The Lord Weighs the Heart

Correcting a flippant attitude regarding God's judgement and knowledge of our hearts

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Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash

Perhaps you’ve heard someone say, “Only God can judge me” or “God knows my heart.” This is usually an attempt to excuse sin, to deflect from the heinous nature of it, to downplay its severity. This is what Christians will encounter when we witness in the public square, or if we’re simply having coffee with a friend.

There are countless individuals who have deceived themselves enough into believing that God looks at their hearts and says, “I get it. You’re fine.” Of course, they are right in one area. They are correct to claim that only God judges them. They are right to say that God knows their heart. To them, that brings a sense of comfort, albeit unjustified. It’s used as a warm blanket to cover the sinful motivations of their heart that they don’t want to admit.

Yes, God is their judge and knows their heart. And that should frighten them. The reality of God being your judge should not bring you comfort, but should make you shudder. Again, this is an excuse unbelievers make to excuse their sin. How dare someone else, who cares for them, point out their sin and call them to repentance? Only God can judge them! Indeed, that’s the problem they will be facing.

“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes,” Proverbs 21:2 says, “but the Lord weighs the heart.” We all believe we’re doing the right things; we all claim to be on God’s good graces. This is a common attitude among unbelievers because they use the good/bad works scale to explain why God knows their heart. He’s an “understanding and forgiving God,” they say. The problem, of course, is in the unbeliever’s giant misunderstanding of God’s law and their good deeds. There is no good/bad work scale because there are no good works to counterbalance their bad works.

The more unbelievers claim that God knows their heart, the further they push themselves away from salvation. It is only in admitting how sinful we are and that our hearts are impure that we can feel safe (in Christ) before the judgement of God. Until someone reckons with the sinfulness of their own heart, the reality of God’s judgement is not a good thing.

Many people criticize evangelicals for talking too much about judgement, sin, and wrath. It’s certainly possible to place too heavy an emphasis on those things if we’re not also talking about redemption in Christ. But how can we see the beauty of redemption if we don’t see the folly of our hearts? How can we taste and see the goodness of the Lord if we don’t first taste the bitterness of our sin? Therefore, it’s imperative to talk about the hard things. It’s of utmost importance to admit that we need a Savior.

For Christians, God sees our hears that have been made new. He doesn’t see a stony heart anymore, but sees the new one he gave us in the new birth. He sees a heart that loves Christ (imperfectly) and hates sin (imperfectly). He sees a heart that is eager to pursue him and eager to forsake unrighteousness. Of course, we don’t do this perfectly since we still reside in our flesh.

Believers need not fear God’s judgement; we don’t need to be afraid of his wrath—that was taken on by Christ on the cross on our behalf. And thank God for that.

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