Long ago, I played in a Christian alternative rock band named Everybodyduck.  I was the “long haired” guy in the band.  One of our more popular songs contained a lyrical hook in the chorus that said, “If Jesus sees my heart, how come you only see my hair.”  (Here’s a link to the tune:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfJgp1Ake0I)

It was a fun band with light-hearted lyrics, but there was something to that message….

Here I am, 19 years old in a rock band...

Here I am, 19 years old in a Christian rock band…

It’s true that the heart encapsulates what you are. 

American’s often think of the heart as the seat of the emotions.  To the Hebrew, the heart was not just the emotions, it also involved a person’s intellect and will.  The heart symbolized the inner person with that person’s many functions.  AND… it is the heart that is the source of most of our trouble.

Your heart is critical to Jesus   

In Matthew 15, verse 18-19, Jesus says, “18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this

[the heart] defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”

Who we are, in the deep recesses of our hearts, is what Jesus cares about the most.  It’s not enough to polish up the outside of our lives.  Listen to what He says about the Pharisees in Matthew 23:25-26:

25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

Jesus never aims to simply clean up our manners.  His intention is to transform our hearts.

Jesus didn’t come to help us have better etiquette or to cure us of some bad habits.  He came into the world because our hearts where so dirty and broken that we needed to be completely purified.

We can do all the right things on the outside and still be sinfully sick in the heart.  Jesus is not looking for a culture that is all buttoned up.  Jesus is concerned about the heart.

When Jesus found us, our hearts were unfit for eternal life in the kingdom of God.  In our state of utter unworthiness, He showed us our sin.  He shined a light into our hearts so that we could see our desperate state.  This revealing of sin is a gift of His grace.  If we didn’t know that we were dying without hope, we might never have looked for a Savior.

The Spirit’s light revealed that our condition is far worse than we originally thought.  We aren’t just sick; the disease is terminal.  There is no reversing the process. Sin has wreaked havoc on our soul and the destruction is so total and complete that no amount of good deeds could ever repair the damage. 

Sin totaled our life like a bad accident totals a car.  Sin damaged our souls beyond repair.  The light of the Spirit revealed how far we are from fixing ourselves.  Without Jesus, we are a wreck, destined for destruction.  We’re totaled beyond restoration.  Our sin rightly invites God’s wrath upon us.  Without Jesus, we’re existing in a spiritual junkyard.

When we see the total depravity of our spiritual condition without Jesus, we are faced with some choices:

  • We can ignore what the spirit has revealed.  In arrogance, we can assume that we are still good enough to see God even if we’ve sinned a little.
  • We can try to polish up our lives.  Through effort, good works, and religious ceremonies, we can try to shine up our spiritual lives in order to make us look good enough to see God. (like putting Turtle wax on a wrecked car – hoping no one will notice the damage)
  • We can reject the Spirit altogether and try to find God outside of the Bible in a false pursuit.

But there are some who reject all those choices.  They see their spiritual condition without Jesus and cry out for help.  They realize their need for a Savior and they ask Jesus to save their souls.  Romans 5:8 says that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Christ died for us.  He was destroyed instead of us.  He faced the full force of the wrath of God so we didn’t have to.