Charnock - How can we, with thoughts of the cross alive in our hearts, sin against so much tenderness, compassion, and grace, and all the other perfections of you, our God?

To answer Charnock’s question, because:

Jeremiah 17:9 - The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

How good for us to understand our true state. “You’re in bad shape,” someone might say, “you need a doctor!”

Luke 5:30-32 - Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

So God comes with a transplant and performs the surgery - because he does understand the brutal nature we’ve fallen to!

Ezekiel 36:26–27 - And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Only the Spirit keeps us from sin, ensuring we walk in God’s ways:

Romans 8:13 - For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Imagine a 55-year-old man that gets a heart transplant and now had the heart of a 27-year-old who died in an accident and was an organ donor. For those in Christ, he’s died and given us the heart of an eternal one that never dies. Now imagine the 55-year-old abuses his heart over the course of years and destroys it. The donor family would feel some range of sadness, anger/rage, betrayal.

Mark 3:28-29 - [Jesus speaking]: “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” — for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

What if this idea of blasphemy is akin to abusing a transplanted heart? Suppose, at the beginning, you curse out the 27-year-old’s family offering the heart. Or suppose you get the heart and abuse it as we recounted. Or suppose you say the heart is worthless and doesn’t have any power so you sit inside all day.

The Holy Spirit blows like the wind. We never wonder how the wind can be in India and the United States at the same time. Air. Yet we often think the Holy Spirit can’t be everywhere even though Jesus told us:

John 3:8 - [Jesus speaking]: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

The Spirit offers to save us. Do we brush him aside? Curse him?

He speaks truth to us. Are we hostile to him? Do we ignore him?

He has power over sin. Do we shrug our shoulders, saying, “I’m weak. He can’t overcome sin in my life”?

He whispers guidance to us. Do we sense him telling us to get off the computer? Not to go to a party? To go to sleep? To read the Word and pray and sing a song? Do we listen and obey or dismiss and walk out on him?

Sin undoes us enough. But maybe there’s a family of blasphemies by which we intentionally or unintentionally reject the Spirit, become more spiritually ill, stay sick, and sink our shot at true life.

Psalm 95:7b-8a - “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…”

Holy Spirit, speak to us! Do your work in us! Don’t let this transplant get rejected by our body because we loved other things more than you and forsook you. Save us from ourselves. Re-new us and help us stand against the devil and his schemes and our own bad habits. Produce all your fruit in us and clothe us with all the colors of godliness!

Isaiah 43:1
But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
    he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
    I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Teach us how to belong to you, God of love, Son of man, Spirit of light! Keep calling us to yourself and help us listen and follow the way!