1 John 3:19-22

1 John 3:19

God Greater than Our Heart.

I. The subject with which these verses deal is an accusing conscience and its antidote. St. John does not say that the heart may not accuse justly. He does not say that a child of God is sinless by virtue of his relation as a child, and that his self-accusation is quieted by being pronounced groundless. It is entirely possible that one's heart may justly accuse him of sin, and that God's judgment may confirm the accusation of the heart. But he does mean to say that the heart is not the supreme and final arbiter, and that whatever it may accuse us of must be referred to a higher tribunal. You will observe that emphasis is laid on the words "before Him" we "shall assure our hearts before Him."

II. God knoweth all things, while our heart is ignorant and blind. Whatever light or power of discernment conscience has, it receives from God. Not a few Christians live habitually in a state of self-accusation. They live in anticipation of Divine judgment. Life is one continuous arraignment at the bar of conscience, spite of all their prayer, and striving, and study of the word. Is it the appropriate daily occupation of a child of God to be a mere bookkeeper, writing down bitter things against himself? And then, once more, it is true that many Christians do not carry up their case from the bar of the heart. It is at this mistake that the Apostle's words are aimed. The whole text carries a protest and an antidote against that kind of piety which is too contemplative and self-scrutinising; which is always studying self for the evidences of a right spiritual relation and condition; which tests growth in grace by the tension of feeling; which limits God's presence by the sense of His presence; which reckons the spiritual latitude and longitude by the temperature of emotion, as if a sailor should take his reckoning by the thermometer. Feeling, religious sensibility, have their place in the Christian economy, and a high and sacred place it is; but its place is not the judgment-seat.

M. R. Vincent, The Covenant of Peace,p. 160.

References: 1 John 3:20. J. Keble, Sermons from Advent to Christmas Eve,pp. 123, 137, 151. 1 John 3:21. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxi., No. 1855; J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons,p. 260. 1 John 3:22. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1103. 1 John 3:23. Ibid.,vol. ix., No. 531; Mackarness, Church of England Pulpit,vol. x., p. 313. 1 John 3:23; 1 John 3:24. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 316.