“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. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
This promise from God was fulfilled, in part, when he brought the people of Israel back from their captivity in Babylon. But just as the promise of their return in Ezekiel 34 flowed into a promise of the coming of Christ, the great Shepherd, so here it transitions into a promise of the Holy Spirit.
Earlier, in Ezekiel 11:18-20, God promised that he would not only cleanse his people from their sin. but he would also “remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” That is to say, God would change the very inclinations of their heart.
As Dane Ortlund notes,
When the Bible speaks of the heart … it is not speaking of our emotional life only, but of the central animating center of all we do. … It is our motivation headquarters. The heart, in biblical terms is not part of who we are but the center of who we are. Our heart is what defines and directs us.
(Gentle and Lowly, page 18)
God causes his people to obey him, not by external coercion, but by internal conversion. Notice again what God says will happen when he puts his Spirit within us: “[I will] cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezek. 36:27). Matthew Henry rightly notes,
If God will do his part according to the promise, we must do ours according to the precept.
God’s promises must drive us to his precepts as our rule, and then his precepts must send us back to his promises for strength, for without his grace we can do nothing.
Don’t miss the significance of those last seven words: “without his grace we can do nothing.” This truth comes straight from the lips of Jesus in John 15:5. Jesus goes on to say in verse 8, ““By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”
This proof is the evidence of God’s promise, “you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezek. 36:28). This really is the essence of happiness. Revelation 21 gives us a glimpse into eternity and what it will be like for all those who have been saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle John writes,
I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”
And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.” And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.” (Rev. 21:3-7)
Imagine a football player being told, just before he’s getting ready to take the field, “You are going to win this game, big-time!” How would he respond? Would he just sit on the bench or give at best a lackluster performance, thinking, “Well, I’m going to win anyway, so why bother?”
No, he won’t think that way at all — not if he’s a football player at heart!
The same is true of God’s people. Because God has given us a new heart, we give it all we’ve got, relying on God’s grace to give us the victory. “Salvation belongs to the Lord” (Psalm 3:8). that’s God’s part. To trust God and obey him is our part. That’s how we prove that we are his people.
And that’s the greatest privilege and joy there is.