#DailyDevotion How To Reassure Yourself When Your Heart Condemns You
Wednesday Easter 4
1 John 3:19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;
What is the “by this” that John is talking about? Just this a few verses before, he laid down his life for us. If you believe Jesus did this for you, then you know that you are of the truth and we can reassure out heart before him. Jesus laid down his life to take away our sin. In taking away our sin, he also has taken away our guilt and our shame by nailing them to the cross in his body. If you are not of the truth then this great truth cannot reassure your hearts before the Father. All you can see and present to him is your broken, wretchedness. But with this truth we can stand before him and present to him Jesus’ righteousness, Jesus’ sacrifice.
Whenever our heart condemns us, and it will what shall we do? We know we sin. John reminds us of that in chapter one. We confess that sin and Jesus justifies us. He is our advocate before the Father. More than that, God is greater than our hearts. God knows our great weakness and our failings. He knows why we do what we do better than we know ourselves. More than that, he knows what God the Son did for us when he laid down his life for us.
Trusting God is greater than our hearts, we can say with St. Paul, “Who will condemn us?” Certainly not our hearts when it believes Jesus justifies us. If our hearts start to condemn us we place Jesus before our hearts and remind it there is your righteousness before God. God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. We need to remind our hearts of this regularly. If our hearts cannot condemn us because of Jesus then most certain Satan cannot accuse us anymore either. Well he may try but God will not listen to him. The blood of Christ Jesus stops up the ears of the Almighty and all he can hear is the verdict, “Not Guilty.”
Through the body of Christ then, and by his high priestly office, we can approach the throne of God’s grace boldly. For our guilt has been taken away by Jesus. Whatever work we shouldn’t have done does not stand before us nor any work we should have done. Jesus in laying down his life for us has taken care of that. On top of that he has given us the token of his salvation namely baptism. We can point to that and say, “Here you joined yourself to me and me to you. You have taken on all my sins, guilt, shame and death in your baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sin and given me all your righteousness, merits, glory and life. So I can stand before God blameless, holy and without stain.” When our hearts remembers this it stand boldly before God and it should. To do otherwise is to spurn the gift of our almighty king.
Heavenly Father, through your Son Jesus Christ, you have shown that you are greater than our hearts which would condemn us because of our sins and iniquities. Grant us the remembrance of your great mercy towards us in your son’s laying down his life for us that we may ever stand boldly before you in his precious name. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.