“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.” (Ezekiel 36:26)
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2Corinthians 5:21)
Q: What is the relationship between these two verses? More specifically, what is the relationship between the sin that Jesus bore and our hearts of stone that God removed?
A: Jesus bearing our sins was Jesus taking our hearts of stone, as it were.
Where else do you think it went when God removed it? The heart is what caused all the damage—the icy, obstinate stone that hated God and worshiped Self. How heavy do you think it was? The perfect Son of God who had enjoyed an infinity of communion with the Father, incomprehensibly perfect and holy and good and lovely. This One took our heart of stone. He took the heart and all the wreckage it caused. He took it upon Himself—the heart of cursing and fist-shaking, vanities and idolatry. Our heart became his heart. How heavy do you think it was? What kind of pain do you think he felt? We cannot fathom.
Where is it now? The wrath of God must have incinerated it. Maybe it melted into the Son’s bloodstream and dripped from the cross, soaking into the Jerusalem soil. All we know is that it is gone—“removed.” That stone is gone and another was rolled away so that when God spoke to your soul—“Let light shine out of darkness!”—the light shone.
Praise Him!
