The navi (prophet) Jeremiah declared:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV).
This is one of those many abused verses that abound in orthodox Christian circles. The immediate context of the verse speaks of Judah’s sinfulness in spite of all the blessings of Elohim (God).
He earlier said:
“Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point, on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars” (Jeremiah 17:1, KJV)
Saying that their sin is inscribed on the tablets of their hearts is similar to saying that they are “desperately wicked” in verse 9.
This is what an unregenerated heart looks like:
“They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, Elohim (God)-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know Elohim/God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them”(Romans 1:29–32).
Not every person will commit all the sins listed above. 'Total depravity', a theological term invested with a great deal of meaning by Protestant exegetes, does not mean that every person is as bad as he possibly can be, but that every person is completely consumed by sin and there is no hope of his turning it around and 'getting better’ on his own. We are “desperately wicked” in our unredeemed, pre-salvation state for, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please Elohim(God)” (Romans 8:8), In the flesh in context refers to the natural person who has not been regenerated by the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God). The 'illness' is terminal and incurable, so much so that Paul describes the unregenerate as “dead in sins” (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13).
The only hope for the sinful human heart is to be supernaturally changed. Jeremiah gives the solution. Where sin was once inscribed on the hearts of His people, Elohim (God) provides a new inscription:
“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Yahweh: I will put my Torah (Law, Teaching) within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their Elohim (God), and they shall be My people” (Jer.31:33).
Yah'shua (Jesus) came to inaugurate a B'rit Chadashah or New Covenant so that sins could be forgiven and sinners could be born again (John 3:5). As “desperately wicked” people by unredeemed nature, we cannot reform our hearts by our own effort. The only solution is for Elohim (God) to make our hearts new, washed clean from sin and fundamentally reoriented toward pleasing Him. This means making a choice to be fully surrendered to Him at all times.
Here's the GOOD NEWS:
Ezekiel 36:26 describes the new covenant like this: “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.”
Romans 6:17: “Thanks be to Elohim (God), that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.”
Acts 15:9: Elohim (God) “made no distinction between [Judahite/Jew] and [Gentile], having cleansed their hearts by faith (emunah = proactive trusting leading to obedience to the commandments).”
John 7:38 may be the most amazing of all: Yah'shua (Jesus) says, “Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Oh, amazing. Oh, I want to be like that, right? I just want to have a kind of new heart that doesn’t just enjoy water — it flows to other people. John 7:39: “Now this he said about the Ruach (Spirit), whom those who believed in Him were to receive.”
1 Timothy 1:5: “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a PURE (regenerated) heart.”
I sometimes hear Jeremiah 17:9 weaponised against regenerated believers as though this state of depravity is INEVITABLE. We can slip back into the flesh if we're not careful. Our job then is to remain IN Christ fully SUBMITTED and OBEDIENT to His commandments.
DISOBEDIENCE leads once again to DEGENERACY to one degree or another. We can choose.
We are not therefore slaves to depravity IF we are truly in Christ. The heart CAN be changed from stone to flesh. The proof of the pudding, though, is in the eating and in the actual life we CHOOSE to live.
Finally, remember also that in Hebrew the 'lev', which we translate 'heart', also includes the MIND. A regenerated person is also RIGHT-MINDED. His thinking is right. His theology is right because MIND AND HEART DO NOT OPERATE SEPARATELY but in TANDEM. You can't neglect one and hope to not influence the other.
With Elohim (God) ALL things are possible, even a regenerated heart.
(8 January 2025)
