READ: 2 Corinthians 5:16-19
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” – 2 Corinthians 5:17
Christianity claims to change the essentially wicked nature of a man. Jesus makes you a new creation. You become a brand new creature with a brand new heart. In the Old Testament, the prophets predicted that the day would come when God would take out the stony heart and replace it with a heart of flesh.
A new heart also I will give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an HEART OF FLESH. Ezekiel 36:26
When a man is in Christ he is a new person. He is regenerated. He is born again. When we speak of being bornagain, it does not mean going into your mother’s womb again. It is your spirit, the inner nature that is born again. …that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. John 3:6
If you take a pig and you wash him, bathe him and dress him up in a wedding suit, all you have is a dressed up pig. This same pig will return to the filth that he is used to because that is his essential nature. Obeying a set of rules does not change your heart. Coming to Christ and being born-again is what affords every man the opportunity to have a new heart.
I believe with all my heart that it is only a change in the unsaved nature of a man that can bring about a change in this world. New Year’s resolutions and obeying rules do not change anything because the spirit of the unsaved man is dead and desperately wicked. No one toys with a dead thing. Dead things must be separated from living things. The only hope for the dead and wicked human spirit is the miracle of rebirth in Jesus Christ.