We've been talking about the importance of the heart and biblical theology. What we've found out is that the book of Proverbs doesn't teach us how to make right decisions. The Book of Proverbs actually teaches us how to become the right kind of person, who then has the capacity to be able to make right decisions. The majority of our decisions come flowing out of our heart and that forms our character. In You Are What You Love by James K. Smith, he wrote, “Discipleship, we might say, is a way to curate your heart, to be attentive to and intentional about what you love.” How then do you change your heart? How do you even begin? 

In the early 400s, Augustine of Hippo debated this man named Pelagias, who believed that trying hard enough would result in character change. But Augustine said absolutely not because people are curved in on themselves naturally, their heart is filled with things that they love and these loves are out of order. (Augustine called them disordered loves.) Some 10 centuries later, Martin Luther entered an Augustinian monastery around 1505, where he realized, as Augustine believed and taught, that he was curved in on himself and full of these disordered loves. 

I've been reading this biography about Martin Luther, and this view of himself certainly comes out in his confession times with his vicar, his superior, Johann von Staupitz. Staupitz would complain because Luther would enter into these six hour sessions of confession on a regular basis. It was because he understood how deeply curved inward he was and he was trying to find a way through that. Staupitz once said to Luther, “Martin, you confess everything. You think even your own fart is a sin.” What Luther confronts over and over in those days is that we have to change our heart but we don't have the capacity to. Repentance, he said, is not just for the bad things you’ve done, it’s also for the good things you’ve done that were’ connected to poor or self-interested motivations in your heart. One could go through all the motions of loving God, yet discover, in the end, that all that was done supposedly for him, was actually done out love for self or to further self-interest. 

What's the answer then? The Scottish minister, Thomas Chalmers, wrote this about the heart in the 1800s: “Its desire for one particular object may be conquered; but as to its desire for having some one object or other, this is unconquerable….” The heart must have something to cling to. The only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is the expulsive power of a new one. In other words, the only way that your heart will change is to find something more attractive and more beautiful. 

Let me ask you something: Do you think of the gospel as beautiful? I'd love for you to think about that today. Have this conversation with God in prayer. Do you see the gospel as pragmatic or do you see the gospel as something beautiful that not only addresses your sinfulness but brings the beauty of forgiveness. Do you accept it as an invitation into grace and mercy because of the cross? 

Prayer for Today
Father in heaven, it's as simple as seeing the beauty of the gospel. May it strike us today that this is the beauty of Jesus. As we're coming off of an Easter weekend, may what he did on the cross captivates us and sink more deeply into our hearts. We pray for this In Jesus name, amen.