Someone once said, ‘The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.’ Our sins do not make us sinful. Rather, we commit sins because, at the very centre of our lives, we are sinful. Sin has invaded the inner recesses of our personalities. Jesus said that it’s not what goes into a person that defiles him, it’s what comes out of him. The corrupted streams that flow out of us come from a corrupted heart:
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person (Matt. 15:19-20).
Sin’s haven is the human heart. Martin Luther came to see this, and it caused him to say, ‘I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals.’ The easiest thing we are tempted to do in discipleship is to deal with the things we can see, and we can see behaviour.
Focus on the heart
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus repeatedly focused on the heart issue behind the wrong behaviours addressed by God’s law. Christ’s focus was not on the outward behaviours but the internal heart motives behind them. Since the Word of God is unique and sufficient and is our final authority in faith and practice, we must always take those we disciple to Scripture, and contrast our heart attitudes with the attitudes that glorify God. Those who learn about their heart and their inward struggles have a real sense of how profoundly they need God and his grace. Their focus is not on the external but on what’s going on in their hearts.
How do we explain that those with whom we have invested hours upon hours of intense discipleship, and yet, when left to their own devices, continually seem to make the wrong choices and fall into serious sin, yet others pick up the baton and excel under the challenge of living for Christ? The answer is the heart! Why do some individuals go back to their besetting sins? Because their hearts were never completely gripped in such a way that there was only room in their life for King Jesus!
We cannot change others, no matter how great our pastoral gifts are or how amazing our expositional ministry may be. The transformation of the human heart is exclusively an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit. Only when salvation has truly occurred in a person’s life will we begin to see them hand their lives over to the Lordship of Jesus. We can’t change people, our programmes can’t change people, our love can’t change people. We can’t even change ourselves. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can do that! Only his love can melt hard hearts. If we can’t change people, and if they can’t change themselves, then we must hand them over to the great lover of souls. We must pray that he would hold mastery over them, that he would change them from the inside out.
Behaviour is the fruit of heart change
If the heart is the root, then behaviour is the fruit. Fruit sins are defined as the behavioural expressions of an inner heart condition (Gal. 5:19). Like apples hanging from a tree, these expressions of sin are dependent upon the root. Consequently, removing the obvious fruit will not change the identity of the tree. In human terms, the modification of behaviour does not change the character of a man or woman. Only by impacting the root can the fruit be altered (Matt. 7:16-18).
Since fruit sins are visible, repentance often centres only upon what has been revealed or discovered. Yet unless the heart issues are addressed (root sins), the behaviour will likely return in its original or modified form. At the root of these issues lies a much more insidious problem grounded in one’s identity, integrity and character. Many common and compromising root sins include idolatry, unbelief, selfishness, pride, unforgiveness, anger, wrath and bitterness. Until the fullness of the heart is addressed, these core vulnerabilities will continue to yield behavioural sin.
Behaviour change is important, but altered conduct has never saved a single soul. Saved, regenerate people, however, will, in time, demonstrate behavioural change as a byproduct of their transformation.
The Lord challenges Israel with the futility of any effort to change. God compares their status to the unchangeable colour of a foreigner’s skin and the spotted fur of a wild beast. God proclaims that without his intervention, the capacity to ‘do good’ is impossible for those ‘accustomed to doing evil’. Can a leopard change its spots? No… but God can. For the external to change, the internal must be supernaturally remade. Paul reminds us:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away, behold, new things have come (2 Cor. 5:17).
As a correct view of God emerges, so emerges a correct view of self. Conduct that was acceptable and even loved is now hated. One’s character, previously defined by the wilful, repetitive practice of sin, is replaced by an identity in Christ. Affections and worship begin to change; will is surrendered; and a quest for purity ensues. Those destined for damnation are rescued by grace. In the midst of God’s miraculous work, sanctification occurs (1 Cor. 6:9-11).
Only in the hopelessness of our sinful plight, with the glory of God in view, can we cry out in repentance leading to salvation or restoration. Realise that even repentance is beyond the scope of man; it is a gift of God. Change is initiated and finished by the ‘author and perfecter of faith’ (Heb. 12:2). Only through his work can we apply the past tense to our identity, ‘such were some of you’ (1 Cor. 6:11).
As my old pastor used to say, ‘A change of heart will lead to a change of conduct, resulting in all glory to God!’
