The Request:

Psalm 51:10

    Create in me a clean heart, O God.

    Renew a loyal spirit within me.

God’s Response

Ezekiel 36:26

   I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

This is, in essence, the conversion experience.  Sin separates man from God and we have all sinned and fallen short.  There is nothing we can do about it.  We come to a point where we realize our utter helplessness and ask God to do for us what is impossible to do for ourself.  

Our old sin-stained heart is the heart we inherited from the first Adam.  To make a new heart possible God sent into the world a 2nd Adam, His only begotten Son, born of a virgin, Jesus.  Jesus took all our sins upon himself on the Cross.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.  Otherwise Jesus would today still be bound by the grave and Satan.  Jesus conquered death and sin and rose again.

 An angel rolled away the stone to expose an empty tomb.  Jesus was again alive on earth, in His yet unglorified body, to prove to his disciples and over 500 witnesses that death had been defeated.  

Then after 40 days, Jesus ascended to Heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father.  Next the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the grave, was sent to earth.

  

This is why Jesus had to die and take our sins.  The Holy Spirit could not reside in a sin stained heart - but only in a pure heart; the new one God puts in us when we are saved

This was God’s plan from the onset of creation.  He wanted children who were free to worship Him.  Not by controlling their minds, but by given them a new heart filled with the Holy Spirit - a Spirit of Love, Peace, and Hope. 

 

  They will know we are His people by our love.