Heart Transplant

Selfishness is like glue, like sticky cholesterol that builds up in our arteries and chokes off the supply of life-giving blood to our heart and brain. Selfishness throughout our lifetime accumulates weight in our heart, weights that are like multiplied children created by the illicit marriage of bad experiences and memories during our life interpreted through union with lies implanted by Satan. The resulting weights multiply and fill our hearts with heaviness until they become so stiff and full of self-defensiveness and sticky selfishness that they become as hard as stone. All of this imagery can be derived from the meanings of the original Hebrew word 'eben and its root word banah from which it is derived. This is the word translated as “stone” or “stony” in Eze. 36:26 describing the heart that God promises to remove from us and replace with a heart of flesh.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26 NIV)

When I looked up the Hebrew word translated “flesh”, I received an even greater surprise. This is the description of the new heart that God promises to give us in place of the stony heart that He removes. The word for flesh in the Hebrew is basar and contains nuances of meaning referring to flesh, human body, external female sexual organs and nakedness. The root Hebrew word from which this was derived means to be fresh, i.e. full, rosy, cheerful; to announce glad news:--messenger, preach, publish, shew forth, (bear, bring, carry, preach, good, tell good) tidings. I would have never guessed in a lifetime that all of this lay beneath the surface of the word translated “flesh” before I looked it up.

When I compare these two words and their underlying meanings that are descriptions of the heart God removes from us and the heart He implants in us, I can see the dramatic contrast between them. At the same time there is also a similarity. There is the idea of reproduction going on in both descriptions. The stony heart is one that had become so filled with heaviness, the children of lies and sin in our experience, that it is not salvageable and we have to have a heart transplant if we are to continue our existence for very long. The new heart of “flesh” also has implications of children by reference to the intimacy implied in the inferences to nakedness and female sexual organs. But this reproduction of children is rooted in the Gospel, the good news that is fresh and life-giving, cheerful and exciting. This is a direct contrast to the heaviness that characterizes the “stony” heart.

This analogy came to me this morning of a literal heart-transplant and the various dangers and phenomena that occurs in those physical situations. Generally a heart transplant is required when the old heart has become so damaged and dysfunctional that it threatens our very life and it becomes urgent that we get a healthier heart or we will soon die. The search is launched for an available heart that is in much better shape and that is compatible with our body chemistry. When it is found and the surgery is completed, from that point on our own bloodstream supplies the nourishment that determines the health of the new heart.

What if, in the physical analogy, the old heart was in terrible shape because of our bad habits and diet? Our blood was full of contaminants, high cholesterol and all sorts of counterproductive characteristics that led to the hardening and failure of our first heart. What if our lifestyle continues as it was before? What would likely happen to the new, healthy fresh heart under these continued conditions?

Even though we receive a new heart from God that is fresh, open, transparent, intimate and excited with the “good news”, it can also be in danger of slowly becoming more and more contaminated itself and become sluggish due to our failure to change the habits of diet and lifestyle that lead to our previous crisis. This is why it is possible to still be lost even after a genuine conversion and the receiving of a new heart. While the new heart is full of truth and life and vigor and joy when we first receive it, if we allow compromises with our old lifestyle to get a foothold in our life and old habits get reestablished, we can slowly turn even the miracle of a new heart into a sad story of failure that is even worse than our original condition.

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: "A dog returns to his own vomit," and, "a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire." (2 Peter 2:19-22 NKJV)

There is also the interesting phenomena of “heart memory” that is just now starting to be explored and discovered, literal memories that can be recalled by the recipient after a heart transplant of events that took place in the life of the person from whom the heart came. There are even reports of abilities suddenly realized in the life of the recipient such as being able to swim that were not present before the heart transplant. All of this has much potential for exploration in this analogy to the new heart that God implants within us. But I will have to wait for more time to explore those further. Maybe you would like to share thoughts on this that you have learned. Feel free to leave a piece of your heart in the comments.