Spiritual Heart Transplants

"The time is coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the old covenant I made with their forefathers ... This is the new covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. ... no longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man his brother, saying 'Know the Lord.' because they will all know me. ... "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." [Jer. 31:31-34]

The problem with the Old Covenant was that it was patently external. It's laws were written on stone and they provided no internal power to live them out. Something far more radical was needed -- a spiritual heart transplant.

John Blanchard in his book The Truth for Life, relates the story of Dr. Christian Barnard, the first surgeon ever to successfully perform a heart transplant, impulsively asking his patient, Dr. Philip Blaiberg, "Would you like to see your old heart?" On a subsequent evening, the men stood in the pathology lab of the Groote Schuur Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa and Dr. Barnard went up to cupboard, took down a glass container and handed it to Dr. Blaiberg. Inside that jar was Blaiberg's old heart. For a moment he stood there in stunned silence -- the first man in history to hold his own heart in his hands. Finally he said, "So this is my old heart that caused me so much trouble." He handed it back, turned away and left it forever.

This is, in essence, what Christ does for us. He gives us a new heart. God has written His laws within us. He has made His people partakers of the Divine Nature [2Pet. 1:4]. "I will be their God" means He gives Himself to us. And "they will be my people" means He takes us unto Himself. When this happens, everything our complex nature can require is found in Him. St. Augustine said "You've made us for yourself and our souls are restless until they find their rest in You." "They will all know me" [v. 34a] ... The Old Covenant was corporately entered into by a nation, including those who did not know God personally [which was the vast majority]. But those who experience the New Covenant by faith in Jesus' blood come one by one as they are born into a relationship with God. It was Jesus himself who defined eternal life by saying "This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent." [Jn. 17:3]

Amen!