New Christians will look for a new heart experience. This means the things they once loved they now hate and the things they hated they now love. Their affections change toward heavenly or spiritual things and their characters are reshaped.
“When Jesus speaks of the new heart, He means the mind, the life, the whole being.
- To have a change of heart is to withdraw the affections from the world, and fasten them upon Christ.
- To have a new heart is to have a new mind, new purposes, new motives.
- What is the sign of a new heart?—A changed life. There is a daily, hourly dying to selfishness and pride.” The Youth’s Instructor, September 26, 1901.
“One of the most earnest prayers recorded in the word of God is that of David when he pleaded, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God’ (Psalm 51:10). God’s response to such a prayer is, A new heart will I give you. This is a work that no finite man can do. Men and women are to begin at the beginning, seeking God most earnestly for a true Christian experience. They are to feel the creative power of the Holy Spirit. They are to receive the new heart, that is kept soft and tender by the grace of heaven. The selfish spirit is to be cleansed from the soul. They are to labor earnestly and with humility of heart, each one looking to Jesus for guidance and encouragement. …” Our High Calling, 159.
“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).
“The old nature, born of blood and the will of the flesh, cannot inherit the kingdom of God. The old ways, the hereditary tendencies, the former habits, must be given up; for grace is not inherited. The new birth consists in having
- new motives,
- new tastes,
- new tendencies.
Those who are begotten unto a new life by the Holy Spirit, have become partakers of the divine nature, and in all their habits and practices, they will give evidence of their relationship to Christ. When men who claim to be Christians retain all their natural defects of character and disposition, in what does their position differ from that of the worldling? They do not appreciate the truth as a sanctifier, a refiner. They have not been born again.” The Review and Herald, April 12, 1892.
God says: “A new heart also will I 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. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26, 37).