(Click each number to read all that has been said on this topic thus far:)
Readers experience the thoughts of bloggers. They assume what they read is an accurate expression of what’s in the blogger's heart. This assumption is made in general conversations. People usually trust that words and actions express thoughts and intentions. Yet when it comes to making moral judgments, some disregard this basic intuition and assume the heart and its expressions are normally contradictory mysteries. If people acted upon this false assumption, basic relationships would be impossible. Furthermore, moral judgments of any kind, which people make regularly and daily, would also be impossible. But moral reasoning continues because what is in a person’s heart can be known.
Some object by quoting Jeremiah,
“The heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know it?”
But the answer is in other scriptures: God, and people can know the deceitfully wicked heart.
God, of course, knows all things and all beings, each being naked before him. God searches the heart, according to Psalms 139, and other scriptures. He does so of His own will, and will do so when people ask Him. The Apostle Paul also commands the believers in Corinth to “examine themselves, to see if they are in the faith.” Evidently, Paul considers self-examination possible. God and people can know what is in the human heart.
“The heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know it?”
But the answer is in other scriptures: God, and people can know the deceitfully wicked heart.
God, of course, knows all things and all beings, each being naked before him. God searches the heart, according to Psalms 139, and other scriptures. He does so of His own will, and will do so when people ask Him. The Apostle Paul also commands the believers in Corinth to “examine themselves, to see if they are in the faith.” Evidently, Paul considers self-examination possible. God and people can know what is in the human heart.
The Epistle of James compares the heart to a well spring. (Other scriptures do the same.) He makes it clear that as a spring can not give clean and unclean water SIMULTANEOUSLY, so it is with what is in the human heart. Both praises for God and curses against God cannot come out of one’s heart at the same time.
The Lord Jesus tells his followers that “from the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” In the book of Hebrews, the heart is described as a person’s “thoughts and intentions,” both discerned by the word of God. Jesus compares the heart to a tree, with words and actions as the fruit. He, like James, makes clear that a tree will bear the kind of fruit that identifies the tree: apple trees bearing apples, orange trees bearing oranges.
So, what is overflowing in a person’s thoughts and intentions will come out of his or her mouth, or be expressed in his or her actions. In this way, the human heart can be known.
(Click here for PART 2)
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