The Human Heart

Our Lord Himself sounded all the depths of the human heart, the heart which is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” which God alone really knows. He tells what He found in it, what proceeds out of it, and there is no hint of anything good; no righteousness, no holiness, no love. You cannot get good things out of the natural heart because they are not there. Hear what He, who spake as “never man spake,” has said concerning this: “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man” (Matthew 15:18-20).
Then again in Galatians 5:19-21, the Holy Spirit gives us a long list of the works of the flesh, but you search the record in vain to find anything about love or goodness. Listen to the appalling list: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies, envying’s, murders, drunkenness, revelling’s, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
This is what you and I are capable of by nature. These are the things that abound in our hearts. Decency may keep us from following out all our evil inclinations, but these are the sins to which we are liable, one person just as much as another, if exposed to temptation. It is written: “As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.” And again, “There is no difference, for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
If then the great test of salvation is love for the Lord Jesus Christ, and you do not possess that love, you are lost, no matter how respectable your outward life may be. And if you say to yourself, “From now on I am going to love Him; I refuse to spurn Him; I will make myself devoted to Him,” let me warn you not to try, for your efforts will end in disappointment and despair. You do not love the Lord Jesus Christ if unregenerated, and you cannot love Him unless God Himself produces that love within your soul.
By this we see the absolute necessity of a second birth. Now, indeed, we understand why it is that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” and there is no possible way by which it can be changed into spirit. The works of the flesh are unholy; the will of the flesh is ever opposed to the will of God. “The carnal mind,” which is the mind of the flesh, “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Hence man as born after the flesh is hopelessly lost, unless God intervenes.
But blessed be His Name, that “which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” It is possible for man, totally depraved though he is by nature, to be regenerated by divine power, born again by the Word of God and the Spirit of God, and so become a new creature in Christ Jesus, producing fruit for God.