How does God perform the heart work necessary for salvation?

The concept of heart work in salvation underscores that it is God who operates on our hearts. Scripture teaches that our hearts are deceitful and wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), and only God can cleanse them (Psalm 24). The heart must be transformed to genuinely respond to the gospel, leading to faith and repentance. This transformation is a work of God's grace, as seen in Isaiah 61, where the Spirit of the Lord binds up the brokenhearted. Without this divine intervention, we remain captive to our old nature, unable to turn to God on our own accord.