christ?” Touched as by an electric influence, the heart beat once more to the name of Jesus; the features, fixed in death, relax; the countenance, dark in death, flushes up like the last gleam of day; and, with a smile he replied, “Remember Jesus Christ! He is all my salvation, and all my desire.”