1.1 Jesus by Heart
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
I want to thank you for the honor you have given me to share with you concerning this new life you have just embraced, walking together with the Lord Jesus Christ. You stated that you have just received the Lord Jesus as your Savior and are overwhelmed with the joy of knowing your sins all washed away.
Yet you also said that you had never before heard of the Bible or of Christianity or even of Jesus Himself, that, knowing nothing about this God with whom you had come into agreement, you desired to be taught all things that God says about this Jesus now living in your heart.
With great joy I would do just that through this little book.
Where We Begin. Paul said that Christ lives in your heart through faith (Ephesians 3:17). This is where we must begin.
Now, you noticed that the title of this book is “Knowing Jesus as He Is.” Paul also said that as we see Jesus as He is, we are transformed from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). That means that knowing Jesus is a big deal, something that does not happen overnight. Knowing Jesus grows inside of us step by step, transforming us in surprising and unexpected ways, all of them glorious.
I want to begin this introduction of Jesus alive inside of you by showing you this Jesus in two intertwined ways. One of those ways is knowing Jesus by heart and the other is knowing Jesus by Paul.
Paul’s Gospel. You see, knowing Jesus must begin with Paul and the several letters he wrote to different groups of Christians. Paul is a very interesting fellow, and you will get to know him a lot better even as you learn of Jesus.
Paul, to say the least, is exuberant, and as a writer, he goes all over the place, assuming that his readers are staying with him, even though we often aren’t. And Paul talks about himself even more than he talks about Jesus, which is a lot. This tendency of Paul, always weaving Jesus together with himself, is very important. Paul is excessive, and part of his “excess” is his claim that his version of the gospel, different from what some of Jesus’ other disciples taught, is the only true gospel (Galatians 1).
Paul’s Jesus. Another part of Paul’s excessiveness is that he calls Jesus by many different names or phrases, Jesus or Christ or the Lord Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus – and so on. If you would look at Romans 8:11, you will see that to Paul, “Jesus” and “Christ” were referring entirely to the same one Person in all that He is. That means that, throughout the Bible, the name “Jesus” and the name “Christ” are always freely interchangeable.
So, when Paul says that Christ lives in your heart through faith, we are free to say “Jesus” as well as “Christ.” But because of Paul’s great claim that his gospel rules, we must know Jesus as Paul knew Him.
No Mental Images. We know Jesus only by heart, as the One who lives, for real and in Person, inside our own hearts.
One reason it is so important for us to begin with Paul’s Jesus, this One who dwells inside of our hearts in all that He is, is that some prefer to think of Jesus as an image held in their intellects of a “heavenly” Being far away from them. Conjuring up a mental image in ignorance of Jesus as He is cannot be a good idea. Stay away from such a practice.
You see, everything I will share with you in this book and everything that is part of knowing Jesus as He is, not only begins in this one line, but remains in this knowing forever. Christ lives in your heart through faith.
Receiving Jesus. Although we want to know what God says in the Bible, and even more, what God means by what He says, we never treat what we read in the Bible as mental information. You are, personally and intimately, dealing directly with the Lord Jesus Himself through these words.
The first thing we must do with a word like Ephesians 3:17 is to believe that God is telling us the truth. The second thing we must do is receive Jesus through these words. Talk to the Lord in this way. “Lord Jesus, You say that You live inside my heart and that You enter into my heart through faith. I don’t know what that means or how You could be inside of me, but I believe that You are telling me the truth. Jesus, I receive You alive inside my heart, through faith.”
All of Jesus. Having received Jesus into us through believing these words, let’s look a little further at what these words might mean. Jesus lives in my heart through faith. First, we have the main phrase of the sentence, the subject/verb – Jesus lives. Then comes the where – in my heart, followed by the how – through faith.
When we say Jesus or Christ, we are speaking of all that Jesus is as He is. We have no idea what “ALL” of Jesus means, but we never think that “Christ” means only part of our Savior. So look again at your heart and say, “Jesus, I don’t know what it means, but I do know that ALL that You are in Person and in glory, that You are living, right here, inside my heart.”
At Home. What, then, is Jesus doing inside your heart? The action verb is to live or to dwell, and it means being at home. The Lord Jesus Christ in all that He is dwells at home in your heart. Your heart is His house, and even more than house, His home.
Now, we must add here something Jesus said as found in Hebrews 13:5. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Again, we never stack ideas up in our minds, rather, we must believe what Jesus is saying and receive His words into us. “Lord Jesus, no matter what I do, say, think, or feel, I know that You are ALWAYS dwelling right here, inside my heart.”
Inside Of. Then – where is Jesus? Jesus lives in your heart.
We have to start with the word “in.” “In” is almost the largest word in the English language, taking up more space in an exhaustive dictionary than just about any other word. “In” is also just about the largest word in the Bible and the most important word of the gospel. Both Paul and John made use of it innumerable times in relationship to God, to Jesus, and to us.
“In” means “inside of,” a more complete rendition that I prefer because it makes this little word stronger, as we must. Even more, we could say, “inside all the sphere of.” In other words what is IN, is truly IN and IN all.
A Most Literal Word. More than that, the word “in” is about the most literal word in the Bible. When find “in” inside a phrase like Ephesians 3:17, Christ lives IN your heart through faith, we take that “in” to be literal and absolute, spirit, soul, and body, heaven and earth. In means “in,” and it means ALL that “in” means.
In what? – In your heart. Look at your heart – you are looking at Jesus, for that is where He lives. What is the heart of a believer in Jesus? That is a big question, one as large as knowing Jesus Himself as He is. Knowing your own heart and knowing Jesus as He is will grow in you at the same pace.
What Is Faith? Then Paul said, “through faith.” Faith is always the channel through which the Lord Jesus enters into us.
You see, we never think of Jesus as “static” or “unmoving.” Jesus LIVES, that means living energy. Yet it is not that the Lord Jesus Himself has to “come back into us,” rather, it is the Words that He speaks that are always coming into our hearts through the passageway of faith.
And what is this faith? The faith through which Jesus enters into us by every Word He speaks is two things. First, it is the simple human decision to believe that God is telling us the truth. And second, it is the willingness to receive these Words that God speaks as Jesus Himself.
Where Jesus IS. You might think, “I don’t know if I have enough faith.” You don’t ever need to think such a thing. Jesus is the One who dwells in your heart, and He gives you all the faith that you will ever need. He gives you His own faith.
And so the simple prayers you spoke (and always speak these little prayers out loud) are the very faith through which this simple line, “Jesus lives in my heart through faith,” becomes real and alive inside of you. You will never know Jesus as He is apart from knowing Him at home inside your own heart. Whatever Jesus is, that’s where He is, and how.
We know Jesus as He is only by heart.