Mackintosh Mackay
Hebrews 3:12. Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according the fruit of his doings” (Jer 17: 9,10). No one had more deep experience of the human heart than the Apostle Paul. He was a chosen vessel to the Lord; and the Lord tried him, and proved him, and made him jealous over himself with godly jealousy. It is he, we have every reason to believe, who is here addressing the “brethren” by inspiration of the Spirit and giving them this salutary warning from God.
It is strange, indeed unaccountable, that while we may be convinced of our own natural unbelief and feel its evil and guilt and cry to God for deliverance from it, we may still cherish unbelief at the same time. The human heart is as the chambers of imagery the prophet saw in vision. After he had seen many evils, his omniscient guide leads him onward, saying, “Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do” (Ezk 8:13). When God’s gracious voice and commandment reach the soul, offering Himself in Christ to be our God and Redeemer, and when the soul, acknowledging its own guilt and its need of an Almighty Saviour, turns to the Lord Jesus, then the heart feels its unbelief and its inability to trust in Christ. It seeks to be delivered from the power of this unbelief and seeks grace to overcome it, and God’s enlightening revelation shows the soul the glory and all-sufficiency of the Saviour.
Every believer has cause to bless God that this revelation is given in such measure as to keep the soul waiting upon Him. But while God is so gracious, how unworthy are the responses made, even by believers, to His loving-kindness and His tender mercies – not to speak of the numerous backslidings which they have to lament and which hinder the growth of their souls in spiritual life and holiness, even at their best state and in their best frames. How much remains with them of a self-righteous tendency! The object of faith is Christ, and it is surely unbelief which leads the mind to take comfort from any other object or source.
1An evening meditation, taken with editing from The Christian’s Daily Companion. Mackay (1793-1873) was, at the time of writing this piece, a minister in Dunoon.
But there is such unbelief in them that it will break forth when they are little aware of its existence. They cherish it unknown to themselves, and if God was not indeed the God of infinite compassion and of longsuffering – if their Surety in covenant and their Intercessor in heaven was not their merciful High Priest – their own deceitfulness of heart would consume them and bear down the life of godliness in their souls. It would reduce them, while outwardly professing the faith of Christ, to a dead formality, an unworthy and base hypocrisy of spirit. While they complain, with good cause, of the weakness of their faith, the darkness or dimness of their views, there is in their hearts what would treat their complaints and longings as having merit.
And suppose that tendency to depart from the living God, as He is revealed in Christ, should be permitted to have the ascendancy in His people’s hearts, and they permitted to build on any other foundation than that which is already laid. Then their souls would be lost; the waters would cover them; they would sink beneath the stream or be carried away by this evil current of their own unbelief and natural pride of heart.
The soul must be continually aware of this its own evil tendency; watch unto prayer against it; wait on the Lord for increase of grace and for the enlightening power of the Spirit of truth. The soul must wait on the Teacher and Comforter to abide upon it; to show to it more and more clearly and largely the glory of the Saviour; to reveal to them His covenant; to bring them within its bonds in the experience of their souls, as the only place where there is liberty, and where their souls can really prosper in the knowledge and experience of faith and hope. This tendency of the heart, as the power of evil still existing in them, ever and unweariedly seeks its opportunities to act – to have its own unholy dominion. How great is believers’ need to be upon their watch-tower, and jealous of their hearts with a godly jealousy.
But though unbelief takes this special shape with those who are quickened to follow after God, how many other shapes does it also appear in! It is so deeply seated and rooted in the soul that, however often rebuked by the manifestations of God’s goodness, it will still again spring up and trouble them. In the times of the believer’s prosperity, whether temporal or spiritual, it will seek to turn him aside. The world will come in and claim dominion again in the affections. This will deaden the soul and darken the understanding. In times of adversity and trial, unbelief will tend to overwhelm the soul with suspicions, doubts and fears. In the hour of temptation it will tend to divert the mind entirely from God and from every believing view of Him which the soul has ever received. Its shapes are so many, its places in the heart so hidden, its power is so subtle that we may be sure that it is exercising its power whenever we are unaware of its presence and not watching against its movements and wiles as we experience them.
It is that principle on which the author of evil lays hold, claims as his own, and knows to be his own in the believer’s spirit. But the blessed and omnipotent Saviour has a stronger claim, and He has full authority to assert His claim to the soul which He has redeemed by His own blood, and He will shortly bruise Satan under His people’s feet. Many have been the promising appearances destroyed by this spiritual blight. True, it cannot destroy the “incorruptible seed” of the kingdom, when that is sown by the great Husbandman. But how are we to know whether the seed is really in us?
It must be proved by its growing up, by our being drawn nearer and nearer to Christ, as our all and in all. “Faith which worketh by love” is the principle of spiritual life in the soul. It draws the soul to Christ; it quickens it into filial obedience. It makes the soul quick-sighted in detecting in it what is contrary to His honour and glory, that which dishonours Him. How great is the soul’s need to have this principle strengthened, watered, refreshed and invigorated every day and hour, by the Spirit’s influence and power through the truth applied to the heart. How near does Christ bring Himself to the soul! And how necessary that He should come in and take up His abode in the heart – that He might be honoured as continually present there, and that we might truly know His blessed name and be devoted to His service and glory. Nothing but the Spirit’s testifying power can make the heart even desire this. And when the heart does not desire it, surely it is the evil heart of unbelief that prevails, in departing from the living God.
O my soul, what have you been seeking and desiring most this day? What have you chiefly been engaged in? Have I not cause to dread the power of this powerful and destructive enemy? Has it not been assailing my spirit? Have I not been ensnared by it? “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” Destroy the evil heart; renew it by Thy gracious power. Draw me, that I may run after Thee. “Turn Thou me, and I shall be turned.” Let not this sin rule over me, but let grace reign through righteousness, abounding toward me, and setting my soul free.