HEART THEOLOGY acronym

H: Holy Heart of love. God’s nature is wholly good in all that He is and all that He does. All of His attributes and actions flow out of His loving nature, like His justice and wrath, and nothing within Him is contrary to Himself, but He is completely unified. There are only five nouns that identify God’s nature, which are: Love, Light, Life, Spirit, and One. Everything else flows out from this. God the Father is love and has a heart full of overflowing love, which created the world and all good things to spill over His benevolence towards all creation that He may share His goodness with all from this selflessness and humility made known to us through Jesus Christ. From the overflow of His heart, He has always been propitious towards mankind and never needed anything or anyone to render Him propitious because He is self-sufficient and immutable in His Triune nature. God desires all people to believe in His love and goodness, and that's why He sent His only Son. This is the same God of the Old Testament in Exodus 34:6-7 who is most glorified in showing His grace and compassion towards all His creation, and this is what He desires to be made known for. God has created no one expendable, but at the expense of Himself, Jesus Christ left heaven’s glory to save sinners. While being reviled, He did not revile in return, nor defend His own honor. His glory was never about the self-exaltation of His own ego as if He needed the adulation of men and angels; but rather, the exaltation of His name is unto the end that all the nations may believe in Him because He selflessly loves the whole world.

E: Everyone is Enabled to come to Him if they so choose to do so, even within the fallen state of creation, through the ordinary means of grace of the gospel message, the Spirit’s working, spiritual perception, mental understanding, and through a heart of humbly receiving the free and gracious gift of eternal life. Receiving this gift in conversion is not confined to the natural realm alone or mere psychology but is inherently spiritual and operative upon the gracious provision of God, while the new birth is wholly supernatural and a work of God alone. Sin is not a substance but a choice upon which each individual is guilty for choosing and will be held accountable for despite any choices of their parents or ancestors whereby, they were not born either guilty or with a sin substance by which they could blame God or their parents for their own sin. The only barriers to salvation are sin and unbelief. Sin, because it darkens the understanding of the mind to not come to the truth, it creates a hard heart that loves the darkness to not let the light to come in, and it produces fear, shame, and self-preservation that leads to unbelief. Unbelief is a barrier because belief is what opens the door to God’s love and light so that the life of God can dwell in us through faith to dispel the darkness to reconcile us to God. Jesus is the only name permitted by which we can be saved because the Lord our God is a Jealous God and shall have no other gods before Him.

A: Atonement is provisional for All people to be reconciled back to the heart of the Father through faith in Jesus Christ’s demonstration of the Father’s love for us in the Son’s incarnation, life, suffering, death, and resurrection. Through this, all receive the Spirit of Christ’s life and power within them as their salvation and new heart to live out of His nature and through all the benefits of Jesus that He obtained on our behalf; whereby, our obedience is because Jesus learned the way of obedience having never sinned; our victory in faith is because Jesus overcame that victory for us; our death to sin is because our corrupted flesh was crucified with Christ; and our resurrection from the dead will be because Christ’s resurrected life dwells in us. Through effectual faith in the holy love and goodness of God revealed through His Son and through His laws, the blood of Jesus is transformationally expiatory to purge our sins away, and God’s forgiveness is declared to us upon penitent confession to the Lord. Perfection was never a requirement for a reconciled relationship, but faith has always been. The death of Jesus proved the Father’s love for us to have faith in Him, while the life and resurrection of Jesus is provisional for everlasting life for all who abide in Him and He in them. Through His life and death, sin is cleansed through the blood of Christ.

R: Return or Reap. Return to the heart of the Father through faith in Jesus Christ to obtain life or reap the consequences of sin, which is separation from the life of God forever as eternal death, the cessation of all life. The reason God hates sin is because it corrupts the image that we were made in after the likeness of God, destroys what we were meant to become, harms others, separates us from Him, rejects His loving provision, aligns into devotion to the devil’s work, and is so contrary to the pure nature of His holy love, humility, and unity that it is nauseating to Him and grieves Him. The judgement of God is retributive, governmental, and consequential. Jesus will return one day to judge the living and the dead according to the deeds they have done, to purge all evil on this earth in preparation for His eternal and physical kingdom, where all sin and death will be destroyed under the authority of His feet. But all those who choose sin now shall reap the inbuilt natural consequences that sin produces: deprivation, corruption, and death. But those who return in faith to the Father in heaven who made them shall receive forgiveness, life, and peace forever. Those who place their faith in Jesus, our Passover Lamb, shall have the wrath of God pass them over when The Day of Judgement comes.

T: Truth & Theology properly understood and appropriated by faith can set people free from sin, the devil, the world, and religion. Freedom begins through faith in the truth and continues to grow with greater degrees of faith, through the merging of one's true identity in Christ, reliance on Him, the purgative nature of trials, and through the destruction of lies and doubts to which faith then overcomes the post-Adamic corruption of the heart, is purified from the sinful inclinations, and enters into God’s rest and peace, which continually abides. Though God is wholly within His right to freely bestow this gift to any individual at any time, and may do so for some at conversion. Though it is likely wrong doctrines or beliefs that keep people from this gift. Faith guards the heart from sin and the devil, hope guards the mind from the world, and love guards the body from evil. Through these three virtues, the spiritual life ascends towards God in increasing virtues, and spiritual life and power to purge the heart, mind, and body of the remnants of sin and imperfections through the indwelling Christ-life being allowed access to every part of our being. Though sinless perfection is never attained in this life. But where faith, hope, and love all mature through the crucifying of the flesh and the renewing of the mind, perfect love and the maturity of Christ are attained and maintained through active choice. But the ultimate aim of Christianity is not freedom from sin. It is about love, advancing the kingdom of God, and having a relationship with the God of the universe.

