Getting to the Root of the Problem

The Bible has much to say about the heart. In Scripture, the heart refers not so much to an organ that pumps blood throughout the body as it does to the core of the soul, the deepest seat of human affections. It is out of the heart that the issues of life flow. Jesus saw a close connection between the location of our treasures and the drive of our hearts. Find a man's treasure map and you have found the highway of his heart.

In this fallen condition, the heart is seen as the root of our problem. We are said to have "a heart of stone." I remember two songs from my teenage years that lamented this fact of human nature. One was called "Hearts of Stone" and the other, a Dixieland jazz piece, was titled "Hard-Hearted Hannah, the Vamp of Savannah."

Hardened hearts, of course, are not limited to vamps, nor are they found only in Georgia. They are found in the breasts of fallen creatures everywhere who have no affection for God. The stony heart is calcified. It is like an inert rock. It has no passion for God, no affection for Christ, no love for His Word. The hardened heart knows nothing of a longing for the things of God.

When Jesus told Nicodemus that it was necessary for him to be reborn in order to enter the kingdom of God, He was telling him that he had heart trouble. Nicodemus had a congenital heart defect—a condition of sclerosis of the heart with which he was born.