We Have A Choice To Do Evil or Good
We have a choice about if our heart is wicked or not and God judges us and determines who will dwell with him if we choose his way or not. “I will set no wicked thing before my eyes. I have hated the work of those who turn aside; it shall not hold on to me. A perverse heart will depart from me; I will not know the wicked. Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, I will cut him off; him who has a high look and a proud heart, I will not allow. My eyes shall be on the faithful of the land, so that they may dwell with me; he who walks in a perfect way, he shall serve Me. (Psalm 101:3-6).
Similarly we see: “All is well for the man who is kind and gives freely to others; he will make good his cause when he is judged. He will not ever be moved; the memory of the upright will be living for ever. He will have no fear of evil news; his heart is fixed, for his hope is in the Lord. His heart is resting safely, he will have no fear, till he sees trouble come on his enemies. He has given with open hands to the poor; his righteousness is for ever; his horn will be lifted up with honour.” (Psalm 112:5-9).
God is testing our hearts; he has not finished the creation of us yet: “You have put my heart to the test, searching me in the night; you have put me to the test and seen no evil purpose in me; I will keep my mouth from sin. (Psalm 17:3).
The following verses provide a summary in the New Testament of how the heart works and the fact that it is not always evil or good, but is something we can change and are expected to change.
The apostles, even after being with Christ for three and half years, still needed to learn not to have a hard and unbelieving heart: “He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen.” (Mark 16:14)
We can shut up our heart, or open it up, and we can know if we are doing right or wrong: “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.” (1 John 3:16-21)
We are told to love with a pure heart: “Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, “ (1 Pet 1:22)
We can also deceive our own heart: “If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless.” (James 1:26)
The state of our heart is the purpose of the commandments: “Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk,..” (1 Tim 1:5-6) Similarly: “...let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Heb 10:22)
Obedience to God or man must be based on a sincere heart: “Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ. But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality. (Col 3:22-25).
Other “Wicked Heart” Scriptures
When we understand the choice that we have is to keep our mouths from sin and our ways from evil then we can understand the real intent other scriptures that seem to first imply that man’s heart is wicked and nothing can be done about it.
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Gen 6:5). If you read the context you will see that these people had chosen to be wicked, but Noah found favor in God’s eyes, and walked with God so he obviously did not have a wicked heart. Noah therefore was not included in the statement “that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. We, if we love God with all our heart, are also are not included in that statement. It was poetic, and was meant for the vast majority of people on the earth at that time. But we are to choose to be different from them, and we are to follow the example of Noah who obviously chose correctly.
Similarly after Noah had been released from the Ark and had offered a sacrifice to God it is recorded: “And when the sweet smell came up to the Lord, He said in His heart, (God has a heart!) I will not again put a curse on the earth because of man, for the thoughts of man's heart are evil from his earliest days; never again will I send destruction on all living things as I have done.” (Gen 8:21). God is not saying that we are all always wicked, but that even if the thoughts of man’s heart is wicked he will not bring a flood to destroy all life. To imply from this verse that all people for all time are evil in their heart is to misread the context and what it really means.
The following Psalm has also been used to imply that all humans are inherently evil: “The Lord was looking down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who had wisdom, searching after God. They have all gone out of the way together; they are unclean, there is not one who does good, no, not one.” (Psalm 14:2-3). Yet the context of these verses is verse 1: “The foolish man has said in his heart, God will not do anything. They are unclean, they have done evil works; there is not one who does good.” And verse 4 “Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord. There were they in great fear: for God is in the generation of the righteous. (Psalm 14:4-5).
We must remember that this is a song. It's meant to be poetic. It's comparing the workers of iniquity and the workers of righteousness. If there were no ‘righteous’ then the ‘wicked’ could not be compared to them. David is simply using poetic licence in saying that there are “none that do good, no, not one”, but he is obviously talking about the foolish of verse 1, not the righteous and all other human beings mentioned later in the song. To extrapolate this poetic song and thereby accuse the entire world of being full of evil hearted people is to look for fault in all humans and ignore all the verses in the Bible that talk about righteousness with pure hearts and the examples of the goodness in man’s heart and actions. Worse still such interpretation is to ignore the fact that God wants us to CHOOSE to change to go His way, to follow His heart and His Mind. To put in us a good heart, a heart which He loves.
