God Transforms Our Heart

My wife Marianne has an uncle who was born with a life threatening heart condition that doctors didn’t believe would allow him to live past 2 years old.  At the age of 48 he received a heart transplant.  As a result of someone’s death, Marianne’s uncle’s diseased heart was replaced with a new healthy heart and he is still alive today at the age of 71.  It was a new heart that allowed Marianne’s uncle to avoid death and experience life.

We all have an eternal-life threatening heart condition called sin.  Our only hope to escape death is a supernatural heart transplant.  We need someone to die in order that we might obtain a new spiritually and eternally healthy heart.  The good news is that God is a spiritual cardiologist!  Nearly 600 years before Jesus was born God made His spiritual surgical plans known through the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel to the nation of Israel.

READ: Jeremiah 31:31, 33; Ezekiel 36:26-27

God transforms our lives by removing our OLD heart and giving us a NEW heart!  The new covenant God promised to us through the prophets was nothing less than a spiritual heart transplant!  Jesus Christ, who loved and obeyed God perfectly, exchanged His perfect heart for our sinful heart when He died on the cross.  How do we get a spiritual heart transplant and what happens when we get a new heart?  In describing the post heart transplant of the Corinthians who had believed in Jesus Christ Paul wrote in . . .

READ:  2 Corinthians 3:3-18

God transforms us by putting His SPIRIT in our heart (2 Cor. 3:3, 6, 8) – Have you ever struggled with wanting to do what God wanted you to do?  What about wanting to want to do what God wants you to do?  By placing His Spirit into our hearts God miraculously replaces our old sinful wants and desire with His wants and desires.  It is God’s Spirit dwelling inside our hearts that gives us new thoughts, new attitudes, new intentions, new motivations, new words, and new actions.  Without God’s Spirit in our hearts, we will continue in a life of unforgiven sin.  This transformation happens, “when one turns to the Lord”.  At the moment we repent of the sin in our heart and put faith in Jesus Christ, God does His surgical work of removing our diseased heart of sin through forgiveness and putting His Spirit into our hearts.

God transforms us into the GLORY of the image of JESUS CHRIST (2 Cor. 3:16-18) – Just as a dimmer switch can increase the brightness of a lightbulb in order to illuminate a room, God is working in our hearts to increase the “brightness” of His image in our lives in order to illuminate the world.  Amazingly, the “brightness” of our lives has the divine potential to be greater than the sun.  How?  Romans 8:28 says that, “those whom He foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son”.  Our maximum brightness are the very thoughts, attitudes, intentions, motivations, words, and actions of Jesus Christ Himself!  As a result of giving us a new heart, little by little, one characteristic at a time, God gradually increases the brightness of Christlikeness that comes out of lives.   In ever increasing amounts, our lives should reflect more and more of the thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions of Jesus Christ.  

CONCLUSION
2 Corinthians 4:6 says, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”   The God of the universe, who created light, wants the light of His glory to dwell inside of us. Without Him in our lives, we have no other choice but to be darkness.  A transformed heart starts with a belief in the light of Jesus Christ (John 1:1-5, 9-14). Have you allowed the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to shine in your life?  God’s glory shone most brightly through Jesus Christ on the cross.  The reason Jesus died was to forgive our sins, but also so that God could transplant His righteous heart for our sinful heart so that we might shine like the Son (pun intended)!