The Bible is clear that all of our words and deeds start in the heart. The heart is indeed “the heart of the matter.”
In Matthew 15 and Mark 7, Jesus said that a whole variety of activities have their origin in a person’s heart. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:17), He said that a bad tree produces bad fruit. James wrote that “faith without works is dead” (2:26). What’s on the inside will show itself on the outside – guaranteed.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote:
Take for example the realm of music. A man may play a great piece of music quite accurately. He may make no mistakes at all, and yet it may be true to say of him that he did not really play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. He played the notes correctly, but it was not the Sonata. What was he doing? He was mechanically striking the right notes but missing the soul and the real interpretation. He wasn’t doing what Beethoven intended and meant. That, I think, is the relationship between the whole and the parts. The artist, the true artist, is always correct. Even the greatest artist cannot afford to neglect rules and regulations, but that is not what makes him the great artist. It is this something extra, the expression, it is the spirit, it is the light, it is the whole that he is able to convey. There is, it seems to me, is the relationship of the particular to the general in the Sermon on the Mount. You can’t divorce; you can’t separate them.
The Christian, while he puts his emphasis on the spirit, is also concerned about the letter, but he is not concerned only about the letter. He must never consider the letter apart from the spirit. On the one hand to claim the spirit without living according to God’s law is to be a liar. On the other hand, to try to live out the law without the spirit is to be a hypocrite. They both go together. The spirit is the right attitude and the letter is the obedience that comes as a result.”
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