For This Reason 40

[HKHaugan]

We've gone to great length to shift our gaze about heart maturity from what man thinks to what the Lord Jesus thinks. What man seems to assume is that if all of us can simply have an ideal of what a mature heart is like then we can work, strive and attain that ideal. It's our desire, our intention to set our mind on being good and right that counts. This is where ideals fall apart. There's no example, no ultimate standard, just a 'pie in the sky' hit and miss goal. We have to face the fact that an ideal is man made and always allows for exceptions because 'we're all just human after all.' But the Lord doesn't give us a break here. He says that we need to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect (Mt.5:48). There are no exceptions for 'after all we're just humans.' So what do we do?

When the Lord makes a point He tells it like it is. He reaches out to our hearts and looks us straight in the eye and defines the problem. “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person Mk.7:18-23).” Ouch! Got me.

David reflects the same understanding when he says in Ps.51 “In sin did my mother conceive me.” Ouch again. So it's not just doing the spiritually unacceptable but entertaining them in the mind, contemplating their possible pleasure, being one up on others, getting the world to conform to me, doing it my way and scheming their accomplishment, it all starts in the heart which is far from Him (Mk.7:6).

Houston, we have a problem, a heart problem.

Sin is the problem and its roots run deep from generation to generation. In Genesis 4 the Lord God says to Cain “Sin is couching at your door and you must master it.” My own reply is “I can't.” I need help and it won't come because I want to be better or that I'm doing the best I can or my intentions at least are good. Self denial doesn't solve it either nor does denial of the problem of sin. Either I'm too afraid to admit I'm a sinner or I have so much pride I'm willing to work hard at being as good as I can and besides the pressure all around me to 'fit in' to think, say and be things that I know aren't right but it's not my fault. That's the way the world is. After all no one's perfect. And if the heat is turned up I think like a child and say “Well I didn't ask to be born. It's not my fault. I come from a dysfunctional family and a crummy neighborhood. I never had the chances other people had.” Same old same old.

In the musical “West Side Story” one of the Jets gang members named Action recites a litany of excuses among which were, “my father was a drunkard, my brother was a thief, my mother didn't want me but somehow I was had, that's why I'm so bad' which he sums up with the grand conclusion “I'm depraved on account'a I'm deprived.” Any of that sound familiar?

The heart infection called sin affects not only our heart. Sin grabs control of our mind and is the devil's spirit that drives our spirit. “Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time (Gen.6:5),” God's staggering assessment of the human condition which remains unchanged.

Tell me we don't need a savior from outside ourselves to show us the way and I'll sell you my oceanfront property in Montana.

No one can be perfect which is Jesus' command not a suggestion. Again the Lord God gave us a Genesis insight, a hope, a cure and an eternal assurance. “Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness (Gen.15:6).” Faith is the perfecting spiritual oil that unwinds the tangled backlash of sin. If you want to work at being good Jesus says, “The work of God is this, believe on the One He has sent. It is the Lord Jesus whose faith was His perfection. His perfect faith took Him to the Cross so that we might experience Him through His Word in our mind and His Holy Spirit in our heart. This is what it means to be born spiritually, born again in the Holy Spirit, born to be a spiritual younger brother and sister of Jesus.

When Jesus tells us we must take up our cross every day He was telling us, giving us the ability, sharing the depth of Himself, His heart, that faith is the cross he wants us to embrace everyday so that we can experience Him working His faith, His perfection, His presence in and through us. When we come before the Father in prayer knowing that we are viewed by Him through the eyes of His Son that is our justification before Him. It's not our intention or our works or our striving but His Son's presence in us that He sees and like Abraham He counts that as our being in the process of being perfected. Just as Jesus' faith blessed the Father so our faith does the same because His Son accomplished that for us for all time and eternity.

So we no are no longer doomed to the frustration of trying so hard to be good and right and acceptable which is slavery. No, we are free to serve the Lord with a clear conscience. He has forgiven us and continues to forgive us. It is faith in Him the Father sees. Our hearts find that the Holy Spirit inspires us to let the Lord guide what we are to think and do. That's why it is through grace we have been saved by faith (Eph.2:8).

The maturing heart is one that recognizes we have been saved by grace through faith because the One who made it possible was full of grace and truth. If we need an ideal He is our ideal, alive, personal, spiritual and filling us with Himself every next moment. That means for each of us there never really is a dull moment.

Next, the mature spirit.