What’s the prognosis for a heart "beyond cure" (Jeremiah 17:9)?
9 The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it? (NIV)
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Asked March 21 2020
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Jack Gutknecht
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Tim Maas
The prognosis would be the same for anyone in the absence of God's involvement -- eternal separation from Him. That was why Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3 that it was necessary to be spiritually born again as a result of the working of the Holy Spirit to see the kingdom of God, just as He later -- when he told the apostles that, although it was easier (in Jesus' words) for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven -- immediately thereafter told them that with God all things were possible (including, I would say, even the regeneration of the type of desperately deceitful or wicked heart spoken of by Jeremiah).
Jack Gutknecht
Most sections of Jeremiah are predominantly poetic in form. Jeremiah’s poetry is lofty and lyrical. A creator of beautiful phrases, he has given us an abundance of memorable passages (e.g., Jeremiah 2:13; 8:20,22; 9:23-24; 10:6-7,10,12; 13:23; 17:5-9; 29:13; 31:3, 31-34; 33:3). The heart of each problem is the problem in the heart, and the human heart is deceitful (Jacob in the Hebrew, after whom every Jack could be named, including me), and THE HEART IS INCURABLE. Sin is terminal and there is no cure. This is true unless it removed and replaced with a new heart. Before I met Christ, I was unreliabe, wishy-washy, and at times selfish! Things are different now! After our old heart of stone is replaced with a heart of flesh (Eze 11:19) at the time of our salvation (Ezekiel 11:19 -- are you saved, yet?), then and only then can God write His laws on this new, pliable heart (Jeremiah 31:33).
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