The Word of God and the Development of Inner Life
Hebrews 8:10 This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people. NIV
What we see in Heb 8:10 is that God’s focus in developing human life is not primarily the external but inner life (the heart and the mind). Jesus speaks in Mathew 23 about blind builders who focus on the external.
Matthew 23:25-26
25 "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. NIV
Sadly, the focus of preaching tends to be on the external-temporary issues. Preaching tends to service the external physical life when God is really focusing on the inner life of believers. The phrase “first clean the inside” indicates the priority of inner life in an authentic kingdom building. So therefore when we spend more time talking about external-physical issues like financial prosperity, we are talking about the right things but in an unbalanced way; and so essentially, we are preaching heresy or something that misrepresents God’s building process. The inside of the cup are issues of the heart and mind, the inner motivations, desires and attitudes that really shape the outward behaviour, character and lifestyle. In other words, it is no surprise that as church we have generally failed to produce the kind of human that must be seen by the nations, this is basically as a result of misdirected building efforts. Jesus calls this “blind-building” (Matt 23:26): meaning that although it is building but it is not inspired by sight of God’s system and process of building. In the Kingdom, internal-invisible life is much more important than external-visible life.
It is very clear that the focus of the New Covenant (NC) is internal building, see Heb 8:10. At the core of our building process (preaching, teaching, shepherding etc.) is the need to produce hearts and minds that are correct. Key issues coming out of Heb 8:10:
- I will put my laws: “Law” speaks of a system of regulation. The New Covenant does not exempt us from law. There is no scripture that supports such an idea. The New Covenant takes us out of one system of law to another. It takes aside the law of Moses and puts in the law of Christ. So Christ is the end of the law (Rom 10:4) but He is also a fulfilment of the law (Matt 5:17). The law was proclaimed until a certain dispensation (Matt 11:13). Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set us free from the law of sin and death…so that the righteous requirements of the law are met in us through Christ (Rom 8:1-4). The law of Moses was an external system of regulation that focused only on behavioural righteousness whereas the law of Christ is an internal system of regulation that focuses firstly on the quality of inner life and then also on the correctness of behaviour and character (first wash the inside and then the outside will also be clean). As an internal system of regulation, the law of Christ works through the mechanism of heart conviction (through the Holy Spirit) so that correct outer life proceeds from an internal alignment. Any thing outside of this is hypocrisy.
- I will put my laws in their minds: The word that is used for “minds” here is the Greek word “dianoia”. It comes from two words: The first word is “dia”: a preposition denoting separation. “Dia” is the English preposition “through”. The second word is “noeo”: to think over, to observe, to perceive with thought coming to consciousness, to understand, to discern. If combined, the two words (“dia” and “noeo”) mean “to think through”. The word “dianoia is defined as: the intellect, intelligence, insight, mode of thinking and feeling, the activity of the mind. The emphasis of this word is in the mechanism by which one thinks. In any human, there is the issue of “thinking” and there is the issue of “mode of thinking”. Every human thinks, whether educated or uneducated and every human has a mode of thinking. A mode or mechanism of thinking can be one’s culture, experience, prevailing popular perspective etc. If church is called to build and perfect a human as the scriptures suggest (Eph 4:11-13, Col 1:28) then church must build the mindset of the human also and not only “the spiritual dimensions”. God Himself says, “I will put my laws in their minds”. In the light of the definitions given above, this phrase literally means that God wants the Bible not just to be a bunch of scripture verses that are quoted on Sunday morning but as life principles that provide a framework and mechanism for how we think on Tuesday. In fact being spiritual also means developing a Christ-like mindset. In this sense, the Word of God is a system of thought. So great responsibility lies with the teachers of the Word, to present the Word as a system of thought to believers. If the mind is one major component of the human then we will be fooling ourselves if we think we’re building anything without actually focusing on developing kingdom mindsets within the church. Solomon says, “as a man thinks so is he” (Prov 23:7, NKJV). We can not therefore afford to channel the word of God to that which is external without firstly allowing it to re-engineer the inner life of a human.
