Heart: the radical region of life - Chambers, Oswald
Chapter XI Heart: the radical region of life
The Radiator of Personal Life (continued)
1. Voluntary
(c) Love (1 timothy 1:5; proverbs 23:26; judges 5:9; Philippians 1:7; 2 Corinthians 7:3)
(d) Hate (Leviticus 19:17; psalm 105:25) 2. Versatility
(e) Memory (Isaiah 65:17; Jeremiah 3:16; 2 chronicles 7:11; acts 7:23; 1 Corinthians 2:9; Luke 1:66; 21:14)
(f ) Thinking (genesis 8:21; 17:17; 24:45; Ecclesiastes 1:16; Matthew 24:48; Hebrews 4:12)
(g) Birthplace of words ( job 8:10; psalm 15:2; Matthew 12:34; exodus 28:3)
3. Virtues and vices
(d) all degrees of fear (proverbs 12:25; Ecclesiastes 2:20; Deuteronomy 28:28; psalm 143:4; Jeremiah 32:40)
(e) all degrees of anguish ( Joshua 5:1; Jeremiah 4:19; Leviticus 26:36; psalm 102:4)
(f ) all conscious unity (1 chronicles 12:38; Jeremiah 32:39; Ezekiel 11:19; acts 4:32)
1. Voluntary
(c) love but the end of the charge is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned. (1 timothy 1:5 RV ; see also judges 5:9; proverbs 23:26; Philippians 1:7; 2 Corinthians 7:3)
Love is the sovereign preference of my person for another person, and we may be astonished to realise that love springs from a voluntary choice. Love for god does not spring naturally out of the human heart; but it is open to us to choose whether we will have the love of god imparted to us by the holy spirit. . . . The love of god is shed abroad in our hearts by the holy ghost which is given unto us (Romans 5:5; see also Luke 11:13). We are emphasising just now the need of voluntary choice. It is of no use to pray, o lord, for more love! Give me love like thine; i do want to love thee better, if we have not begun at the first place, and that is to choose to receive the holy spirit who will shed abroad the love of god in our hearts. Beware of the tendency of trying to do what god alone can do, and of blaming god for not doing what we alone can do. We try to save ourselves, but god only can do that; and we try to sanctify ourselves, but god only can do that. After god has done these sovereign works of grace in our hearts, we have to work them out in our lives. . . . Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is god which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure (Philippians 2:1213). The love of god is the great mainspring, and by our voluntary choice we can have that love shed abroad in our hearts, then unless hindered by disobedience, it will go on to develop into the perfect love described in 1 Corinthians 13. We have, then, to make the voluntary choice of receiving the holy spirit who will shed abroad in our hearts the love of god, and when we have that wonderful love in our hearts, the sovereign preference for Jesus Christ, our love for others will be relative to this central love. We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus sake (2 Corinthians 4:5).
(d) Hate thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart. (Leviticus 19:17; see also psalm 105:25)
(The passages quoted are chosen from an innumerable number which mention hate. )
The exact opposite to love is hate. We do not hear much about hatred in connection with Christianity nowadays. Hatred is the supreme detestation of one personality for another, and the other person ought to be the devil. The word of god clearly shows the wrong of hating our brother men; but Paul says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, i. E. , against bad men, but against principalities, against powers, . . . Against spiritual wickedness behind men. Bad men are sim- ply the manifestation of the power of Satan.
If the love of god were presented as having no hatred of wrong and of sin and the devil, it would simply mean that gods love is not so strong as our love. The stronger and higher and more emphatic the love, the more intense is its obverse, hate. God loves the world so much that he hates with a perfect hatred the thing that is twisting men away from him. To put it crudely, the two antagonists are god and the devil.
A good way to use the cursing psalms is in some such way as this do not i hate them, o lord, that hate thee? . . . I hate them with perfect hatred. Ask
Yourself what is it that hates god? Nothing and no one hates god half so much as the wrong disposition in you does. The carnal mind is enmity against god ; what we should hate is this principle that lusts against the spirit of god and is determined to have our bodies and minds and rule them away from god. The spirit of god awakens in us an unmeasured hatred of that power until we are not only sick of it, but sick to death of it, and we will gladly make the moral choice of going to its funeral. The meaning of Romans 6:6 is just this put into scriptural language knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him. The old man is the thing the spirit of god will teach us to hate, and the love of god in our hearts concentrates our soul in horror against the wrong thing. Make no excuse for it. The next time you read those psalms, which people think are so terrible, bring this interpretation to bear on them.
One other thing, the bible says that god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, . . . And yet it says that if we are friends of the world we are enemies of god. Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with god? ( James 4:4). The difference is that god loves the world so much that he goes all lengths to remove the wrong from it, and we must have the same kind of love. Any other kind of love for the world simply means that we take it as it is and are perfectly delighted with it. The world is all right and we are very happy in it; sin and evil and the devil are so many orientalisms. It is that sentiment which is the enemy of god. Do we love the world in this sense sufficiently to spend and be spent so that god can manifest his grace through us until the wrong and the evil are removed?
