The Heart You Cannot Fix Yourself

On December 3, 1967, surgeon Christiaan Barnard stood in an operating room in Cape Town, South Africa, and did what no one had done before — he transplanted a human heart. His patient, Louis Washkansky, was a fifty-four-year-old grocer whose own heart had deteriorated beyond any hope of repair. No medication could restore it. No lifestyle change could reverse the damage. Washkansky needed something he could never produce on his own: a new heart entirely.

That is the medical portrait of grace.

We try so hard to fix ourselves. We make resolutions, set goals, white-knuckle our way toward becoming better people. And some of that effort bears fruit. But there comes a point — spiritually speaking — where the damage runs deeper than self-improvement can reach. The prophet Ezekiel understood this when he delivered God's promise: "I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

Grace is God performing the transplant we cannot perform on ourselves. It is not a reward for getting healthier. It is the gift that makes health possible in the first place. Washkansky could not will his failing heart to beat stronger. He could only receive what was offered.

And here is the astonishing part: the Great Physician does not wait for us to qualify. He comes to us precisely because we cannot come to Him whole. The only requirement is the one Washkansky met on that operating table — lying still long enough to let someone else do what you never could.