CHAPTER 1 – OPENING OF HEART – part 1
Nowhere in the Word of God, the Bible, do we find that our Salvation begins or depends on our mind. The Lord is not discarding our mind but brings our heart to the forefront as the most important organ of our soul concerning our life and Salvation. The Lord speaks continuously about human heart and describes it in every necessary angle – what is its natural condition, what it does and what are the consequences of its actions or inactions.
A truly thick book could be written just about this one topic. Should you begin to read the Word of God from the very beginning, you would need much time just to find all the references to the heart of man and then ponder all their significance and practical meaning. It is almost impossible to absorb all that Our God tells us about our heart in His Word.
I will bring only few but outstanding examples concerning our heart, how the Lord sees it, explains it and deals with it. We will see that the heart and will have a clear predominance in the Word of God and that mind follows them in the Salvation process with a certain delay.
ALL MAIN STAGES OF OUR SALVATION DEPEND FIRST ON OUR HEART AND NOT ON OUR MIND! THE LORD REJECTED OUR MIND WITH ITS KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL, ITS THOUGHTS, IMAGINATIONS, REASONING EVEN ITS UNDERSTANDING AS THE WAY TO OUR SALVATION AND CHOSE THE WAY OF FAITH AND OF OUR HEART. (GEN. 3:22-24// EPH. 2:8// PS. 94:11)
ALL THE MAIN ISSUES OF OUR LIFE, AND THUS OF OUR SALVATION, ARE DWELLING IN OUR HEART AND NOT IN OUR MIND. (PR. 4:23)
It is absolutely vital for us to see and understand the important role of our heart in our Salvation, in dealing with the Lord and with each other within His Church. We do not, of course, talk about our physical heart pumping our blood but about the deepest organ of our soul located in the navel area of our body and not among ribs. (Jn. 7:38) Where our physical life began, there also our soulish and spiritual life began.
HEART AND OUR SALVATION
When man ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he disobeyed God through reasoning and lust. His soul became corrupted with that sin and new knowledge, which was not intended for man to have. Though the knowledge itself is not sin, disobedience is. Mind, which is the seat of intellect, is the organ containing knowledge in its memory, understanding and reasoning power. Furthermore, man died as foretold by God (Gen. 2:17), which means, he was separated from the Life, Holiness and conscious Presence of God in his soul. DEATH ALWAYS REPRESENTS SEPARATION AND NEVER CESSATION OF EXISTENCE.
Therefore, God rejected man’s mind, man’s intellect, psychology, intellectual knowledge, thoughts, reasoning, imaginations and intellectual understanding as the way to man’s future Salvation!
Firstly, God chose His FAITH giving the measure of it to every man (Rom. 12:3) so that every man, pagan, could believe in the Saviour and become a believer. No man is born to this world as a believer. This “initial measure of faith” is not to be confused with the “gift of faith” (1Cor. 12:9), which is given to them that are already believers (1Cor. 12:2) and need it to go through their young spiritual age. This is the same with the “initial measure of the Spirit” by which the pagan who believed and confessed Christ Jesus (Rom. 10:9) was sealed (Eph. 1:13). Then, an additional “gift of the Spirit” and His Power is given to him, who is already redeemed and baptized being willing to die to his old life, to continue in his Salvation (Acts 2:38// Heb. 6:1), which, without the Power of the Spirit, is an absolute impossibility.
Secondly, God chose our HEART to be the recipient of His faith, also the interpreter and performer of that faith. God could then speak to us, communicate with us and have fellowship with us in our HEART. And just as God gave the “initial measure of faith” to our spirit (Rom. 12:3) to enable us to believe, be redeemed and born-again in our SPIRIT, so also, after our Redemption, He gave us an “initial measure of the Spirit” into our HEART (2Cor. 1:22) to enable us to BE BORN-AGAIN ALSO IN OUR HEART AND THUS IN OUR WHOLE SOUL! The Lord’s faith then becomes “our faith” and has to be believed and interpreted to our soul by our HEART. No man can obtain his Salvation through his mind bypassing the heart. (see[7])
AN INTELLECTUAL BELIEVER IS NOT A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER BECAUSE NEITHER FAITH, NOR NEW BIRTH COME FROM OR THROUGH THE MIND!