Thank god, these voluntary choices are in our hearts, and they will work out tremendous purposes in our lives. Have i made the voluntary choice to receive the love of god? Have i come to the end of myself ? Am i really a spiritual pauper? Do i realise, without any cunning, that i have no power at all in myself to be holy? Do i deliberately choose to receive from god the sovereign grace that will work these things in me? If so, then i must work them out with glad activity.
2. Versatility
In a previous study we explained versatility as the power to turn easily from one thing to another. When you are in difficult circumstances, remember the time when they were not so trying. God has given us this power to turn ourselves by remembrance; if we lose the power, we punish ourselves and it will lead on to melancholia and the peril of fixed ideas.
(e) Memory
As expressive of this great and surprising power, take memory, which resides not in the brain, but in the heart.
Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord . . . And all that came into solomons heart to make in the house of the lord . . . He prosperously effected. (2 chronicles 7:11; see also Isaiah 65:17; Jeremiah 3:16; acts 7:23; 1 Corinthians 2:9)
The brain is not a spiritual thing, the brain is a physical thing. Memory is a spiritual thing and exists in the heart; the brain recalls more or less clearly what the heart remembers. In our lords parable (see Luke 16:25) when Abraham said to the rich man, son, remember, he was not referring to a man with a physical brain in this order of things at all. There are other passages which refer to the marvellous power of god to blot certain things out of his memory. Forgetting with us is a defect; forgetting with god is an attribute. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins (isaiah 44:22). All these sayings were noised abroad throughout all hill country of judaea. And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts. . . . (Luke 1:6566; see also Luke 21:14). In these pas- sages memory is placed in the heart. We never forget save by the sovereign grace of god; the problem is that we do not recall easily. Recalling depends upon the state of our physical brain, and when people say they have a bad memory, they mean they have a bad power of recalling. Paul says, forgetting those things which are behind (Philippians 3:13), but notice the kind of things he forgot. Paul never forgot that he was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious (1 timothy 1:13); he is referring to his spiritual attainments: i forget to what i have attained because i am pressing on to something ahead. Immediately you begin to rest on your oars over your spiritual experience, and say, thank god i have attained to this, that moment you begin to go back. Forget to what you have attained, keep your eyes fixed on the lord Jesus, and press on. People say god helps us to forget our past, but is that true? Every now and again the spirit of god brings us back to remember who we are, and the pit from whence we were digged, so that we understand that all we are is by the sovereign grace of god, not by our own work, otherwise we would be uplifted and proud. In the case of people with an impaired memory, as it is termed, some say it would be better to remove them; to put them to sleep if that were legal. Why do they say this? Because they estimate wrongly; they estimate according to the perfection of the machine. God looks at what we cannot see, viz. , at the heart. God does not look at the brain, at what man looks at, neither does he sum men up in the way we do. The wonderful thing is that if we will hand our lives over to god by a voluntary choice and receive his spirit, he will purify us down to deeper depths than we can ever go. Then how foolish people are not to hand over their lives to him! He will keep the feet of his saints. He will keep your heart so pure that you would tremble with amazement if you knew how pure the atonement of the lord Jesus can make the vilest human heart, if we will but keep in the light, as god is in the light. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin (1 john 1:7). We use this verse much too glibly; it is simply god letting the plummet right straight down to the very depths of the experience of a redeemed heart and saying, that is how i see you made pure by the marvellous atonement of Jesus, the last strand of memory purified through the blood of his son. (f ) thinking thinking takes place in the heart, not in the brain. The real spiritual powers of a man reside in the heart, which is the center of the physical life, of the soul life, and of the spiritual life. The expression of thinking is referred to the brain and the lips because through these organs thinking becomes articulate. For the word of god . . . Is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12; see also genesis 8:21; 17:17; 24:45; Ecclesiastes 1:16; Matthew 24:48).
According to the bible, thinking exists in the heart, and that is the region with which the spirit of god deals. We may take it as a general rule that Jesus Christ never answers any questions that spring from a mans head, because the questions which spring from our brains are always borrowed from some book we have read, or from someone we have heard speak; but the questions that spring from our hearts, the real problems that vex us, Jesus Christ answers those. The questions he came to deal with are those that spring from the implicit center. These problems may be difficult to state in words, but they are the problems Jesus Christ will solve.
