God is greater than our hearts

And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. - 1 John 3v19-21

This is a great little passage, though I have to say it is packed with conviction. The context of course is our mandate to love the brethren and our actions in response to the mandate.

We can be assured of our walk with God if we truly love the brethren. Our hearts give us the every day assurance that we are His.

But what if our hearts condemn us in this? What if we consider the situation and wonder deep down if we really love the brethren? What if we are just not sure?

If this verse is any indication we have reason to be concerned. If our own hearts, which are wicked and deceitful, condemn us for our lack of love there is something wrong because God is greater than our hearts and He knows all things. He knows everything; every bad feeling, every hypocrisy, and every evil thought. He knows the things that we may not even admit to ourselves. If our own hearts make us aware of a lack of love and give us a lack of assurance we had better check things out because God knows even more than we want to admit.

On the other hand, if we can examine our hearts and actions and see that we do love the brethren we can have confidence and assurance that we are His. Our love should be so pure and so sure that we don’t even have to think about it in our own hearts. We should never even have to wonder whether or not we love the brethren.

God’s kind of love for the brethren will give us the wonderfully calm assurance that we really do belong to Him.