Heart Transplant

Every year, 3,500 heart transplant procedures are performed worldwide. Hearts can be irreversibly damaged by heart disease or viral infection. Other people suffer from long-term heart failure, heart muscle disease, or damage from multiple heart attacks. Often these conditions cannot be treated by any other medical or surgical means, and a heart transplant is the only option for survival. Currently, the five year survival rate for a heart transplant is 73.1% for males and 67.4% for females. Heart transplants have saved and extended the lives of thousands of people who had no other hope or chance of survival.

In Ezekiel 36:26, God says, “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

We have hearts of stone, hardened by sin (Ephesians 4:18). The only way for us to survive spiritually is to get a heart transplant from God. Our sinful, corrupt hearts cannot just be patched up. We need to start over with a brand new one. After David had sinned with Bathsheba, he cried out, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” and God is willing to do just that if we will turn away from our sins.

Here’s the catch. Someone always has to die to make a heart available for transplant. Jesus is the one who has done this for us. He died to take away our sins so we could have a new heart from God. Under the Old Testament, animal sacrifices were made for sin and the blood was sprinkled on the altar. Now, Christ is the ultimate sacrifice for our sin. When we re-enact the death and burial of Jesus by being baptized into Him, we come in contact with the blood which He shed at his death (Romans 6:3-4; John 19:34). Only Christ’s blood is able to sprinkle our hearts clean (Hebrews 9:22; 1 Peter 1:2).

Your surgeon wouldn’t appreciate it very much if, two weeks after a transplant surgery, you started eating three double cheeseburgers a day. In much the same way, God will not be pleased with us if we start corrupting the clean heart He has given us. Colossians 3:12 tells us to “put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” A heart healthy diet is important to our spiritual survival. We need to start feeding our hearts better in each of these areas mentioned in Colossians. One way to start in the area of gentleness would be to make a conscious effort not to snap back at those who offend us. Just let it go. Multitudes of ways can be found to apply each of these areas in our lives, but however we want to start, the main thing is that we need to start eating better spiritually.

God has given us new hearts; let us do all we can to keep them pure.

In Christ,

Jordan Wise

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