personality, including intellect, emotion and will. But it is also a fact that this term stands for that certain attitude of the whole personality toward God through His Word in which one believes and receives His Word without question, even though it may not be understood, rather than insisting on understanding it in order to believe it.
Paul says by inspiration in First Corinthians 1:17 to 2:16 that mental capacity, even of the highest excellence, when exercised by itself, is utterly incapable of apprehending spiritual truth in any degree whatever. And Christ says that it is with the heart that man believes unto righteousness. This defines that attitude of the whole personality which accepts the Word of God on faith without necessarily understanding it, and which gives evidence of acceptance by such a whole-hearted surrender to it as will eventuate in a life of righteousness.
Then in other Scriptures we find that a life of righteousness, according to the divine standard, is based on right relations with God in Christ through faith in His shed blood, through whose incoming and indwelling life, in response to such a faith, the one who receives it will normally live in right relations with his fellow men. That is, it is a righteousness that is obtained by believing, not attained by working. It is received, not achieved.
The use of the term "heart," therefore, in Scripture, means that certain attitude of the whole personality toward God through His Word which the exercise of the intelleet apart from, and unfounded on, faith makes impossible.
It is precisely this distinction in faculties that
