The Ways of the Heart
Frank Allnutt

Section 3: The Ways of Christ-Hearted Man

Page 5: Well-Adjusted and Maladjusted Flesh

Some Half-Hearted Christians are more successful than others in meeting their needs and desires through fleshly and worldly ways. Yet the two have this in common: their self-centered and divided hearts can never seem to attain quite enough knowledge, understanding, and wisdom; the emotion can never quite reach and maintain a consistent level of contentment; the will can never fully satisfy its insatiable, lustful desires; and their creativity and achievements never consistently seem to measure up to theirs and others’ expectations. And so they attempt to overcome such deficiencies through fleshly and worldly ways.

Psychology developed the concepts of the “well-adjusted” and “maladjusted” personalities. The well-adjusted person fares well in the world and generally meets society’s expectations of a good citizen. Some maladjusted people struggle for acceptance and success; others may give up and become reclusive or even antisocial.

Some Christian counselors use the descriptions “well-adjusted” and “maladjusted” types of fleshliness. According to these descriptions, people who are more successful at fulfilling their needs and desires through fleshly ways are said to have “well-adjusted flesh,” “positively conditioned flesh,” or “positively programmed flesh.” They are said to have experienced little trauma and have received general acceptance in life. Those who fail are said to have “maladjusted flesh,” “negatively conditioned flesh,” or “negatively programmed flesh.” And they are said to have experienced serious trauma and considerable rejection in life.

Let it be clearly understood, however, that Christians are no longer “in the flesh,” but are “in the Spirit.” They do not “have” flesh or evil-principled human nature, but have the love-principled nature of Christ. So when a believer is referred to as having “flesh,” understand that it is fleshliness or a flesh-like condition and functioning of the heart.
There is some correlation of meaning between “positive flesh” and the biblical description of “fat-hearted,” and between “negative flesh” and the biblical description of “brokenhearted.” However there are also differences.

Some fleshly Christians engage in various forms of self-improvement or behavior modification in which they attempt, through fleshly and worldly ways, to overcome their “negative programming” and attain more “positive programming.”

Sometimes called “flesh management,” this is no more than the attempt to move from negative halfheartedness to positive halfheartedness.

“Positive,” in the sense used above, should not be understood as “good.” Positive and negative fleshliness are both unacceptable and displeasing to God. Whether a Half-Hearted Christian has positive fleshly symptoms or negative ones, he walks the wrong path—in the ways of the flesh, or “according to the flesh”—and certainly does not walk in the Spirit.

The Broken and Contrite-Hearted Christian

God allows us to go through one or more varieties of halfheartedness so that we might come to experience a broken and contrite heart. Understand that brokenness alone, caused by trauma, loss and suffering, does not necessarily lead to contriteness. Indeed, some who are broken sink to the depths of despair and fall short of contriteness. But here we are concerned with the Broken and Contrite-Hearted Christian who has a “resolute heart to remain true to the Lord” (Acts 11:23). When a believer’s heart arrives at this condition, he is ready to take the first step toward wholeheartedness:

• He has experienced the insufficiency of self-sufficiency. He has exhausted self’s resources in vain effort to overcome sin in his life and to live the Christian life. It is sometimes said that this believer has “come to the end of self.” His self-pride has given way to humility in view of who he was (a sinner) and who he is (a saint), and who God is. He is compelled by love and humility to be obedient to God’s will.
  
  
• He accepts personal responsibility for his sins. We sometimes hear it said that, “The Devil made me do it,” “I heard voices telling me to do it,” “I had to choose the lesser of two evils,” and, “I didn’t do it; it was indwelling sin in my body.” Such statements reflect fleshliness and a misunderstanding of biblical doctrine. The Broken and Contrite-Hearted Christian, however, makes no such excuses and does not attempt to transfer the blame for sin in his life to someone or something else. He acknowledges to himself and confesses to God that he alone is responsible for his sins.
  
  
• He experiences contrition. The Broken and Contrite-Hearted Christian is truly humbled and remorseful over his sins, and hungers for experiencing the victory over sin that came to him at the time of his salvation.
  
  David’s kind of brokenness was broken self-will or a “broken spirit.” It occurs at that time in life when a person experiences and acknowledges the insufficiency of self-effort and the self-deception that comes from prideful self-will. Contriteness of heart is God’s desired result of brokenness. It is characteristic of a believer who has discovered that the road to self-sufficiency leads to a dead-end, and who is humbled by his total dependence on God. He is portrayed in Scripture as being overcome by the guilt and remorse of sinfulness in his life, and is sincere about repentance. He recognizes his need for conditional cleansing, healing, and renewal; seeks a return to fellowship with God; and desires to totally yield to the will of God. This believer has begun to have a change of heart.
  
  
• He opens his heart to the truth. He seeks to learn and experience truth, freedom, and righteousness in Christ.
  
  
• He desires a pure heart—to be conditionally cleansed and functionally healed of sin-debt: sinful thoughts, painful and bitter memories, fleshly motives, feelings of emptiness, guilt, shame, lustful desires, and so on.
  
  
• He seeks to experientially know Christ as life. This believer has come to a place in life where his love and need for God compel him to place Christ at the center of his life, so that he will experientially know Christ as life. David wrote that, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:17). This believer is ready to experience the fellowship of Jesus. He desires to walk in the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit, and to be conformed to the functional likeness of Christ.
  
  
• He is ready to surrender self-will for God’s will. This believer’s self-will has been broken—crushed, shattered, and pulverized. Having experienced the humiliation of fleshly bankruptcy, his heart is prepared to totally surrender self-will, and he humbly seeks to know and to do God’s will.
  