Summary
The traditional rendering of Jeremiah 17:9 demonstrates an almost pathological desire to show man in the worst possible state. To actually believe that our minds are desperately wicked is in itself a mentally unhealthy perception about the state of human beings. It shows paranoia and fear of our supposed total lack of self-control. Such teaching really should only attract people who are mentally paranoid and unstable, yet this is actually the doctrine of most Christian theology!
Because of such doctrines the Way of Life, as shown in God’s Word, is regarded by non-Christians as being based on fear and manipulation (2 Peter 2:1-3). Yet it is unfortunately true that fear and manipulation have been the hallmark of most Christian authorities and leaders for centuries. Erroneous translations of verses such as Jeremiah 17:9 have been the foundation of such fears. Yet this is not the way of God: “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7) and “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 2:16).
God wants us to use our minds, not to suppress them. We need to confront our sins and weaknesses and overcome them. Our minds are not wicked, or the Psalmist could not say “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” And we do know it too, but such warped doctrines undermine our very sanity and cause us to miss the great purpose of the Creator, which is to make in us His very heart and mind.
We have not hearts that are inherently evil or deceitful as Jeremiah 17:9 is wrongly translated to say. God wants us to choose His way of good and reject evil and overcome it. To imply that God has created in us an evil wicked heart is to denigrate God and His mind, which is the very mind that He wants us to become like: For let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. (Phil 2:5)
God has given us the choice between good and evil, and told us to choose good. If we have an evil heart that is our own problem, which God is willing to help us change. Such paranoia about being evil undermines our ability to do good and to then grow in understanding of truth and righteousness. It does not help to produce true humility. It only undermines our sanity and self respect and makes Christianity look like a paranoid and stupid religion in the eyes of rational people, and this then undermines our ability to be a light to the world.
The following words of Christ sum it up well: ‘No man may be a servant to two masters: for he will have hate for the one and love for the other; or he will keep to the one and have no respect for the other. You may not be servants of God and of wealth.’ And the Pharisees, who had a great love of money, hearing these things, were making sport of him. And he said, ‘You take care to seem right in the eyes of men, but God sees your hearts: and those things which are important in the opinion of men, are evil in the eyes of God.’” (Luke 16:13-15, Bible in Basic English)
Again Paul tells us we have the choice to let sin reign or not: Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. Do not yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but yield yourselves to God, as one alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under Law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under Law, but under grace? Let it not be! Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves to him whom you obey; whether it is of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness. (Rom 6:12-15)
God made us in his image, and if we choose to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit we choose to become more like him. We can also choose not to follow the Spirit’s lead. It’s as simple as that. We can choose, and that ability to choose is the only thing we could call our Human Nature, there is nothing inherently wicked about it.
The Bible does not us the term Human Nature, rather it talks about our heart, but the heart has the same ability of choice between right and wrong, good and evil, and as we have seen there is not anything inherently wicked about our heart either, for the heart can change. However there comes a time when God will give up: He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing. (Proverbs 29:1)
Similarly: Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness. (Psalm 95:8- which is also quoted in Heb 3:8, 3:15 and 4:7).
The scriptures tell us clearly not to harden our hearts, or stiffen our necks, yet this is a choice we have. It’s our ability, our nature if you will, to choose to obey God or not, to choose life or death. You are not wicked by nature, nor are you good. It’s up to you which you will choose.
You are made in the image of God and yet you are dust. You can choose to become more like God, or to return to dust from which you were made. We, like David, can ask God to help us to make that choice, to create in us a clean heart (Psalm 51:10), but ultimately it’s your choice. Will you choose to love God or not?
I call Heaven and earth to record today against you. I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life, so that both you and your seed may live, so that you may love the Lord your God, and that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him. (Deut 30:19-20)
