Jeremiah 179 is a famous Bible passage about the heart.

It's a verse that many of us know by heart, and it says this.

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick who can understand it.

Pastor John, this is certainly true of a preconversion heart without the Holy Spirit.

But is this passage accurate for a converted, regenerated heart that is now united to

Christ, or is this simply wrong to apply this passage as a diagnosis for the sin struggles

in the Christian life?

It is wrong to apply this text, the text about Jeremiah 179 about the hardest deceitful

above all things.

It's wrong to apply that text to the regenerate heart without qualification.

Let me start with the definition.

In what sense is the heart deceitful like that?

Here's my answer.

The heart offers incentives and motives for behaviors that destroy us by putting the

proposed action in a compelling light.

In other words, that's deceitful.

It's a lie.

And the heart is telling us, do this, do this, because it'll do this, and it's lies.

It's lying.

Do destruction.

So evil actions can have very compelling motives that the heart offers up, or flip it around.

Good acts can have no motive.

...