The Heart of the Gospel
From Chapter 2 of The Christian's New Heart
by Frank Allnutt

What did the word “heart” mean when given by the Holy Spirit to men of faith to pen into Scripture so long ago? And what does this archaic term from Scripture have to do with Christianity at the dawn of the 21st Century?

God gave us His model of the heart to help us better understand who we are, our spiritual relationships, and why we think and behave as we do. If we don’t understand the intended meanings of “heart” then the heart of the New Covenant is plucked out and the Greatest Commandments are reduced to sentimental fluff.

Andrew Murray, the beloved 19th Century pastor, missionary, and author from South Africa, was concerned that, even in his day, some biblical words were succumbing to overuse and misuse, and that their original meanings were fading into obscurity:

It is often said that the great aim of the preacher should be to translate Scripture truth from its original form into the language and the thought of the present century, and so to make it understandable to our ordinary Christians. It is to be feared that the experiment will often do more harm than good. In the course of the translation the force of the original is easily lost. The result has been a race of Christians to whom the language and meaning of God’s Word is foreign. With the loss of the meaning of the Scripture words comes the loss of Scripture truth. When truth is lost, the God who spoke the words will be lost. It is imperative, therefore, that the Christian life should involve each person studying and understanding the very words which the Holy Spirit has spoken. (The Believer’s New Covenant, page 9).

God’s model of the heart: rediscovering what has been lost
“Heart” is one such word that has all but lost its meaning over time. The importance of understanding its various meanings cannot be overemphasized. If the meanings of heart are not understood, the doctrine the heart cannot be understood. And if the doctrine of the heart is not understood, then the Gospel itself and biblical doctrines of anthropology, psychology, and a host of other truths cannot be fully understood and appreciated. Consequently, the promises of the New Covenant cannot be fully understood, and if the New Covenant is not understood, then a believer cannot adequately understand and appreciate who he is and what it means to be a Christian.

There are several reasons why the meanings of “heart” are unknown by so many of today’s Christians:

Reason No. 1
The heart, and other “members of the body” mentioned in Scripture (such as in Romans 7:23) are regarded only as physical parts of the body. This view ignores Scripture’s use of the names of several members of the physical body to represent certain psychical/ spiritual aspects or functions of man. Here are both definitions of several members of the body:

Belly (Hebrew, beten; Greek, koilia): Though a physical area of man, it can refer to the seat of emotions (Job 32:14; Psalm 31:9) and thought (Job 15:35); the inner being (John 7:38); and self (Romans 16:18).

Bowels (Hebrew, meim; Greek, splagchna): A biological area in man, but also the seat of emotions (Isaiah 16:11; Jeremiah 31:20; Song of Solomon 5:4; Lamentations 1:20; 2 Corinthians 6:12; Philippians 1:8, 2:1; Colossians 3:12; Philemon 7); and self (Philemon 12, 20).

Reins or kidneys (Hebrew, kelayoth; Greek, nephros): Physical organs of the body, but also the seat of emotions (Proverbs 23:16); the mind (Psalm 16:7); the rationale inner self (Psalm 7:9, 26:2; Jeremiah 11:20, 12:2, 20:12; Revelation 2:23); and the conscience (Psalm 73:21).

Bones (Hebrew, estem): The physical meaning, but also the seat of emotions (Psalm 51:8; Proverbs 12:4, 15:30, 16:24; Isaiah 66:14; Jeremiah 20:9; Lamentations 1:13; Hababbuk 3:16).

Heart (Hebrew, leb, lebab; Greek, kardia): The biological organ, but predominantly man’s inner self, comprised of God-created, unique spiritual being (“hidden person of the heart” or “personhood,” 1 Peter 4:3), and the immaterial aspects of human nature (soul and spirit). About 1,000 verses of Scripture refer to the heart in psychical/spiritual terms, and we will examine scores of them in the course of our studies.

Reason No. 2
In contemporary teaching, the three primary models of the makeup of man generally ignore the biblical doctrine of the heart:

Dichotomy: This theory was popular in the early western Church, being advanced by Tertullian and Augustine. It holds that man consists of body (the “lower life”), and soul (the “higher life”).

Trichotomy: This theory was advanced by early Greek Church fathers. Their view was that man consists of body, soul, and spirit. According to this theory, which is rooted in Greek thought, the body gives man contact with his physical environment, and is his means for world and sensual consciousness. The soul is man’s means of self-consciousness and self-expression in society, and is regarded as the personality. The spirit is thought to be “dead” in natural man, because it is the seat of unregenerate man’s “spiritually dead” natural or Adamic life. The spirit is considered the essential person as well as the Christian’s means of God-consciousness.