  
• He is on the path to learn what Jesus learned from suffering: “He [Jesus] learned obedience from the things which He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8).

Paul writes of the broken and contrite heart in his second letter to the Corinthians: “I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God.... For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret...” (2 Corinthians 7:9, 10a).

God wants all of His children to experience a change of heart. The process begins when we humbly surrender our broken and contrite heart to God out of faith, hope, and love for Him, and begin to actually walk in Christ and depend wholly on His sufficiency.

The Whole-Hearted Christian
Once again we will refer to Christ’s parable of the sower. Moving on to “the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil,” we find His explanation: “this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit, and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty” (Matthew 13:23). This man has responded wholeheartedly to the Word. When such wholeheartedness becomes consistent in his life, he can be described as a Whole-Hearted Christian.

Positionally, relationally, and ontologically, the Whole-Hearted Christian is no different from the Half-Hearted Christian. Both have “eaten of the Tree of Life” (Revelation 2:7), and were rescued out of the domain of darkness and placed into God’s realm of light. Both are new-hearted, new creatures in Christ. The differences between the two have to do with the condition or mode of their hearts and the ways in which they function in the inner man and conduct themselves through the outer man.

A change of heart
The Whole-Hearted Christian has experienced, and is experiencing, a change of heart and all that comes with it: intimate fellowship with Jesus, and the wonderful blessings of the abundant life He promised. He wholeheartedly walks in truth and does what is good in the sight of God (see 2 Kings 20:3). This is sometimes referred to as “knowing” or “experiencing Christ as life.”

In the New Testament, “repent” (Greek, metanoeo) and “repentance” (metanoia) find their meanings in a change of heart (though a change of heart involves more than repentance). Repentance is the radical transformation of the functioning of the heart’s mind, emotion, and will, which form the context of salvational faith. Faith without repentance is not saving faith, but mere intellectual assent. Repentance is turning away from sin—mentally, emotionally, and volitionally. It begins at salvation and continues to be a way of responding to actual sins. For when a believer sins, sin must be confessed and turned from if the believer wishes to enjoy fellowship with Christ. Sin functionally divides the heart and separates the believer from fellowship with the Spirit of Christ; on the other hand, repentance motivated out of love functionally unites the heart and brings about reconciliation and fellowship. Just as light disperses darkness, so does love disperse sin. We will more fully explore the duality of sin and love in a later chapter.

Perspectives of the Whole-Hearted Christian
Figure 3-8, below, depicts the Whole-Hearted Christian from several perspectives. At the left is the positional, relational, and ontological perspective, and at the right is the conditional, functional and behavior perspective.

1. Positionally, this believer, like all believers, exists in God’s realm of light and is in the Spirit, as indicated by his white heart and body.
   
   
2. Relationally, this believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, as symbolized by the white dove.
   
   
3. Ontologically, this believer, like all believers, is a new-hearted, new creature in Christ. This is indicated by the white purity of his heart and body.
   
   
4. Conditionally, the heart of the Whole-Hearted Christian is united, soul with spirit, and God’s light fills his heart and body.
   
   
5. Functionally, this believer experiences the united dynamics of the soul and spirit, which are in holy harmony with the indwelling Spirit of Christ.
   
   
6. Behaviorally, this believer walks or lives in the Spirit, is led by the Spirit, and is filled by the Spirit.

Wholeheartedness is a superior way of living—the way of living in Christ, and experiencing His living in and through the believer.

The believer with a whole heart is one who, out of the promised “new spirit” of love (Ezekiel 36:26; 2 Timothy 1:7), has had and is undergoing a change of heart. He has positively responded to God’s desire for him to “Give Me your heart, My son, and let your eyes delight in My ways” (Proverbs 23:26). He is experiencing true fellowship with God because love has functionally set him free from pride and other actual sins, and their resulting separation of fellowship with God.

The Whole-Hearted Christian has forsaken fleshly, worldly and sinful living. He has conditionally and functionally “crucified the flesh” (Galatians 5:24), has “put on” his new heart and new spirit of love (Ephesians 3:12, 14), and is living as a new man in Christ.

A whole heart is a healed or healing heart
Many of us, in various ways and degrees, have experienced a wounded or broken heart. The Whole-Hearted Christian has been, or is being, healed of any such wounds. God has promised all of His children: “I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isaiah 57;15b).

David and Isaiah testified to God’s love for the brokenhearted believer and His desire to heal their wounds:

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).

He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds (Psalm 147:3).

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified” (Isaiah 61:1-3).

Healing is part of God’s process to renew us to wholeheartedness. And as we demonstrate our love for God, out of obedience from the heart, we magnify His glory.

“I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to [fellowship with] Me with their whole heart” (Jeremiah 24:7).

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:26, 27).

Peter assures us that God has fulfilled His promises to us: “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and Godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature...” (2 Peter 1:3, 4).

There is much evidence in Scripture that God has fulfilled His promise of a new heart, a new spirit of love, and the indwelling Holy Spirit. Perhaps the most complete and concise statement to this effect is found in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, in which he prays that God will grant to them “to 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 3:16-19).

The Spirit of Christ is our source of the “new spirit” promised by God. Paul wrote to Timothy of this: “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline [sound judgment]” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Our new hearts and new spirit of love make us capable of loving God and others as ourselves. This is because we are partakers of the divine nature, of which love is the chief attribute. This “new spirit” empowers us with the motivational principle of love so that love will be dynamic in our relationship with God as well as with others. When we live wholeheartedly we are always in a state of becoming more and more conformed to the functional likeness of Christ Jesus. We see ourselves living more in Him and more of His living in and through us.

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