Do We Have a New Heart in Regeneration—and Are We Keeping His Ways According to the New Covenant?
Many have been taught that, as believers, we now possess the “new heart” promised in the New Covenant, and that this means we are already keeping God’s ways from within. But this is a serious confusion of God’s covenantal promises—a confusion that undermines both assurance and the true ground of sanctification.
The Eschatological Promise: Israel’s New Heart
God’s promise through Ezekiel and reiterated in Hebrews is clear and specific: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you… I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes” (Ezekiel 36:26-27; Hebrews 8:10; 10:16). This is not a vague spiritual metaphor. It is a concrete, sovereign act God will perform for Israel when He restores them to their land and establishes them in the Kingdom. In that day, God Himself will write His law on their hearts and minds so that they will be fully obedient, incapable of inward rebellion or defilement. This is an eschatological reality—future, national, and unbreakable.
The Present Reality: Exhortation and the Need for Cleansing
But look honestly at the New Testament’s exhortations to the Church. Hebrews repeatedly warns believers: “Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart…” (Hebrews 3:12). We are told to “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:22-23), and to “not be carried about with various and strange doctrines; for it is good that the heart be established by grace” (Hebrews 13:9).
If you truly had the new heart in the sense of Ezekiel’s promise, you would not be capable of inward sin. Jesus exposes this: “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28). Have you been guilty of this? Or have hateful and obscene words poured from your mouth in anger? Jesus says these come from the heart (Matthew 12:34-35; 15:17-20). The fact that you must still contend with such things proves your heart is not yet fully new or perfected.
The Necessity of Ongoing Renewal
If the new heart were already yours in its fullness, no spiritual growth would be necessary. There would be no need for the constant admonition to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2), or for warnings against setting the mind on the flesh (Romans 8:2-7). Paul’s instructions make it plain: the heart and mind can still be defiled, and therefore must be continually cleansed—by the water of the Word and the blood of Christ.
This is not a denial of regeneration. Our spirit has been made alive together with Christ (Romans 8:10). Christ Himself dwells in our hearts by faith as we grow in the knowledge of Him (Ephesians 3:16-21). But this is a process of progressive sanctification, not the eschatological heart transplant promised to Israel.
What Is Lost If This Distinction Is Denied
If you collapse these two realities—if you claim that the Church now possesses the fully new, sinless heart of the New Covenant—you destroy the very logic of sanctification and assurance. You will either be forced to deny the evidence of ongoing sin in your own heart (and thus deceive yourself), or you will question your salvation every time you stumble. Worse, you will undermine the finished work of Christ by making your inward state, rather than His blood and intercession, the ground of your standing before God. This is not a secondary issue; it strikes at the heart of justification, inheritance, and sonship.
The True Provision for the Church
What, then, has God given us now? Not a perfected heart, but the living Christ and His Spirit, who indwells us and gives us the capacity for growth. We are called to guard our hearts, to be washed by the Word, to have our consciences cleansed by Christ’s blood. This is the means of our ongoing sanctification. We do not wait passively for some mystical transformation; we actively lay hold of what Christ has accomplished, knowing that the full reality of the new heart is still to come.
Israel will one day be restored and made incapable of departing from God. Until then, we—who are already alive in Christ—walk by faith, continually cleansed, continually renewed, and continually growing in conformity to Him. This is the true Pauline doctrine: the distinction between promise and fulfillment, between positional acceptance and progressive renewal, between the unbreakable covenant with Israel and the present reality of the Church.
Do not surrender your assurance or your inheritance to a confusion of covenants. Stand on the finished work of Christ, and let your heart be established by grace.
