The New Heart and New Spirit (Ezekiel 36)

Question 4131

The promise of a new heart and new spirit in Ezekiel 36:26-27 is one of the clearest statements in the whole Old Testament of the inward work God intends to do in his people by his Spirit. The LORD declares, I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Here is no mere reform of behaviour from the outside, but a remaking of the inner person, a replacement of the hard, unresponsive heart with one that is soft and alive toward God.

To read the promise of a new heart and new spirit rightly we have to notice both who is first addressed and what principle it reveals. The words were spoken to the house of Israel concerning their future restoration, yet they unfold a truth about the Spirit work of renewal that runs through the whole of Scripture and reaches every believer who is brought from death to life.

The setting of the new heart and new spirit

Ezekiel prophesied to a people in exile, carried off to Babylon under the judgement of God for their long rebellion. The surrounding chapters speak of the LORD regathering Israel from the nations, bringing them back to their own land, cleansing them from their idols, and putting his Spirit within them so that they will keep his ways. The promise of inward renewal is set within this larger pledge of national restoration. God will not only bring the people home in body, he will change them in heart, so that the cycle of rebellion and judgement that marked their history will be broken at its root. The distinct programme God is working out for the nation is taken up in our answer on the difference between Israel and the Church.

This means the fullest and most literal fulfilment of the promise looks forward to the day when the nation will turn to its Messiah and be born anew as a people. What the prophets foresaw was a coming time when Israel, so long hard of heart, would receive the heart of flesh and the indwelling Spirit. That day still lies ahead, bound up with the return of the Lord Jesus and the establishing of his kingdom. Yet the principle at work in the promise is not held back until then, for the same Spirit who will renew the nation already renews every individual who comes to Christ.

From a heart of stone to a heart of flesh

The heart in Hebrew thought is not the seat of sentiment but the centre of the whole inner life, the place of thought, will and desire. A heart of stone is a fitting image for the condition of fallen man toward God, unfeeling, unyielding, unable of itself to respond to him. The promise is that God will take that stone away and give a heart of flesh, warm, living and responsive. This is the work the New Testament calls regeneration, the new birth, being made alive together with Christ. It is not that the sinner improves himself, for a stone cannot soften itself, but that God performs a creative act within, giving life where there was none. The Spirit role in this new birth is set out further in our answer on the Spirits role in regeneration.

It is worth being careful here, because this passage has sometimes been pressed into a system that makes the new heart the cause of faith rather than its accompaniment. Scripture holds out the gift of the new heart to those who turn to God, and the call to repent and the promise of renewal stand side by side in Ezekiel himself, who in the next chapter pleads, cast away all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 18:31). The same God who commands the people to make themselves a new heart promises in chapter 36 to give it, and the two are not in conflict. God works the renewal, and he works it in those who respond to his call rather than apart from any response at all.

The new covenant and the indwelling Spirit

The heart of the promise is the line, I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. Under the old arrangement the law was written on tablets of stone and stood over the people as an external demand they could not meet. The promise of a new heart and new spirit belongs to what Scripture calls the new covenant, where the law is written not on stone but on the heart, and where God himself supplies from within the obedience he requires. Jeremiah voices the same hope when he records the LORD saying, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). The Spirit does not only point to the right path, he inclines and enables the renewed heart to walk in it.

Believers in this present age share in these new covenant blessings through the Lord Jesus, who is the mediator of the new covenant in his blood. Paul tells the Corinthians that they are a letter from Christ, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts (2 Corinthians 3:3). The church is not the nation of Israel, and the national promises to Israel await their own fulfilment, yet the principle of inward transformation by the indwelling Spirit is the common possession of all who belong to Christ. How the work of the Spirit differs between the old era and the new is explored in our answer on the Spirits work in the Old Testament and the New.

Walking in the newness the Spirit gives

The purpose clause in the promise matters. God gives the new heart and puts his Spirit within so that the renewed person will walk in his ways and be careful to obey. The new birth is not an end in itself but the beginning of a new way of living, and the same Spirit who gives life also leads and empowers the daily obedience that flows from it. A believer who has received the heart of flesh finds, sometimes to his own surprise, that he now wants what he once resisted, that the commands of God have become a delight rather than a burden, even while the old nature still wars against the new.

This guards us against two mistakes. It saves us from imagining that the Christian life is a matter of trying harder in our own strength, for the obedience God seeks is the fruit of the Spirit he has put within. And it saves us from a false passivity that waits to be carried along without effort, for the Spirit causes us to walk, which is something the renewed person actively does. The God who gives the new heart also gives the strength to use it.

Why the promise still stands

The promise also carries a deep assurance, because it rests entirely on what God undertakes to do. Notice how many times the LORD says I will. I will give you a new heart. I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone. I will put my Spirit within you. The renewal is the work of God from beginning to end, and that is the ground of its certainty. A resolve to do better that depends on the strength of the one resolving is fragile, but a heart that God himself has made new is secure, because the One who made it is faithful to finish what he begins.

This is why the truth of the new heart is so closely bound to the security of the believer. The same Spirit who is put within is the guarantee of all that is to come, and the inward renewal God works is not a passing improvement that may lapse but the beginning of a life he intends to bring to completion. The believer rests not on the strength of his own changed heart but on the faithfulness of the God who changed it.

So, now what?

If you are in Christ, take stock of the wonder of what God has done. He has not asked you to manufacture a softer heart out of the stone you were born with. He has done the creative work himself, removing the stone and giving flesh, and putting his own Spirit within you. The desires after God that you now feel, faint though they may sometimes seem, are the evidence of his work, and they are a pledge that he will complete what he has begun.

If your heart still feels like stone toward God, the promise of Ezekiel is also an invitation. The God who gives the new heart calls you to turn to him and receive it, and he has never turned away one who came. Do not wait to feel that you have softened yourself first. Come as you are, ask him for the heart of flesh he has promised, and trust the Lord Jesus who is able to make all things new.

And for the nation of Israel, the promise stands unbroken. The God who pledged to put his Spirit within his ancient people will keep his word in the day appointed, and the same faithfulness that secures their future secures the new heart he has given you.

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26