The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it? Jer17.9 NKJV
Popular advertisements will often make use of the before and after shot--before the diet and after the diet, before working out and after. The before shots can be rather ugly and since the vast majority of us are on the before side of things, we are regularly reminded of our poor and wretched physical state.
God’s Word has many such passages which describe our sinful spiritual state. But we do well to mark the fact, that verses such as the one above, describe us before Christ, and not after He has entered our heart. God is healing the heart of all who are in Jesus and while there remains some sense of that old desperately wicked person, the Christian has been given a new heart and with it a desire to love and serve God. We may correctly say that before Christ, our heart was indeed deceitful and wicked but this is no longer the case after Christ. Or it is at least not the whole picture. He has entered the heart. His presence is regenerating us into new creatures. He asks us in light of these changes to renew our minds. Apart of that renewal is to stop seeing ourselves as that old man, the before shot if you will, and to start seeing ourselves re-created in His likeness. “As a man thinks within himself, so he is.” One final thought here. If one is still in that before Christ condition, Jesus warns how great is that darkness, one so great that only the light of His presence can penetrate it. If you doubt, cry out. 7/2/07 ts
Just me trying to be honest with God.
