I was debating a scriptural principle on the meaning of the word love with a fellow believer a few years ago, but he could not accept what I was saying; it didn’t fit into his world view. He went away, but came back the next day with a verse of scripture, which I thought was out of context and wrongly interpreted, but he said, “See! An old believer I knew years ago told me that if I knew something in my heart was right, I should just search the word of God and I’d find it. There you are.”

Mmmmmm… NO! In other words, RUBBISH! We need to read and search scripture for it to teach US how to live and act, and allow it to change our heart if it challenges us to see that we are deceiving ourselves. On the subject of the heart, it is clear:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? (Jer. 17:9)

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)

Were we to follow the logic of this old believer, we could justify almost anything (and many unholy things have been ‘justified’ by all sorts over the centuries). See, I don’t believe that adultery is really such a sinful thing for Christians… aaaah, didn’t Jesus refuse to condemn the woman brought to him who had been caught in the act of adultery? (John 8:3-11) and he also said that “in the resurrected state neither do [men] marry nor are [women] given in marriage” (Matt.22:30 CEB) so if this is perfection, then the perfect state for a Christian is not to worry about marriage and to practice ‘free love’ – we can sleep around without condemnation (and there really IS no condemnation for us (Rom. 8:1)) However, those of you who have read plenty of scripture know this is utter hogwash. Don’t you? Please tell me you weren’t taken in by that ‘logic’!

Where this becomes dangerous is when people, in order to maintain their ‘righteous’ stance on something (which may be valid or not), start to ignore, reinterpret, or worst of all, CHANGE words from scripture to fit into their personal jigsaw of life. If the word of God clearly states something, tell your heart to change its thoughts.

Grace be with you.