(g) Birthplace of words
The heart is the first thing to live in physical birth and in spiritual birth. It is a wonderful thing that god can cleanse and purify the thinking of our hearts. That is why our lord says, of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh (Luke 6:45). The bible says that words are born in the heart, not in the head. Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their heart? ( job 8:10; see also Matthew 12:34). Jesus Christ said he always spoke as his father wished him to. Did his father write out the words and tell him to learn them by heart? No, the main- spring of the heart of Jesus Christ was the mainspring of the heart of god the father, consequently the words Jesus Christ spoke were the exact expression of gods thought. In our lord the tongue was in its right place; he never spoke from his head, but always from his heart. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue . . . This mans religion is vain ( James 1:26), there is nothing in it. The tongue and the brain are under our control, not gods. Look at the history of words in the different coun- tries of the human race, or take our words to-day the words, for instance, at the head of these studies, they are all technical, there is no heart in them. Com- pare the language of the authorised version of the bible, which was translated into the language the people spoke. Our modern speech is a great aid to inner hypocrisy, and it becomes a snare because it is easy to talk piously and live iniquitously. Speaking from the heart does not mean refinement of speech merely; sometimes Jesus Christs speech sounded anything but nice to natural ears, e. G. , Matthew 23. Some of the words he used, and some applications he made of his truth were terrible and rugged. Read our lords description of the heart: out of the heart, says Jesus, proceed . . . And then comes the ugly catalogue (Matthew 15:19). Upright men and women of the world simply do not believe this. Jesus Christ did not speak as a man there. He spoke as the master of men, with an absolute knowledge of what the human heart is like. That is why he so continually pleads with us to hand the keeping of our hearts over to him.
There is a difference between innocence and purity. Innocence is the true condition of a child; purity is the characteristic of men and women. Inno- cence has always to be shielded; purity is something that has been tested and tried and has triumphed; something that has character at the back of it, that can overcome, and has overcome. Jesus Christ by his spirit can make us men and women fit to face the misery and wrong and discordance of life if we will keep in tune with him.
3. Virtues and vices
All degrees of fear, all degrees of anguish, and all conscious unity reside in the heart. Notice how the natural virtues break down, the reason being that our natural virtues are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what we were designed to be. God does not build up our natural virtues and trans- figure them. You will often find that when a good, upright worldling is born again, his natural virtues fail, and confusion is the first result of the spirit of god coming in. Jesus himself said, i came not to send peace, but a sword, i. E. , something that would divide a mans own personal unity. There is a difference between the modern way of looking at men and the way the bible looks at men. The modern way of looking at man and his virtues is to say, what a wonderful promise of what man is going to be; given right conditions, he will develop and be all right. The bible looks at man and says. He must be born again; he is a ruin, and only the spirit of god can re-make him. We cannot patch up our natural virtues and make them come up to Jesus Christs standard. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity, no natural forgiveness, can come anywhere near what Jesus Christ demands. The hymn has it rightly:
And every value we possess,
And every victory won,
And every thought of holiness,
Are his alone.
As we bring every bit of our bodily machine into harmony with the new life god has put within, he will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of the lord Jesus; the supernatural virtues are made natural. That is the meaning of learning to draw on the life of god for everything.
(d) All degrees of fear
Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. (psalm 143:4) and i will make an everlasting covenant with them, . . . I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. ( Jeremiah 32:40; see also prov- erbs 12:25; Ecclesiastes 2:20; Deuteronomy 28:28)
Fear resides in the heart. Take it physically, if you take a deep breath, you cause your heart to pump the blood faster through your veins, and physical fear goes; and it is the same with the spirit. God expels the old fear by putting in a new spirit and a new concern. What is that concern? The fear lest we grieve him.
(e) All degrees of anguish
I am pained at my very heart; . . . I cannot hold my peace. . . . ( Jeremiah 4:19; see also Joshua 5:1; Leviticus 26:36; psalm 102:4)
There again we find that the physical and spiritual center is the heart. All anguish is in the heart. What we suffer from proves where our hearts are. What did Jesus Christ suffer from? The anguish of our lords heart was on account of sin against his father. What causes the anguish of our hearts? Can we fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ? Are we shocked only at social evils and social wrongs, or are we as profoundly shocked at pride against god? Do we feel as keenly as Jesus Christ did the erecting of mine self-will against god? The center of true anguish is in the heart, and when god puts our hearts right, he brings us into fellowship with Jesus Christ and we enter into fellowship with his sufferings.
(f ) All conscious unity
All these men of war, that could keep rank, came with a perfect heart to heron, to make David king over all Israel and all the rest also of Israel were of one heart to make David king. (1 chronicles 12:38; see also jer- emiah 32:39; Ezekiel 11:19; acts 4:32)
the heart is the place where god works, and there all conscious unity resides; when once the spirit of god is in the heart he will bring spirit, soul and body into perfect unity. Other powers can do this beside god, viz. : the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world can give a conscious unity to mans heart; so can the flesh and the devil. The man who gives way to sensuality, to worldliness, to devilishness, or to covetousness, is per- fectly satisfied without god. God calls that idolatry.
We have to watch and see with what our hearts are getting into unity; what our hearts are bringing our souls and bodies into line with. O lord our god, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us.