Our second step into our Salvation is to start opening our heart to the Lord.
Our heart is the most important organ in our SOUL where our Redemption begins and our Salvation ends. The most important organ in our BODY is, however, our tongue! Because what our tongue speaks brings to us salvation or damnation, justification or condemnation and life or death! (Rom. 10:10/ Mt. 12:37/ Pr. 18:21) While man looks at the external appearance and judges thereby, the Lord looks at the heart and judges according to it (1Sam. 16:7). The Lord counsels us to keep our heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life (Pr. 4:23). The Lord also describes our heart saying: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). This diagnosis is valid also at our Redemption. Despite this tragic evaluation, the next important fact about our heart is that only the heart can receive faith from the Lord and that from our conscience, which is the organ of our SPIRIT (see Truth about Salvation, diagrams). Only the heart can understand that faith, can keep it in our soul and compel our will to decide to do that faith. Based on the above facts, it may be easy to imagine that the greatest spiritual fights are taking place precisely in the heart. Finally, even the renewal of the spirit of our mind (Eph. 4:23) and the work of the Spirit of God in our will (Phil. 2:13) could not be successfully performed without the heart. Thus, the faith in the heart is needful for the working out of our salvation in our entire soul… with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12b).
We can thus say that the heart stands in the foreground of the Salvation of man and without it, and without our tongue, man cannot be saved and that despite the unfavorable diagnosis in Jeremiah 17:9. Though this Word of God is truthful and applies to the heart of every man, this fact is not the most important. The most important fact is whether that heart is open to the Lord or closed. Closed heart is a doomed heart because the Lord has no access into it (Rev. 3:20), hence, He cannot work in it, give to it new faith, which we absolutely need for our Salvation. After our Redemption and mainly after our baptism, Satan uses every means how to close our heart for the reception of any further faith and for the work of God’s Spirit in it, and how to keep it closed. He knows very well that the Salvation of our entire being depends on our heart. In addition, he will try to engage our head into our Christian life, which incessantly gathers in itself mental knowledge and we think that the more we know the more we are saved and the more we are acceptable to the Lord. This, of course, is a lie, a great deception from the devil and almost all the Church fell victim to it. Hence, thanks to this deception, almost all the Church lives its Christianity in the head and not in the heart.
In order to really see the importance of an open heart, let us now consider the question of circumcision. Circumcision had, and has, for Jews an immense significance. It was the sign of their national unity, national existence and of the fact, that they belong into the people of God according to the covenant which God gave to Abraham (Acts 7:8). If anyone did not have this sign on his body, he was completely outside of the Promises and the Covenant of God and he was not allowed to take part even in the feast of Pesach (Easter). Hence, without circumcision, Jewry would not exist. In the Old Testament everything existed physically, but at the same time, it had a spiritual meaning in the New Testament. The physical circumcision of a Jew represented the physical baptism of a Christian in water. Both were acts which lasted but a moment. But the physical circumcision of a Jew at the same time represented a spiritual circumcision of the heart of a Christian even though the spiritual circumcision is not an act, which lasts a moment, but it is a process, that lasts our whole earthly life. The spiritual circumcision of a Christian represents the crucifixion of his sinful flesh. Thus the Jew, who was not circumcised physically, had no part on the Promises and the Covenant of God, which means, he did not belong to God. The same with the Christian, who was not circumcised spiritually, crucified in his sinful flesh, does not belong to Christ (Gal. 5:24).
We must be “circumcised” in our heart, our feelings, our emotions, our uncontrollable desires, our apprehensions, in our fears, indecisiveness, etc. There are too many Christians, which in their Christian life are totally controlled by their soulish feelings, emotional inclinations, fears, worries, uncertainty, etc. For them it is bondage and they cannot get out of it, therefore, they suffer under the influence of these soulish powers and are their victims.
We must be circumcised in our mind, our intellect, reasonings, assessments, explaining, arguments, discussions, etc. Difficulties and problems with many Christians are precisely in that all Christianity they have in their heads where their stubbornness, mental skillfulness, intellectual dominance, argumentative temperament and other mental factors dwell as well. Their head stands in the way of their heart to open and receive the Lord’s Light and Truth. Their selfishness has various forms: self-expressing, self-assurance about their knowledge, self-liking, self-captivation, self-regret, self-consciousness, self-satisfaction, self-love, self-elevation, etc. Without an open heart, even the mind cannot renew itself because, even for this work, faith is necessary and the mind does not understand faith and does not receive it.
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To be continued next week
brother Hanola
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