S: Salvation, Sovereignty, Suffering

Salvation begins (1) with faith along with a change of mind and heart, (2) enters the new birth of regeneration by the Spirit, which is the spiritual water of cleansing, (3) progresses in sanctifying growth, and (4) culminates in the glorification of our bodies when we see Christ face to face and become as He is. Persevering faith is required all the way to the end to make it into the eternal kingdom of heaven, of which it is possible to forfeit through apostasy. It is possible to forsake Him through the progression of rebellion and unbelief, culminating in the loss of faith, whereby God is kicked out of the temple of the body through a person's free, conscious, and deliberate choice, and God respects it. This is one reason why we are commanded to abide in Christ through faith and abide close to Him through keeping His commandments. Even so, the grace and power of God are abundantly sufficient to work on our behalf to keep the faith through our eternal High Priest; and we have no reason to fear, being securely established in covenant with God by the shed blood of Christ, which is His solemn oath and unwavering commitment to never leave us or forsake us. We are protected by the power of God through faith so long as we have faith, as faith is our union with Him.

Sovereignty: God has determined not which choices we should make but that we should be free to make them. The heavens are the Lord’s but the earth He has given to mankind to be His image-bearer representatives acting within the authority He has given them, having crowned them with glory and honor to keep and rule the earth. A God less than sovereign would be afraid to bestow this kind of creaturely freedom. But in the nature of God revealed to us through Jesus Christ, a selflessly loving and humble God desires to lift up humanity and to share His authority and goodness because that aspect of His glory is more important to Him than His power or control. At the same time, God orchestrates events after the counsel of His will to achieve His ultimate ends while also allowing for creaturely freedom, even as an earthly king is still sovereign without meticulously controlling everything about his subjects. God has determined some things to be but does not determine all things so that mankind can have contra-causal free-will (though not completely independent from influences). God’s foreknowledge of events does not necessitate Him determining those events, and the Bible reveals to us that God makes many choices within time as things are happening within the present. The election of grace is such a choice as God has made the decision that salvation is by grace alone through faith in Christ and this is the only way into the kingdom of heaven and only selects individuals as they come through that door while rejecting those who come by any other door. But though the decision for individuals is made in the present, the plan of salvation provisional for all humanity was decided before the foundation of the world. God had always planned that all the nations should be His inheritance so that whosoever may come to Him may be saved. Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, is the Elect One and only those in Him are elect, and are never elect apart from or prior to being in Him. Election is about (1) the choice of grace for all those In Christ to inherit the promises of the covenant, sanctification, glorification, and all future blessings as co-heirs with Christ, and (2) election is about God’s choice for us to serve Him as holy and blameless, a people set apart for His own possession. All these promises are ours in Him. Though God chooses specific individuals for service, even in His foreknowledge, it is still their choice to believe and to continue serving to follow the call of God on their life and it remains possible for them to turn away from God even as Solomon did. The book of life existed from but not before the foundation of the world and was a blank book from that time while through the progress of time, names were written in the book or blotted out according to people’s choices. There are only two calls: God’s call upon man to come to Him and man’s call upon God to be saved.

Suffering: Since God is in the heavens and we experience so much suffering in this world, it can be hard for us to believe that He is all-loving, good, or that He cares about us. But He is not too distant from us or removed from our suffering. He gave us laws for our own good and to display the nature of His love and goodness but we rejected those laws and lived according to our own way and that is why humanity is filled with so much brokenness and suffering. God destroyed people and nations that were irredeemably evil so that the proceeding generations would have a better future. The Ten Commandments were written by God while the Law of Moses was written by Moses and was strict in some ways but lenient in other ways but were not a full reflection of the heart of God but were a means for governing a people for that time in history. God’s true heart for how people should live and treat others was revealed in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew five, God shows to us that our violation of His law is against His holy love, humility, and unity and we are so unlike Him and fall far short of His perfect love. Humanity is the product of their own choices. God desires us to love Him and love others but true love cannot be deterministically controlled if it is to be real. God did not create or program robots but desires us to freely love Him in return and for that love to last for all eternity. Though God is in the heavens, He is also present everywhere, and He sees all things. He is mindful and compassionate towards our suffering, even as He was when He heard the cry of the Israelites and brought them out of slavery, and how He saw the desperate cry of Hagar and her boy, took care of their needs and made of him a great nation even though the covenant did not come through him. God sees every tear, hears every hurtful word, and does not forget our pain. But since we found that so hard to believe, He sent to us His One and only Son to walk upon this earth to show us that He is Immanuel, God with us. He suffered with us alongside the oppression of evil governments, unfair treatment, and the loss of loved ones. The eternal God in Jesus and perfectly innocent One—was rejected by His own people. He was betrayed, abandoned, whipped, reviled, mocked, and crucified by the hands of evil men. They blamed Jesus and made Him a scapegoat, even as many people today blame God for their problems. And so we are guilty for crucifying God since we have done that in our own hearts by our evil thoughts about Him in blaming Him because we were too afraid to face the darkness in our own hearts. But being rich in love and mercy, He offers forgiveness for all who turn to Him. Though we do not have every answer to the question of suffering and do not know the infinite wisdom of the mind of God, Jesus provided to us the comfort of knowing God’s heart, that He understands and knows and is for our good since He suffered alongside us and rose from the dead on our behalf. God does not determine our sin and evil, for He is blameless. He is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all. For all those who believe in Him and love Him, He is orchestrating all things according to His good purposes, and is redeeming the evil that mankind and the devil have made to bring about good in the end. The ultimate solution to our suffering is believing in the love and goodness of God, the life of God within us, and the eternal kingdom of heaven awaiting those who truly believe and follow Him.

Heart Theology

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