The Heart and the Understanding
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.” — Pbov. iii. 5.
The chief object of the Book of Proverbs is to teach knowledge and discretion, and to guide in the path of wisdom and understanding. To understand righteousness, to understand the fear of the Lord, to find good understanding, it is to this the Proverbs offer to guide us. But it gives the warning in the pursuit of this, to distinguish between trusting to our own understanding, and intellect, and seeking spiritual understanding, that which God gives, even an understanding heart. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not to thine own understanding.” In all our seeking after knowledge and wisdom, in all our planning our life, or studying the “Word, we have these two powers — the understanding or intellect, which knows things from without, by nature and the conceptions we form, and the heart, which knows them by experience as it takes them up into the will and affection.
I am deeply persuaded that one of the chief reasons why so much Bible teaching and Bible 64 knowledge is comparatively fruitless, one of the chief causes of the lack of holiness, and devotion, and power in the Church, is to be found here — the trusting to our own understanding in religion. I beseech my readers to give me a patient hearing here.
Many argue: But surely God gave us our intellect, and without it there is no possibility of knowing God’s “Word. Most true; but listen. By the fall our whole human nature was disordered. The will became enslaved, the affections were perverted, the understanding was darkened. All admit the ruin of the fall in the two former, but practically deny it in the latter. They admit that even the believer has not in himself the power of a holy will, and needs the daily renewing of the grace of Jesus Christ. They admit that he has not the power of holy affection, loving God and his neighbour, except as it is wrought in him unceasingly by the Holy Spirit. But they do not notice that the intellect is just as much spiritually ruined and impotent, and incapable of apprehending spiritual truth. It was especially the desire for knowledge, in a way and at a time God had forbidden it, that led Eve astray, as the outcome of the temptation. To think that we can take the knowledge of God’s truth for ourselves out of His word as we will, is still our greatest danger. We need a deep conviction of the impotence of our understanding really to know the truth, and of the terrible danger of self-confidence and self-deception in doing so, to see the need of the word, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not to thine understanding.” It is with the heart man believeth. It is with all the heart we are to seek, and serve, and love God. It is only with the heart we can know God, or worship God, in spirit and truth. It is in the heart, therefore, that the Divine Word does the work. It is into our heart God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son. It is the heart, the inward life of desire and love and will and surrender, that the Holy Spirit guides into all the truth.
In Bible study, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not to thine own understanding.”
Trust not, wholly distrust, thy own understanding. It can only give thee thoughts and conceptions of Divine things without the reality. It will deceive thee with the thought that the truth, if received into the mind, will somehow surely enter the heart. And so it will blind thee to the terrible experience which is universal, that men daily read, and every Sunday delight to hear God’s Word, and yet are made neither humble, nor holy, nor heavenly minded by it.
Instead of trusting the understanding, come with the heart to the Bible. Instead of trusting the understanding, trust in the Lord, and that with all thy heart. Let not the understanding, but the whole heart set upon the living God as the Teacher, be the chief thing, when thou enterest thy closet. Then shalt thou find good understanding. God will give thee an understanding heart, a spiritual understanding.
You may ask me, as I have been often asked, “But what am I to do? How am I to study my Bible? I see no way of doing so, but by using the understanding.”
Perfectly right. But do not use it for what it cannot do. Remember two things. One is, that it can only give you a picture or thought of spiritual things. The moment it has done this, go with your heart to the Lord to make His Word life and truth in you. The other is, remember that pride of intellect, the danger of leaning to your own understanding is unceasing, and that nothing, not even the most determined purpose, can save you from this, but only the continual dependence of the heart on the Holy Spirif s teaching. It is alone through the Holy Spirit quickening the Word in the heart, in the disposition and affections, that He can guide the intellect. “The meek will He guide in judgment; the meek will He shew his way.” “The fear of the Lord,” — a disposition — “is the beginning of wisdom.”
With every thought from the Word the understanding grasps, bow before God in dependence and trust. Believe with the whole heart that God can and will make it true. Ask for the Holy Spirit to make it work effectually in the heart. So the Word becomes the strength of our life.
Persevere in this, and the time will come when the Holy Spirit, dwelling in the heart and life, will hold the understanding in subjection, and let His holy light shine through it.