2.2 Does God Have a Heart?
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
You have looked at some of the New Testament phrases containing the word “heart” and made some attempt to arrive at a definition of what the word “heart,” as used by the writers of the New Testament, might mean. Almost all of those verses speak of the human heart. What about God? Does God have a heart? The center of Heart is purpose and desire. Does God have a purpose? Does God want so very much something He does not have?
Impassibility
A reader of my letters mentioned in an email to me a teaching he had heard called “the impassibility of God,” an idea that claims that God cannot suffer. “Impassibility” means no passion, no suffering, no desire – not at all the One I know. The first characteristic of love is that love suffers long. If God does not know suffering, then God is NOT love. If God does not know suffering, then the Spirit of God does not labor with us in the cries of His/our travail. If God does not know suffering, then Jesus does not bear our griefs and carry our sorrows.
Kardia
Let’s bring in some New Testament uses of the word “kardia.”
-
I have great sorrow and continual grief in my kardia. - Brethren, my kardia’s desire and prayer to God . . . (Romans 9:2 & 10:1).
-
For out of much affliction and anguish of kardia I wrote to you, with many tears. . . - We have spoken openly to you, our kardia is wide open (2 Corinthians 2:4 & 6:11).
-
That Christ may dwell in your kardias through faith (Ephesians 3:17a).
BUT – there are two times only in the entire New Testament, where a kardia, a heart, is ascribed to God.
After My own Heart
And when He had removed him (Saul), He (God) raised up for them David as king, to whom also He gave testimony and said, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own kardia, who will do all My will.” Acts 13:22
A man after My own heart. There are few statements in all of Scripture that are more overwhelmingly profound, more penetratingly meaningful than this one. Let this word bring you to tears. – A man after My own heart.
There is another line in the New Testament, found at the very core of John’s gospel, by which we understand what this incredible claim God makes might mean.
Seeing the Father
He who has seen Me has seen the Father. - Jesus the Christ. And Jesus bases this claim on these words: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? - Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me.
All of our knowledge of God is based on this one fact of absolute reality. God is invisible. God is NOT seen or known in heaven or earth. The ONE time God became visible, entering into His creation to be seen and known, God appeared ONLY as a Man. A Man on His knees to serve.
Knowing the Father
And all of our knowledge of God, all that we live by, is that we can know the Father by one means alone. We know the Father by knowing this Man, the Lord Jesus. This Man who lives in our hearts. This Man who has taken us entirely upon Himself. This Man who now lives as us.
We cannot know anything about God except we see Jesus as He IS. John said that we are just like Him as we see Him as He IS. There is no other way for us to know God, or even to know anything at all about God as He really is. We know God only by heart. When I look at my heart, the only thing I ever see is Jesus.
Lowly of Heart
There is one other reference in the New Testament that indicates to us the nature and reality of God’s heart. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:29).
We know that the only time and place in heaven or earth through which God showed Himself is Jesus. Jesus made God visible. When Jesus says, “I am gentle and lowly in heart,” we know that we are hearing the Father say, “I am gentle and lowly in heart.” God is lowly of heart.
Lowly
What on earth does this mean? God gives us one context clue only concerning any definition of His heart. That context clue is the adjective “lowly.”
Now, the Greek word here is tapeinos, which means:
-
Humble, lowly, in position or spirit (in a good sense). (biblehub.com)
From Strong’s:
-
Cast down, humble, lowly; depressed, i.e. (figuratively) humiliated (in circumstances or disposition) – base, cast down, humble, of low degree (estate), lowly.
The dictionary writers want to limit that word to humans, how we see ourselves in relationship to God and to each other. No one considers it as a word God uses to describe Himself.
To the Humble
Both James and Peter use this same word when quoting a text from Solomon. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
We do not think of God as a BIG creature doing things to other creatures. God is omnipresent Spirit, All Now Here and Personal in all things at all times. Everything comes out of God. Evil happens only when a created being turns his or her back on God, yet none can actually “depart” from God as if God is finite. Grace is the gift of God in Person in us. God cannot give Himself to arrogance and self-seeking. God gives Himself only to those who allow Him to be their heart.
Esteem Others
In lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself (Philippians 2:3b). The word “lowliness of mind” is the same word that God used to define for us the nature and essence of His heart. Does God esteem you and me better than Himself? God does not ask us to live by a lowly heart that esteems others better because we are “low” from a human perspective. He asks us to live by Himself, to live in and out from His own Heart. We could just as easily say: In God, let each esteem others better. The God who lives in us is always lifting others up.
Jesus as Heart
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Is Jesus the revelation of the Father’s Heart? Is knowing Jesus knowing the Father’s Heart? If Christ lives in our hearts, does the Father’s Heart live in our hearts? Do we know God only by heart? Placing God as Heart inside of us, a Heart that is gentle and lowly of mind, causes us to see and know God quite differently from anything we have ever considered. God does not “make us do”; rather, Christ lives in us as all that the Father reveals Himself to be.
The Heart of God
The purpose of this brief lesson is simply to place in front of ourselves the concept of God’s Heart, that God does have a Heart, that God dreams of things that He desires, that God is tender and kind, gentle and lowly of Heart. Everywhere I look, I find so little interest in God’s Heart, in what God wants, in how God feels about things. So few care about God.
May I suggest that knowing God begins, not with what we humans define as the high and the exalted. – Knowing God begins with lowliness of heart, with caring about God’s Heart, with wanting Him to win the thing He desires and longs for, the thing He has paid everything to gain for Himself.