It’s so easy for us to struggle with feeling we aren’t good enough. We aren’t OK on the inside. If anyone really knew us, we think. In response, our culture tries to tell us: Don’t put yourself down! Think well of yourself! And that message is fine, in its place.
But the truth is this: if we’re separated from God, in the deepest part of our being we’re really not OK. The sad truth is that we’re all born into the world with hearts in rebellion against God. We’re sinful. We’re self-seeking. We set ourselves up as our own god.
God loves us, yes, but our hearts are not OK. You can tell that by just glancing at today’s news headlines on your phone. Humanity is a mess. Something is dreadfully wrong on the inside, which creates not only the problems we see in the world around us, but the messes, sometimes tragic, we and those we know make in our own lives. No amount of societal change and no number of new laws can fix the problem.
For us to be everything God intended us to be, God has to radically change our hearts. But how? Does he try to reform it? Improve it? Rehabilitate it? Not at all. He does something much more far-reaching. He removes it entirely, and gives us a completely new one. In other words, he performs a heart transplant. That’s the third thing he does under his new arrangement with us. God promised this:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)
What is a heart of stone? It’s hard. It’s dead. It’s unresponsive. That’s exactly how God says we were born into the world—dead to him, unresponsive. What is a heart of flesh? It’s alive. It’s beating. It’s warm. It’s responsive.
God promises to take out our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh—a heart that is alive and responsive to him.
God isn’t talking metaphorically here. He’s not talking symbolically. He’s talking literally. He’s talking about reality. When we place our faith in Christ, God does a genuine miracle inside us. He removes that dead inner being from us, and gives us a new, living inner being, one that is on his side, in complete sync with him.
I remember clearly how I experienced this when I came to faith in Christ. All of a sudden, things were genuinely different. I had a peace and a joy I’d never had before. I cared about people in a way I never really had before. For the first time, overnight, the Bible started to make sense to me. And I really could recognize the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Something drastic had happened inside me. If someone comes to Christ at an earlier age, that’s often not apparent. But I think my experience is typical of people who come to Christ as adults. They know something has changed. Because it has.
So how, exactly, does God perform this heart transplant? You can go online and see how a heart surgeon performs a physical heart transplant. How does God perform a spiritual one?
Jesus explained to a man named Nicodemus that the Holy Spirit actually births a new human spirit within us. He said that to be part of God’s kingdom, we have to be born again, or born from above.
Jesus isn’t talking about turning over a new leaf, or experiencing something in life that “feels like I’ve been born again.” I so fell in love with a girl the summer after my senior year in high school that I probably could have said, “I feel like I’ve been born again!” But I hadn’t been. I was still the same, just filled with a lot of “in love” hormones that summer.
No, Jesus is talking about an actual birth in the spiritual realm. The Holy Spirit gives birth to a new human spirit inside us. That’s why over and over the New Testament writers speak of us as being “born of God.” We are—literally! God gave birth to our new spirit (our heart of flesh). At the same time, he removed our old spirit (our heart of stone).
The Apostle Paul refers to these as the “old man” and the “new man.” Our old man, he says, is gone. It no longer exists. We are the new man now. That’s why Paul says about us:
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. Now, all things are from God … (2 Corinthians 5:17-18)
The person we were before, with a sinful heart opposed to God, has ceased to exist. We are literally a brand new person.
God had to do a heart transplant on us to accomplish his plan. We couldn’t be genuinely connected to God with our old, nasty heart. Which is why God did away with it.
The new heart God birthed within us is the opposite of the old one. It has God’s own nature. “Flesh gives birth to flesh,” Jesus said to Nicodemus. That is, humans give birth to humans. What we give birth to is like us. “Spirit gives birth to spirit,” Jesus continued. That is, the Holy Spirit gives birth to our new spirit. Which means our new spirit is like him. It has God’s nature. The Apostle Peter says we are “sharers in the very nature of God.” Paul says that our new man is “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
(As I write, I sit here, amazed. I share God’s nature! You do, too!)
It’s critical to understand that, having been born of the Spirit, God doesn’t just choose to see us as righteous (though we really aren’t, allegedly). No, God sees us as righteous because we really are righteous. He birthed us that way. Our hearts wouldn’t have been ready to become one with God if he simply declared us righteous. He had to make us righteous. And that’s what God says he did. Paul writes,
He [God the Father] made him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
He says,
For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:19)
We were actually made to be sinners. Likewise, we were actually made to be righteous. The Apostle John wrote:
The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as [Jesus] is righteous. (1 John 3:7)
John doesn’t say that God just sees us as righteous. He says we are righteous, just as Jesus is righteous. We can’t get any more righteous than that!
God had to make us righteous to accomplish his purpose for our lives. We are righteous not as a result of our behavior, but as a result of our new birth. The Spirit gave birth to our new spirit. He could only give birth to someone with his own nature. That’s us!
People always struggle with their self-image. Am I good enough? Am I OK? Will anyone really like me as I am?
The new birth is God’s complete solution to the issue of self-image. God says to you (and me), “You’re totally OK. I gave birth to you, and I don’t give birth to anything that isn’t perfect.” Our behavior isn’t yet perfect, but our new heart is exactly the way God wants it to be. You’re not just accepted by God (although you are). You are now totally acceptable to God. In the depths of your being, you’re completely OK. There isn’t anything you need to do to make yourself more acceptable to him. He’s already done it all for you.
Ultimately, what God says about us is the only thing that matters. And—I can say this from experience—what he says actually can become how we think about ourselves. That means we can be at complete peace with who we are. We can like ourselves, just as we are. We don’t have to try to make ourselves into someone good. We are someone good. Very good. God birthed us that way. Which is fantastic news.
Here are some of the places in the Bible where God explains what we just discussed:
How we are born into the world: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” (Ephesians 2:1-3)
Also: “… remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” (Ephesians 2:12)
Also, “So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart …” (Ephesians 4:17-18)
God births a new spirit within us: “Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’” (John 3:5-6)
We are actually born of God: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13)
Also, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.” (1 John 2:29)
Also, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” (1 John 4:7)
Also, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.” (1 John 5:1)
Also, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” (1 John 5:4)
Our old man is gone: “… knowing this, that our old self [literally, man] was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin …” (Romans 6:6)
Our new man is holy and righteous: “… the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:24, ESV)
We are sharers in God’s own nature: “For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” (2 Peter 1:4)
God has perfected us for all time: “For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” (Hebrews 10:14)
We are completely accepted by God: “Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God.” (Romans 15:7)
