“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).

There are two kinds of heart trouble—one physical; the other spiritual. We all know of the physical kind, but are we aware that everyone is born with spiritual heart trouble? It can lead to such things as adultery, idolatry, witchcraft, heresies, murders, and drunkenness (Galatians 5:19–21), to physical death, and eventually to eternal, spiritual death.

The word “heart,” mentioned 800 times in Scripture, relates, usually, to the spiritual, or psychological aspect of a person and is the source of evil in everyone. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

Even in the first period of human history, “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).

Time did not improve man’s performance. Paul writes, during the time of the Roman empire, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). In the end, sin collects its wages: death—both physical and spiritual, “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). How can our heart’s disease be cured? God, the Father, sent His only begotten Son, Christ, to the cross, laying the penalty of the world’s sin on Him, thus dying as our substitute: “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness” (I Peter 2:24). Christ is the Savior from sin, and eternally releases all who accept Him as their Savior. He is the divine Physician who heals hearts. When spiritual heart trouble is cured, we find peace and forgiveness in this life and can enjoy eternal life—life forever in His presence. JLG