The Heart

Summation:

What is meant by “Heart” from a Christian perspective?  Simply put, the human heart sustains and is behind the operation of the entire body.  In a spiritual perspective the heart is the sustainer of the spiritual condition of a person.

Strategy, motivation, actions, thinking, perspective, desire, understanding, knowledge, wisdom, … are all determined by a person’s spiritual heart.  The mind releases what comes from the heart.

Through faith in Christ Jesus, the only begotten son of God, people receive a new heart or heart condition that is like Jesus, not unregenerate man.  This change takes place in the life of everyone who honestly seeks out Jesus and commits his life to him.

Your whole outlook and life desires change to become like Jesus.  You will now seek and turn to Jesus as your life source.  You will no longer depend on man’s strength, ability or teaching.  This is what the Bible refers to as being born again.  Without this experience, no one will see God, for Jesus the Christ alone is the way, the truth and the life that leads to God.

Biblical truth to support the Heart summation:

In Romans chapter one and verse 24 we see that God gave man over to the sinful desires of their hearts.  God turned them over to their sinful desires because “although they knew God, they neither gloried him as God nor give thanks to him” (Romans1:21)  One must answer the question; how does man glorify God as God and give thanks to him? 

Romans 1:18-20 partly answers this question.  God’s creation is breathtakingly complex and beautiful but the wicked exchange this truth to accept and believe the lie of evolution instead of the truth.  Glorifying God would be marveling at his incredible creation.  Giving thanks to God would be thanking him for fulfilling man’s needs through his creation.  To understand more about who God is, what he is like and what his desires are, would be very beneficial in understanding ‘heart’ conditions.

John 1:1 tells us  “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.”  The writer refers to the word as a distinct identity being with God in the beginning.  John 1:14 tells us “the word became flesh.(Jesus) and made his dwelling with us.”  We, the disciples and God’s people, have seen his glory, the glory of the one who came from the father, full of grace and truth. The nature of God is revealed to us in 1John 4:16, “God is love.”

Now we have to define what God means by love since man has many, many definitions of love.  Love is best defined in 1Corinthians 13:4-8 ; “Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”  Love never fails.  If you study what Jesus said and did while on earth, you will realize that this describes his exact nature.  What Jesus said and did was perfect love.  Jesus further said in John 14:9, :Anyone who has seen me has seen the father.” 

What is man’s inherent nature?  There are many descriptive words for people who miss the mark or sin.  The real test is to evaluate ourselves concerning love, we will soon find we miss the mark especially when we are interacting or exposed to unlovable people.  The Bible explains it this way in Romans 3:23, “ For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  We can thank God he does not stop there but the sin issue continues in 3:24,25, “…and are justified freely by grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (25) God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood.”  When we  choose Jesus Christ, Romans 5:15 tells us that God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

2 Corinthians 5:14-21 explains that in Jesus we become the rightousness of God and therefore have a heart of love. (14) For Christ's love compells us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died (15) and He dies for all, that those tho live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (16) So from now on we regard noone from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this wat, we do so, no longer. (17) Threfore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (New heart, instead of self-centred, Christ centred) (18) All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: (19) That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has comitted to us the message of reconciliation. (20) We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. WE implore you on Christ's behalf: be reconiciled to God. (21) God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The new heart is a gift from God, through Jesus to those who believe. It replaces the old heart that was self seeking to one that is Christ serving.