Modified Trichotomy: In the late 19th Century, writers including Watchman Nee and Jessie Penn-Lewis advanced a modified model of man that borrowed from both dichotomy and trichotomy. This is the chosen model of some of today’s popular Christian writers, teachers and counselors. According to this model, “soul-life” is the natural or lower form of life, which is characterized by a dead and inactive spirit; and “spirit-life” is a higher form of life available only to Christians who must separate themselves from and yet control soul-life.

Reason No. 3
God’s doctrine of the heart is not given a place in secular psychology or among Christian counselors whose methods and techniques are rooted in secular psychology.

Reason No. 4
The new heart and indwelling of the Holy Spirit are mentioned in the same promise of God in Ezekiel 36:26, 27; strangely, some Christians believe in a literal indwelling of the Holy Spirit but reject the premise of a literal new heart. The irony of this is that Scripture clearly states that “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts” (Galatians 4:6). If the Spirit’s indwelling is literal or actual, then the place of his indwelling must be literal or actual as well.

Reason No. 5
The vast majority of pastors, Bible teachers, and Christian counselors have not been taught and do not teach the biblical doctrine of the heart.

Reason No. 6
The doctrine of the heart is seen by some as being too difficult and taking too much time to teach and to learn, and that the biblical concept of the new-hearted, new creature in Christ is too radical for the contemporary mind to accept.

Reason No. 7
Faulty exegesis of “new heart” and “new spirit” in Ezekiel 36:26 misses the biblical meanings of both. Some people wrongly understand the “heart” to be no more than the seat of emotions and affections (state of mind or mental disposition), and that “spirit” refers to the Holy Spirit. This study corrects those errors.

“Preach the Word”
If we teach God’s Word, then we must understand and teach God’s words, not “the precepts of men.”

I get the impression sometimes of this attitude among a few of our brethren in ministry: “Poor Paul, poor disciples, poor Jesus. Their insight into the nature and behavior of man was so limited. Just think what they might have accomplished if they had our words, concepts, and methods!”

Jesus, after telling a multitude the parable of the sower, told His disciples that those in the multitude with understanding hearts would receive the truth of God’s Word, while those with “hard,” “shallow,” and “worldly” hearts would be blind and deaf to so much (see Matthew 13:10-23).

The Apostle Paul gave this sound advice to his disciple Timothy—advice that all of us should take to heart: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanted to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:2-4).

Paul prayed for each of us: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.... [that you might] be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 1:18, 19a, 3:16-19).

The Bible’s extensive references to “heart”
The Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the Bible to speak frequently and freely about the heart. In fact, the biblical terms for “heart” appear more than 1,000 times in Scripture. “Heart” is translated from the Hebrew of the Old Testament (leb, lebab, and other words) and the Greek of the New Testament (kardia). The Zondervan NASB Exhaustive Concordance cites the biblical use of leb and lebab 851 times and kardia 157 times.

In a few instances in Scripture, “heart” refers to the biological heart and to the heart as the center of things (“the heart of the sea”). But in most cases “heart” refers to the immaterial or spiritual essence of a person—the “inner man” or “inner self,” as opposed to the “outer man,” which is the physical body .

When Scripture uses “heart” in this psychical/spiritual sense, rather than the physical, it refers to the essential immaterial person; some specific aspect of a person’s immaterial nature; a person’s immaterial condition, “contents,” faculties, functions, or features. Sometimes the more specific meaning is clarified by context, and other times it is simply implied. In such latter instances it is crucial to be familiar with the doctrine of the heart; otherwise, the writer’s intended meaning may escape discernment, and the true meaning of the passage may be misinterpreted and misapplied.

In its most common and broadest sense, however, “heart” refers to the essential person. This definition is given in all major dictionaries and is held by virtually all recognized biblical authorities, among them:

Oswald Chambers writes in Biblical Psychology (page 99): “The use of the Bible term ‘heart’ is best understood by simply saying, ‘me.’”

C. Ryder Smith, in The Biblical Doctrine of Man (1951), examined the usage of kardia in the New Testament and concluded that, while usually translated “heart,” it comes closer to meaning “person” than any other New Testament word.

Robert Baker Girdlestone writes that, “The heart (leb), according to Scripture ...embraces the whole inner man...” (Girdlestone’s Synonyms of the Old Testament, page 81).

The Expanded Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words and virtually all other commentaries also state “person” as the most frequent meaning of heart.

