Volume. XXXIX, No. 46
Sunday, 18 May 2025
[When you face the Holy Law of God and His justice] You will cry out to God and plead for mercy. Indeed, there is mercy with God in the gospel. In the gospel, God sovereignly and graciously clears sinners of their guilty records and satisfies the demand of His justice by punishing a substitute who bears their sins.
A Bad Heart
But before considering the gospel-solution to your dilemma, we need to consider the other side of this problem also. You not only have a bad record in heaven, but you also have a bad heart on earth. In the Scriptures, God plainly declares that the hearts of all men are bad. Jeremiah 17:9 states, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” In another place we read that “the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart” (Ecclesiastes 9:3).
Furthermore, Jesus plainly taught that the source of evil is rooted in the hearts of men. He said, “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man” (Mark 7:21-23). Sin is not created by the environment. Sin comes from out of the bad heart of man! This is the other aspect of your greatest problem: an incorrigible, sin-loving, God-hating heart, which is at enmity with God and is not subject to the Law of God and cannot be (Romans 8:7).
You probably do not consider yourself to be as bad as the Bible says you are, because your heart is deceitful. It is masterful not only at deceiving others but at deceiving you. With complete disregard of God’s description of your terrible condition, your heart will deceive you into thinking that you are not really that bad. It will tell you that deep down you are “OK”—not perfect, but “OK.” But do you not see that this very response is evidence of a wicked heart? Your conscience should affirm the very truths revealed by God; but instead it denies, distorts, and covers them over with lies. Furthermore, is it not true that the things that God forbids you to do are the very things that you love and do? And are not the things that God commands you to do the very things that you hate and will not do?
This indeed is a problem, for how can you live in heaven with a bad heart? Heaven would be like hell for you, for there you will not find anything that will feed your sinful cravings. Worshipping God and living for Him is heaven’s lifestyle. Would this not bore you, even frustrate and infuriate you, if you remain with a heart set against God and His will? Furthermore, God will never allow you to enter His kingdom as a rebel sinner. God brings into His kingdom forgiven sinners with purified hearts, but never rebel sinners with corrupt hearts.
Now what makes this part of your problem so great is that you cannot change your heart. God’s Word says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jeremiah 13:23). The obvious answer to this rhetorical question is “No.” A man or an animal cannot change his coloring; it is part of his nature. Similarly, men with bad hearts cannot do good, because it is contrary to their nature. Yes, it is true that you may be able to change some of your external conduct, but you cannot change the disposition of your heart. A man may be able to keep from having sex outside of marriage, but in his heart he still will lust. A man may resolve to go to church and tithe, but in his heart he still will be far from God. A woman may restrain her lips from speaking slander and lies, yet she will not be able to keep from hating in her heart.
This is the second aspect of your greatest problem, you not only have a bad record in heaven which you cannot change, but you also have a bad heart on earth which you cannot change. Unless you face this bad news, you will never understand the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is good news only to those who have come to realize that they are utterly helpless in their wretched condition as sinners.
A Cleared Record and a Changed Heart
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news about what God in sovereign grace has done through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to clear the bad records and to change the bad hearts of a multitude of sinners.
Consider what Jesus said at the Last Supper with His disciples just before He was about to die. He said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). Jesus summed up the purpose of His mission in these three words, the new covenant. All that the Lord Jesus did in emptying Himself of His glory and coming to earth as a true man, all that He did in His sinless life, all that He was about to do by His death as a sin-bearing substitute for His people and by His glorious resurrection, led to and culminated in His establishing the new covenant. But what did God promise in the new covenant? The Scripture records the substance of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34, “this shall be the covenant…I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people…for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
The new covenant primarily consists in the conferral of two blessings. 1) God promises that He will remember the sins and iniquities of His people no more. In other words, God says He will blot out their bad records forever; He will not hold their sins against them anymore. In the court of heaven His people are cleared of their guilt. 2) God promises to put His laws in His people’s inward parts and to write His laws upon their hearts (i.e., their hearts and minds). In the new covenant, God changes the hearts of His people in such a way that His laws, once rejected and hated, are laid upon the hearts of His people so that they desire and delight to obey them. What God delights in, they now delight in. What grieves God, now brings them grief also. Furthermore, God’s Law is not only written on their hearts in such a way that they desire to keep it, but God enables them by His power to keep it more and more during this earthly life, and perfectly upon their entrance into heaven.
Thus, in the new covenant, God, as the Judge and Justifier of His people, blots out their bad record. As Physician of the soul, He changes and cures their sin- sick hearts. This is the good news: by God’s grace full provision has been made for the clearing of the records and the changing of the hearts of any and all who come unto God through faith in Jesus Christ.
To be continued….
More Lively Hope
