Hearts of Flesh

We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God...

We have all hurt at least one person in our lives; we have all done injustice---been unfair---to at least one person.  And when we sin against another and do not immediately repent and confess our sin, asking forgiveness, our hearts become hardened so that we do not even see we have been wrong, but instead feel entirely justified in the way we have acted.  And our hardened hearts turn into resentment against the other, so that we become even more unjust and unfair against him.

When God says He will remove our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh (Ez. 11:19), He is referring to hearts hardened by years of unrepented sin.  And when John the Baptist tells us that the Messiah will "turn the hearts of the fathers to their children," he is saying that the Messiah will make our hardened hearts like the heart of God the Father, who has never done evil or injustice and so has never hardened his heart against any of his children.  Then we will truly "be as gods," in the image of God, with hearts of flesh instead of hearts of stone.