The New Heart

Spurgeon argues that the human heart is not merely damaged but utterly ruined — too proud, too rebellious, too thoroughly corrupted to be repaired — and that God's answer is not to fix the old heart but to replace it entirely with a new one, which is itself a greater miracle of grace than the creation of the world since God chose to remake fallen humans while allowing fallen angels to perish without mercy. He explains that this new heart is entirely God's work from start to finish: it cannot be earned, desired, or initiated by the natural person, since no one ever truly seeks God until God has already begun working in them — making regeneration an instantaneous, sovereign, victorious act of divine grace that overcomes even the hardest resistance. He closes with warm encouragement in two directions: to those already seeking God, assuring them that their very desire for a clean heart is evidence the work has already begun; and to those who feel too wicked to be saved, urging them to simply cast themselves on God's mercy, since he saves people not because of what they are but entirely because of who he is.A sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on September 5, 1858.