Question: Is it scriptural to teach that the believer in Christ has “a new heart” now?
K.T.
Answer: The context in which these words are found (Ezek. 18:30, 31; 36:25-27) describes the great moral or spiritual change to be effected in the house of Israel in a day still future.
Similar expressions in the New Testament, such as, God “purifying their hearts by faith,” “having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Acts 15:9; Heb. 10:22), etc., reveal the change now wrought in Jew and Gentile who, believing “the gospel of our salvation,” have been given to rest on the Savior’s atoning death and resurrection. Hence, we have new affections, new desires, being born of God—made partakers of a Divine nature—and have the abiding in-dwelling Spirit of God. Yet have we the old sinful nature still. It is unchanged and unchangeable (that which is born of the flesh is flesh); but “condemned” in the cross of Christ— “our old man is crucified with Christ,” and the believer is now called to reckon himself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” But sin is no longer to reign in our mortal body that we should obey it in the lusts of it. And if we walk in the Spirit we shall not fulfill the flesh’s lusts.