About head and heart

How many times have we heard it in recent decades? "Faith should not be a matter of your head, but of your heart!". We have been pretty much bombarded with it, but we have come to believe it! While it is not true!

Not just your head

Faith is not just a matter of your head, of your thinking. If you but know the things of faith, it is enough. That is certainly not true. You can, so to speak, know the entire Bible by heart and know a great many text places exactly, that alone is not enough. You could also explain a lot about the meaning of the bible and all kinds of chapters and text places. But even that is not enough; if all that is only in the head it is not enough. Even if you believe everything the Bible says and have no doubts about what it says, it is still not enough. In that sense, knowledge of the head is insufficient to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not just your heart

But if it's only in your heart, then it's not good either. Of course it depends a bit on what you mean by 'heart', but let's just say that it at least does something with your feelings deep inside. If your Christianity has anything to do with warm feelings for the Lord Jesus and God the Father for the work accomplished on Calvary, then that's fine! Love for the Lord Jesus. That is not your own love, but that is the love of God that the Holy Spirit has poured out into it (Romans 5:5).

But then you will also need to read, understand and do the Word of God. After all, that's how the Lord Jesus Himself formulated it in, for example, John 14:15 and 21. And a chapter later He says in verse 10: “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love” and not just like that, but “as I have kept the commandments of My Father and abide in His love” (John 15:10).

That's fantastic! Loving the Lord Jesus always goes hand in hand with reading and doing His Word. And it is the Holy Spirit who does both things:

• He has given you the love of God (Romans 5:5)
• He gives you insight into the Word (“He will take it of Mine and declare it to you,” John 16:13-15).

Not the doctrine, but the Lord

A variation on the false opposition head-heart is the saying “it's not about the doctrine, but about the Lord”. Of course the gospel is only about one Person, the Lord Jesus. But He is not "sold separately" so to speak. With Him also comes His Word; and the two are inextricably linked. The written Word and the living Word belong together!

Drawing near to God

On this site we discuss two ways in which people can approach their God or their gods. They are typified by the picture below.

The way that leads away from God is that where the mind is turned off in order to 'experience God'.

When the cross of Christ is important in our minds and hearts, we will be able to draw near to God and make spiritual sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving.