601. VIII. When a person is regenerated, he acquires a new will and a new understanding.

The present-day church is aware that, when a person is regenerated, he is renewed or becomes a new person; this is evident both from the Word and from reason. These passages from the Word prove this:

Make yourself a new heart and a new spirit; why will you die, o house of Israel? Ezekiel 18:31.

I will give you a new heart and a new spirit in your midst, and I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh; and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit in your midst, Ezekiel 36:26-27.

From now on we know no one according to the flesh; so if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. 2 Corinthians 5:16-17.

A new heart in these passages means a new will, a new spirit means a new understanding. For heart in the Word stands for the will, and spirit, when linked with the heart, for the understanding.

The argument from reason is: when a person is regenerated he has a new will and a new understanding because these two faculties are what make him a human being, and it is these which are regenerated. Everyone, therefore, is such as he is in these two respects. If his will is evil, he is evil, and the more so if his understanding favours evil; and the reverse is true, if his will is good. It is only religion which renews and regenerates a person. Religion is allotted the highest place in the human mind, and sees below it the social matters which concern the world. Religion too climbs up through these as the pure sap rises in a tree to its top, and from that lofty position it has a view of natural matters, just as someone on a tower or a mountain has a view of the plains beneath.

2010. Now because the word 'names means the essential nature, and also the knowledge of that nature, the meaning of the statement made in this verse becomes clear. That is to say, 'No longer will you be called by your name Abram, but your name will be Abraham' means, not what his nature had been previously but what it was going to be. The fact that Abram served other gods and worshipped the god Shaddai was shown above in 1992; but because he was to represent the Lord, and in particular His Internal Man, and so the celestial side of His love, his previous nature had to be effaced, that is, the name Abram had to be altered to another which was such that the Lord could be represented by means of it. The letter H therefore was taken from the name Jehovah - which letter alone in the name Jehovah entails the Divine, and means I AM or TO BE - and was inserted into his name, so that he was called Abraham. The same happened with Sarai further on; the same letter was added to her name, so that she was called Sarah. From this it also becomes clear that in the internal sense of the Word Abraham represents Jehovah or the Lord.

[2] It should be realized however that in representations no significance is attached to the nature or character of the one who represents, for in those representations no attention is paid to the person representing but to the thing which he represents, as stated and shown already in 665, 1097 (end), 1361. Therefore the meaning of the words here in the internal sense is that the Lord cast off the human and put on the Divine, which is also the particular point in the train of thought both before and after this statement, for the promise is now made concerning Isaac his son, who was to represent the Lord's Divine Rational.