- I will put my laws in their hearts: the word “heart” is the Greek word “kardia” and is related to the English word “cardiac”. This word “heart” is generally used in the scriptures not to mean the physical heart but the spiritual state of a person. The word is defined in the Greek dictionary as: the seat and centre of human life, the seat of the desires, feelings, affections, passions, impulses etc. Basically, the heart defines one’s desires, motives, feelings and attitudes. God identifies the need to allow the Word to purify or rearrange these. Solomon says the issues of life spring from the heart (Prov 4:23). The heart is the foundation of all human action, behaviour and lifestyle. If the desires, feelings and attitudes are evil then the inside of the cup is declared unclean even though the outer actions may look clean and pure.
Confronting “the Eliab factor”
1 Samuel 16:6-7
6 When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, "Surely the LORD's anointed stands here before the LORD."
7 But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." NIV
Samuel, a prophet who walked in a higher ranking in his day (1 Sam 3:19-1Sam 4:1), who was training others as prophets (1 Sam 19:20-21), was rebuked by the Lord for wrong assessment and evaluation. Samuel basically walked in wrong areas of judgment and almost ordained a wrong guy. How many times does this happen in churches? How many times do we go for the one with an innocent look, one who looks the most passionate or still one who is educated and rich? Wrong assessment of people does lead to wrong appointments and ordinations. It is for this reason that we are given clear appointment characteristics in the word of God (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, Exodus 18). And it is also for this reason that we are advised to take our time before we appoint, to test and assess. The word used as “test” in 1 Tim 3:10 is the Greek word “dokimazo” and it means: to try, to prove, to discern, to distinguish. The word has the notion of proving a thing whether it is worthy or not. The implication we get in 1 Tim 3:10 is that this should be done over a period of time, it is not a momentary instantaneous testing but it is checking someone’s attitude, genuineness and character through different various life situations. By implication, this examination demands relational proximity. There is a tendency to use people in the church when we don’t really know them There is a tendency to use people in the church when the state of their life and marriage are not really known. Often, the only thing that becomes a focus is the person’s Sunday giftedness, may be as a keyboard player or gift of healing etc. It is always sad to see situations where one’s gift and charisma are so important in a church that the person gets elevated “above the law” and never get disciplined even if their lives are clearly a misrepresentation of Christ. How many husbands are known as powerful preachers, gifted in the spirit or good keyboard players but whose wives live in a state of dissatisfaction, pain and hurt at home? That is, our focus on charisma, the need to produce a spectacular church service and numerical growth in membership make us vulnerable as leaders, so that we appoint the wrong people. Wrong focus and objective will always lead to wrong appointment. But if our focus is to build life, marriages, families etc. then we will appoint people who have the ability to exemplify these things.
Confronting “the Eliab factor” (cont…)
Eliab had a correct external profile but was disapproved by the Lord. He obviously had spent his time building his external life and by implication, he was walking in a Pharisee spirit that cleans the outside, leaving the inside dirty. What causes this situation?
Matthew 6:1
1 "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. NIV
Matthew 6:2
2 "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues... NIV
We can only start to focus on the quality of our inner life when we are set free from the need to be appreciated by those around us. We cannot live to please men because this corrupts our walk with the Lord. When we live in a position of pleasing men then the Holy Spirit’s conviction loses power in our hearts as we will tend to do what we think men like as opposed to what God wants.
This Eliab factor is really a characteristic of a Pharisee spirit.
John 12:42-43
42 Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not confess their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved praise from men more than praise from God. NIV
The Pharisee spirit leads to a compromised Inner Life
There are two major characteristics of a Pharisee spirit that we have identified so far:
- Pharisees wash only the outside of the cup (Matt 23:25).
- Pharisees seek to please men than God (Matt 6:1).
God, on the other side, focuses on the development of our inner life:
Hebrews 8:10 This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people. NIV
Matthew 23:26
26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. NIV
So therefore since a Pharisee spirit is too preoccupied with external life and pleasing men, it cannot engage in an authentic kingdom building process. We therefore have to come to a place where we are focusing on Christ and are allowing Him to build us from within.
The Word of God is reconstructing our Hearts and Minds
Hebrews 4:12
12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. NIV
Heb 4:12 implies that interacting with God’s word must go beyond the mere gathering of revelation-knowledge and must look into the divine internal confrontation the Word is bringing in our hearts. It is in this dimension of living as believers that we can grow and become correct in God.
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