Who Can Change Your Heart?

While preparing to teach my Bible class in Jeremiah I ran across the following quote. Warren Wiersbe is an evangelical who does a pretty good job in his commentaries of being practical, as he writes more for the "common man" than the scholar. I enjoy reading his material - most of the time. As he writes on Jeremiah 40, discussing the punishment of the Jews by the Babylonians, he says "Even a severe chastening like the one Babylon brought to Judah didn't change their hearts, for the human heart can be changed only by the grace of God" (from his commentary on Jeremiah, Be Decisive, (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1996, c1995). I believe what Wiersbe writes represents very common thinking in the religious world, but a line of thought that Scripture challenges. Let's think a little about who and what can change your heart.

Wiersbe says that only God can change the heart. That is nothing but Calvinismo. Sadly, the mere mention of Calvinism may cause some to give up on this article. Somehow Calvinism has become irrelevant and out of date in many people's thinking. Say "Calvinism" and it seems to remind many Christians of old time preachers and preaching. For certain, sermons defining the infamous TULIP acronym were common as I grew up, as John Calvin's major teachings were explained and refuted from the Bible. People don't seem to be much interested in that kind of thing today, yet Wiersbe's quote shows John Calvin's influence remains and is very strong. Did you see it?

Calvin was a Swiss theologian who came to some conclusions about God and how God operates, and then refocused everything else through the grid of those decisions. A big part of that is God's sovereignty. Calvin decided God is absolutely in control of everything and everyone, down to the last detail. Free will is a myth. God controls all. Another big part of Calvin's thinking was that man was born completely and totally depraved. Man was and is incapable any good thing. People are not even capable of turning to God, much less doing anything to receive the grace of God or accept salvation. Do you see the Calvinism in Wiersbe's quote now?

Many today believe that before a person can be saved God must somehow operate on that person's heart directly and apart from the Word. That belief takes different forms. Some want the Holy Spirit to do this. Others believe there's a "warm feeling" inside one as God works to bring one to salvation. Yet how it happens doesn't change that Calvinism changes that it must happen. Why? Because a person is born completely depraved and unable to respond to God's grace. In other words, nothing can change your heart "for the human heart can be changed only by the grace of God." Wiersbe's Calvinism is now obvious.

Yet labeling something "Calvinism" doesn't necessary prove it to be wrong. What does the Bible say about this idea that only "God's grace can change the human heart?"

First, the Bible never teaches such because that would mean that God is responsible for every lost person! If only God's grace can change the human heart then why didn't God give grace and change the Jews hearts? Why did God waste time with Jeremiah and preaching if that would do no good? Why did God subject the Jews to the horrors of siege warfare and all the death and torture that the Babylonian army wrecked upon Jerusalem in 586 BC if such were really pointless because "only God's grace can change the human heart?" What kind of God is this? He demands we do right but we are born so depraved we can't do right without His enabling but then He won't enable us? What the Jews needed to tell Jeremiah is "We wish we could do right but we just can't because only God's grace can change us. Our remaining in sin is God's fault!" Here is the first of many reefs that Calvinism founders on. Can we not see as we read Jeremiah how much God wants the Jews to be saved? Over and over He pleads with them through His prophet, arranges armies to come and go, leaders to rise and fall and many other events all so that His people will be put in position to repent. God is doing everything He can short of violating human free will. Yet John Calvin (and Warren Wiersbe) announce God must do more, and that He did not.

This problem gets only worse in the New Testament. There God sends His only Son to die for all mankind (John 3:16) and even announces He desires all men to be saved (1 Tim 2:4) and that He has done all that it takes for all men to be saved (2 Pet 1:3). Of course, Calvin and Wiersbe would say that is not true at all. For men to be saved God will have to operate on their heart. Calvin would even say that God just flat won't do that for some and thus some are lost (the doctrine of predestination).

Further, the Bible teaches you are in charge of your own heart. In stark opposition to Wiersbe's statement is the teaching of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 4:4 he says "Circumcise yourselves to the Lord; remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem." In Jeremiah 9:13- 14 he again addresses the heart: "And the Lord says: 'Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it, but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them.'" Note carefully that "forsaking" God's law and "not obeying or walking in it" are here identified as symptoms of heart disease. These people followed their own hearts, they did to please themselves, worshiping idols instead of the one true God. Jeremiah 18:11-12 spells this out once again: "Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: 'Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.' But they say, 'That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.'" Ezekiel, God's prophet to these people when they were taken in exile to Babylon, makes it very plain that repentance is what they needed and that God wasn't giving "more grace" to change their hearts. They needed to change their own heart! "Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!" (Ezekiel 18:31).

The truth is that God can change hearts but He only does so through an agent, a tool. God wants to change hearts but the preached word is His chosen means of doing exactly that (note Romans 10:10-17 and how it connects salvation, the Word and preachers). God certainly could overwhelm man's heart and force faith and devotion, but of what value would that be to Him? If no man can resist the Holy Spirit's enabling (Calvin called it irresistible grace) then what pleasure could God find in a person forced to do His bidding? Instead God seeks people who will love Him. Love is always voluntary. It cannot be compelled. It comes because a person changes their heart on their own and decides to love. So God wanted the Jews, when they heard the preaching of Jeremiah to realize the error of their way and repent because they wanted to. Even more, He wants you and me, as we understand all that He has done for us at Calvary and beyond, to want Him and to love Him. He wants the cross to change our hearts, from selfishness to selfless service and devotion. So John writes "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 3:19).

Calvinism is not dead. Its long tentacles continue to influence millions though the preaching and teaching of error as seen in Wiersbe's comments on Jeremiah. But John Calvin and his disciples are simply wrong. Man isn't born depraved, God isn't predestinating some to destruction and others to heaven regardless of their actions, and God does not directly change or operate on people's hearts. Calvinism ends up making God the bad guy for not changing hearts and causes people to wait on some miraculous move of God instead of changing their own heart. God didn't over-rule the stubborn hearts of Judah long ago, and He won't do so today. You will have to change your own heart, and you can do just that if you will obey His Word! "Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!"

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