If We're Honest, We're Skeptical Of The Heart of Christ
Honest confession from those who struggle to believe that Christ really is who He says He is
Above: The “Mirror of Erised” from Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone
Introduction
Does the heart of Jesus grow old to us? We wouldn’t dare admit it but evidence from our own lives shows that we can gravitate away from delighting in “what animates Him most deeply”.1 We have seasons of life where we echo the words of Robert Robinson (1735-1790), “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.”
We drink down the polluted waters of self-love, self-acceptance, self-law, and self-forgiveness in today’s world. These billboards aren’t only marketed in the unbelieving world but also market themselves to the church. Believing these mottos, our conscience becomes more gripped by Law-ish-ness than the heart of Christ.2 We don’t like looking extra nos (i.e. outside of us). Like the “Mirror of Erised”3 in Harry Potter, we would rather sit in front of the mirror and see our backwards desire for self while rotting away to our own death.
As a result we ooze the venom of self-worship. When we gravitate away from Christ and toward self we become more like the ancient self-worshipping Serpent than we do as image-bearers of God. We won’t admit this plainly but our thought life and affections testify to this.
When the heart of Jesus grows old to us we begin to grow cold toward Him.
The Lingering Sinful Propensity To Use Christ For Self-Worship
We ought to be unapologetic with our stance of looking far more to Christ than ourselves (1 Cor. 2:1-2; 2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 1:18). If we don’t we’re not being Christian (Jn. 17:3; Rom. 11:36). This is not to neglect necessary self-examination (2 Cor. 13:5) but rather puts it in its proper order and proportion. It helps us avoid falling again into the original temptation: “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5).
Thomas Goodwin has said that Christians at times “have been too much carried away with the [principles] of Christ in their own hearts, and not after Christ Himself.” Michael Reeves, in his Foreword to Goodwin’s Puritan Paperback The Heart of Christ, says, “Goodwin wanted us ‘first to look wholly out of our selves unto Christ’, and believed that the reason we don’t is, quite simply, because of the ‘barrenness’ of our knowledge of Him.”4
Because we have taken more time to obsess over ourselves than Christ we prolong the plague of self-worship. We must drink more deeply of the living waters of the knowledge of Christ.
The Lingering Sinful Propensity To Doubt The Heart of Christ
One of the central aspects of Christ is His heart. The heart is “what gets us out of bed in the morning and what we daydream about as we drift off to sleep. It is our motivation headquarters. The heart, in biblical terms, is not part of who we are but the center of who we are. Our heart is what defines and directs us.”5
Yet, when we look at His heart—as He describes it—we often come away with similar thoughts as Reeves. “When reading [Goodwin’s The Heart of Christ], I find myself continually asking ‘Is Goodwin serious? Can this really be true?’”6
Is this not what our self-obsessed, sin-affected conscience often says? The awakened believer now sees their sin (at least in part). They grow in trembling at the holiness of God. And in these moments when we lose sight of Christ we fall into despair of conscience, or Anfechtungen, and doubt that He really is who He is toward us. Even as believers who have been freed from sin (Rom. 6), we still fight against the lingering remnants that affect the total of our being. Total depravity is no longer the predominant power but it is a mortally wounded enemy that remains in remnant form (Eph. 2:1-10; 1 Jn. 1:8-2:2). A viscious front of this ongoing battle is the fight against the sin of unbelief.7
The Lingering Sinful Propensity To Dwell On Thoughts Of Unbelief
This produces several thoughts such as: “Aren’t we secretly afraid of embracing His heart because we trust ourselves and our thoughts of what He must be like more than Him? Aren’t we covertly fearful of being let down? Can He really be this way toward me and all my heinous sin?”8
But if one really thinks about it, shouldn’t this very thought actually give evidence to the fact that His sinless heart really is as He says it is? The reason why we’re skeptical and suspicious is because all we’ve known is a life gripped by sin or still possessing the remnant of total depravity (including sin still affecting our thinking and reasoning).9 The reason why we can believe Jesus’ own description of His heart is because of His sinlessness. He not only can tell no lies but He also has all the capacity to have such a gentle and lowly heart (Mt. 11:29).
