A melting heart

Today, many rightly bemoan the lovelessness, superficiality, and spiritual hollowness they see spread all too widely across the church. Yet in our longing for a cure, we must not be seduced into thinking that superficial, pragmatic answers are the solution. A moral campaign for better Christian behaviour will not touch the roots of the problem.

The church today is surely in great need of reformation, but reformation of lives happens from the inside out as the Spirit heals hearts with the balm of the gospel. The gospel of Christ’s redemption and the Spirit’s regeneration is not just a message for outsiders: it is our only hope if we are to see the renewal and reformation of the church in our day.

It is not enough to be aware of our corruption. That can be the mistake of the preacher who (perhaps reacting against “sin-lite” gospels) concentrates mainly on hammering home an awareness of sin. The Puritan preacher Richard Sibbes saw this happening in his day and warned: “It is not enough to have the heart broken.” Instead, he said, our hearts “must be melting”. And how can a heart be melted from its natural icy coldness toward God?

Tenderness of heart is wrought by an apprehension of tenderness and love in Christ. Sibbes observes: “I am sure nothing will melt the hard heart of man but the blood of Christ … . When a man considers of the love that God hath shewed him in sending of His Son, [this] melts the heart, and makes it become tender.” The blood of Christ makes us simultaneously aware of both our sin and Christ’s grace.

Our hearts do not only need to be convicted; their desires need to be turned. This is what it means to be born again: for the heart’s desires to be turned from their natural delight in self to a “wholehearted joy in God through Christ and a delight to do every kind of good as God wants us to,” as the Heidelberg Catechism says (Q. 90). It cannot mean anything less, for to be born again is to be born of the Spirit. When God shares His Spirit with us, He shares His own life. Delighted, divine love is the heartbeat of the new life He gives us in the Spirit. Whereas the Pharisees hoped that they could manufacture their own goodness and righteousness by external changes, the Spirit changes us from the inside out by transforming what we enjoy.

And what causes such a change of heart? Jonathan Edwards was convinced that it was the doctrine of justification by faith alone that was the main truth that drove the awakening in his day. Others, such as John Wesley, concurred that times of spiritual refreshment and fruitfulness must and will always be marked by their emphatic teaching on the saving work of Christ and the new birth. The two go together, as can be seen in John 3, where Jesus, having taught Nicodemus of the need to be born again (vv. 1–13), immediately goes on to speak of his redemption: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (vv14-16).

It is this sight of the Son of Man, lifted up in His strange glory, proving the love of His Father, that turns hearts from delight in self and dread of God to delight in God and dread of sin. There we taste the goodness and kindness of God, and, as John Calvin put it: “Once we have tasted His mutual love which He reserves for us, then we will be motivated to love Him as our father.” We love because He first loved us (1 John 4v19).