Tim Challies is a blogger that I have come to appreciate more of late. I was introduced to him back in December by a friend who had been given some blogs on homeschooling. I have found his commentary to be well worth the time that I have to invest in that sort of reading.
Today, he dropped a name that I love to hear – Jonathan Edwards. If you haven’t already read it, enjoy. Click here.
I have the same question a few of the commenters bring up but is never addressed.
Sure this applies to people before they are regenerated but what about believers:
“God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them [the Gentile believers] by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. (Acts 15:8–9)”
As someone pointed out in an Eldridge Review don’t you think this sounds wierd?
“Love the Lord your God with all your desperately wicked heart” (Matt. 22:37).
“All the believers were one in their desperately wicked hearts” (Acts 4:32).
“Love one another deeply, from your desperately wicked hearts” (1 Peter 1:22).
“Sing and make music in your desperately wicked heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19).
“It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my desperately wicked heart” (Philippians 1:7).
Very interesting observations. Would you consider that you, in your regenerated state, can love the Lord your God with all your heart?
Do you find that you and all other believers are one in your hearts (not in your faith, but in your heart)?
Would you say that you love others deeply – from your heart?
Do you truly sing and make music in your heart?
Can you and do you do these things in your heart, or do you find that your flesh wars with the Spirit inside your very being?
For an alternative view, that I personally find incompatible with the teaching of Scripture in so much as it seems to indicate that we have the capacity after getting saved to live a life without sin, mash here.