Commenting on Matthew 11:29, Dane Ortlund says, “And when Jesus tells us what animates Him most deeply, what is most true of Him—when He exposes the innermost recesses of His being—what we find there is: gentle and lowly.”10 Ortlund helps us wrestle this truth in the deepest and most tender part of our conscience. God’s Word—which is why we must start firm upon the doctrine of inerrancy, inspiration, and authority—declares to us with all the Sovereign authority of the one Sovereign Throne that Jesus is who He really is. O conscience! Who are you to say “no” to this Throne?
Despite our sins—whatever they are and whatever they could be. Despite our suffering—whatever has happened or whatever could happen. Absolutely whatsoever we do or whatsoever is done to us, one thing is true about Jesus when He is face to face with us as we really are: He is gentle and lowly.
“But, What About?”
Do your best to fight against the “But, what about…” thoughts. Without taking away the simplicity of His divine nature nor the other necessary attributes of His humanity. Without neglecting or watering down the nature of sin nor the necessity of gospel obedience.11 Without silencing any other part of Holy Scripture, this is still the heart of Christ.
We don’t give Jesus permission to be who He is. We can’t tell Him how much He can be gracious. He just is who He is and He has authoritatively told us. And, He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8).
Therefore…
Let us delight to draw near to Him with our real sins, half-hearted obedience, not-enough-ness, objective guilt and subjective shame, unbelief and despair, our past, present, and future—let us draw near with everything that we are to everything that He is. Let us not grovel in doom and gloom. Let us not embrace the covert form of pride by only sinking one part of “Nothing But The Blood”.
How often our thoughts take on a Charlie Brown mindset and we only repeat, “What can wash away my sin?” We don’t finish the lyrics. We only sing to ourselves, “Nothing can for sin atone.” To not finish the song is to fall into Satan’s classic temptation of not believing that His grace really is true.
Dear Christian, by the power of the resurrected Christ through the Holy Spirit, get back up and believe! Stop your excuses. Stop your self-pity. Nothing can for sin atone, nothing but the Blood of Jesus! Come to Him. Come to Him as He really is.
This will be good news for us rather than harrowing, haunting, and hounding news. In the arms of this Christ we will find the grace and mercy for all times of need.
Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly (Crossway: Wheaton, IL 2020), p. 19.
This is not at all sympathizing with antinomians who do away with the Law (Rom. 6). Rather, this is revealing the internal dynamic of Christians who still have times when they live like they’re in the covenant of works (Rom. 5-7; Gal. 5). We gravitate toward the Law and overly observing our obedience in ways that misses the Law Giver and the Law Fulfiller. The tragic irony is that when we miss this Law Giver and Law Fulfiller we miss the Law and true obedience as well.
This was a brilliant piece of literature as J.K. Rowling spelled “desire” backwards to describe the mirror. The mirror in the novels was something that perverted and twisted one’s desires—made them backwards—and trapped its victims into an endless staring into the mirror. The mirror would eventually have them rot from the inside out. Like a mirror that shows us ourselves, when we obsess over ourselves we end up dying. This is a phenomenal picture of what idolatry—twisted and backwards desires—does to our hearts.
Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ (Banner of Truth: Carlisle, PA 2011), p. xi.
Ortlund, p. 18.
Ibid, p. xiii.
A great work on this is David Pitcairn’s classic book Christ Our Rest.
We need to beware the subtlety of sin in this last question. It really is a form of covert pride. It is the sin of pride to think that my sin can be too much for His grace. In a lot of ways, it is breaking the First Commandment of not having any other gods but God. This means we ought to first aim our repentance there rather than other hypothetical “what ifs”.
And sin, ultimately, is the worship of self rather than the worship of God. It’s what we call “pride”.
Ortlund, p. 19.
The best book on gospel obedience and sanctification is Walter Marshall’s book The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification.