There cannot be many people who do not feel some sort of emotion at the return of Spring. Winter can be very dreary and depressing: waking up with the sun shining and feeling the stirrings of a fresh breeze that does not make you run for a thicker coat or a pair of gloves can be a real relief. Similarly, it is hard not to feel some sort of pleasure at the first signs that the cold earth has woken after months of silence and deadness, and that the wounds of Winter are beginning to heal: the ground is not so hard; the showers are refreshing; the buds are beginning to show green against the bark of the trees; the first green shoots pierce the heavy soil; some mornings when the sun rises and picks out the green promises of summer to come you can almost feel life and vitality in the air.
The hearts of men and women are naturally very similar to the world’s Winter. They are hard and cold. There is no life, and no sign of life. There is nothing that the earth can do itself in Winter to cause life to spring up, and there is nothing that the human heart can do in and of itself to bring about a change in its dead state. The Bible likens our hearts to ‘tablets of stone’ (Ezekiel 26.26), and nothing living grows in stone: the capacity for life does not exist in it.
But we have a hope: in the same way as the return of the sun brings life to the earth, so there is hope for the human heart. The heart needs to be melted – there must be new life given. The Bible informs us that we must be born again, that we must be made anew, that what was cold and dead must be made living and healthy. How does this change come about? The only way for the heart to thaw, for men and women to be born again, is for ‘the Sun of Righteousness’ to arise, ‘with healing in his wings’ (Malachi 4.2). Who is this Sun of Righteousness? It is the Lord Jesus Christ.
However, unlike the Spring, we cannot simply wait for this to happen in us. There is no automatic change of season in our hearts that brings new life. The Scriptures teach that the Sun of Righteousness shall rise and heal ‘you who fear my name’ – the name of God Almighty. To fear God is to repent of sins, and to humble yourself before him for salvation, a salvation that comes only through Jesus.
Without Christ, without being thawed by the Sun of Righteousness, without being drenched in the tears of repentance, the heart remains dead, and will remain forever dead. We must be born again by the Spirit of God (John’s Gospel, chapter 3, verse 3), and only in Christ does the heart of stone become a heart of flesh, able to experience the true joy of life, able to rejoice and bring forth good fruit. The Sun of Righteousness heals the wounds of a barren heart, and brings newness of life to that which was dead.
Posted by Jeremy Walker 