Question:
Would you please explain Jeremiah 17:9, 10? Is it impossible for a man to understand his own heart?
Answer:
Is not the Scripture plain enough? “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Have you not demonstrated its truth in promising yourself, in good faith, too, that you would do so and so, or would not do so and so, and yet you have failed? You thought you would do or would not do, but you did not know your deceitful heart. So again, Jeremiah 10:23, “O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” See Mark 7:21, 22; Romans 7:15-24. That being true, is it not the wise thing, the preeminently wise thing, to do, to place the heart in God’s hands? Is it not best to accept His diagnosis and so know the heart by His knowing? He knows it, for it is written, “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins.” Jeremiah 17:10; Psalms 139:1-4. He will change the corrupt heart and make it “to the praise of the glory of His grace.”