“New heart” and “new spirit” in Ezekiel 36:26
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, God promised to give His children a “new heart and a new spirit.” The new heart He promised is the heart discussed above, and the new spirit is not the Holy Spirit but a new mental disposition rooted in love.

Those who translated the book of Ezekiel into English made a proper distinction between the spirit of love and the Holy Spirit, by printing “spirit” in lower case and by capitalizing the word in “Holy Spirit.” (The Hebrew of the original text had no capital letters.)

Thus God removed the old heart and replaced it with a new heartl. He removed the old spirit and its mental disposition rooted in sin, and replaced it with a new mental disposition rooted in love. God did not remove an old Holy Spirit and replace it with a new Holy Spirit.

The six biblical perspectives of man
God examines our heart, and so should we. And we should examine our heart from God’s perspectives. What are God’s perspectives? The Bible indicates there six, of which the first three listed below are absolute and the last three are variable:

1. Positional: looks at the duality of positional existence in terms of time and place: the spiritual realm and age or aeon in which the heart of a person exists—the realm of darkness or light, the age of the “old man” “in Adam” or the age of the “new man” “in Christ.”
   
   
2. Relational: looks at the duality of interactive relationships of the heart—whether “in the flesh” or “in the Spirit,” with Satan or God, with sin or love, with the world or God’s kingdom, with law or grace.
   
   
3. Ontological: looks at the duality of the origin and nature of human beings, whether Adam-hearted (“natural man” or “old man”) or Christ-hearted (“spiritual man,” “new man,” or “new creature”).
   
   
4. Conditional: looks at the mode and “contents” of the heart—whether soul and spirit are functionally divided or united—and the thoughts, beliefs, and values; and the feelings and affections; and the desires, intentions, and plans that contribute to either the division or unification of the heart.
   
   
5. Functional: looks at the dynamics of the spiritual heart—the functionality and interaction of personhood, soul, and spirit; and how functionality is influenced by “spiritual masters” and life’s experiences.
   
   
6. Behavioral: looks at the actions or physical conduct of the “outer man”—the expression of personhood through the soul, spirit, and body.

Visualizing God’s model of the heart
There is no single verse in the Bible, no single chapter in the Bible, and no single book in the Bible that gives a complete “picture” of the Spiritual Heart. But there are about 1000 verses that refer to it. And, like pieces of a picture puzzle, when all the pieces are properly fitted together, those verses reveal the complete picture.

I have attempted to properly fit those 1000 or so verses together in order to illustrate God’s model of the heart. In doing so I’ve developed a combined representation of the visible physical and invisible spiritual aspects of man by adapting two familiar symbols: A universal symbol of a human which depicts and body, and a traditional symbol of the heart which depicts the spiritual heart. Following is my visualization of the inner man and the outer man. You’ll notice that I’ve pictured the spiritual heart in the position of the body’s torso. Though it is the “center” of a person’s entire being, it is not necessarily “located” in the center of the body. But more about this later.

“Inner man”
“Inner man,” as in Ephesians 3:16, is from the Greek, eso anthropos. It carries the meaning of human, person, or self in the essential, immaterial or spiritual sense. Oftentimes, I refer to “heart,” when it is synonymous with “inner man,” as the “spiritual heart” in order to distinguish it from the biological heart. Alva William Steffler, in Symbols of the Christian Faith (2002, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), notes that the following verses refer to the heart as the “inner person”: 1 Samuel 16:7; 1 Kings 15:3; Job 29:13; Psalms 4:7, 15:2, 27:3, 111:1, 119:11; Proverbs 17:22, 23:26, 25:20; Jeremiah 11:20, 17:9; Ezekiel 44:7; Joel 2:13; Matthew 5:28, 11:29, 12:34, 15:8; Mark 12:30; Luke 2:19, 51; Acts 2:37; 2 Corinthians 3:3, 5:12. I could add scores of others, most notably: Ezekiel 36:26 and 1 Peter 3:4. Other uses of “heart” refer to various “parts,” faculties, features, and functions of the spiritual heart.

“Outer man”
The “outer man,” as in 2 Corinthians 4:16, is from the Greek, exo anthropos. It refers to the “outside” or physical body of a person. It is our physical appearance, personality, and behavior that others see of us; however, God sees more than the outer man; He sees the inner man—the heart—from six perspectives: positional, relational, ontological, conditional, functional, and behavioral.

As this chapter ends, we conclude our biblical introduction to the Christian’s new heart. In the next chapter we will take a closer look at God’s model of the heart and examine scriptures that reveal the places within and parts of the heart.

Go to Chapter 3: The Places in the Heart