When the Gospel is preached, it points to THAT FAITH-REALITY in man’s conscience and the word of THAT FAITH gets into man’s HEART and mouth. Then, when he speaks out THAT FAITH with his mouth believing in his HEART that God raised Christ from the dead, that man shall be saved. (Rom. 10:8,9) Man is not required to use his mind, intellectual reasoning, understanding or other thinking about Salvation. Man’s reasoning would, in fact, stand in the way of his Salvation… as it does in every unsaved pagan. True?
“For with the HEART MAN BELIEVES unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Rom. 10:10) No mind, no thinking, no reasoning, no psychology, no speculation, no intellect.
MIND CANNOT HAVE FAITH! Mind has logic and logical beliefs-convictions. It has no access to faith and can never understand the faith, which the Lord builds, deposits and finishes in man’s conscience and then in his heart. (Heb. 12:2) Hence, God does not deal with or speak to our mind directly until it is renewed by His Spirit and thus enabled to receive and comprehend God’s thoughts. (Is. 55:8,9) This comes in a much more matured state of the believer.
Shall we then say that our mind has no importance? Of course not. Our mind is as important as our heart and will, which form the (inward) trinity of our soul. God is a Trinity – Three in One (1Jn. 5:7) and man was created in God’s Image (Gen. 1:26), so he is also a trinity. In fact, man is a triple trinity: outwardly – body, soul and spirit (1Thess. 5:23), which are one man; inwardly – heart, mind and will, which are one soul, and – conscience, intuition and communion, which are one spirit. (see also[7])
But our Salvation does not start or continue with our mind. Even the RENEWAL OF OUR OLD MIND INTO A NEW ONE, SPIRITUAL ONE, IS DONE THROUGH OUR HEART. Our heart must first see, believe and interpret the faith, which the Lord builds within it showing the state of our mind. It must also see where do our thoughts, imaginations, reasoning and understanding come from and what spirits are influencing or even ruling our mind. Only then can our will decide to get rid of any offensive or evil spirit and darkness from our mind. This is how (the spirit of) our mind is renewed. (Eph. 4:23). This will be discussed later on.
When Apostle Paul tells Timothy to “study to show thyself approved… rightly dividing the Word of truth” (2Tim. 2:15), he knows that Timothy must study and understand the Word first with his heart and its faith, pondering and meditating on the Word. His mind is not set aside but is set as dependent on his heart and faith.
MIND ALONE IS INCAPABLE OF GRASPING THE WORD OF GOD IN ITS SPIRITUAL MEANING, ITS DEPTH OR HEIGHT.
On the other hand, our heart may be renewed, recreated without the assistance of our mind. God can create a new, clean heart even in a person who may be intellectually inferior or disabled. However, if the heart remains wicked and refuses God, then even the most brilliant and knowledgeable mind can do nothing for that man.
What is then the practical outcome of the above facts? I believe, the Lord will graciously show us more of His Light on the next pages. We will start with our natural heart, mind and will and how the Lord sees their spiritual conditions according to His Word and not according to man’s beliefs, assumptions, thoughts or speculations. We will then proceed with the new heart, mind and will and how the Lord conducts their respective renewal, recreation, revival. We will discuss three main verses in the Letter to Ephesians pertinent to this process of renewal of the three organs of our soul.
This renewal of our soul completes our Full Salvation since our spirit is already governed by the Spirit of the Lord and our mortal body will be renewed, or recreated at our resurrection. This process is described more fully and in more detail in our booklet “Truth about Salvation[7]”.
(To be continued next week in part 2)
brother Hanola
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