KARDIA (Heart)
What is the Word?
When we pronounce the word kardia, the form of the word is immediately familiar to us. In English we use a derivative of this word, cardiac, to refer to our physical heart – and usually in a medical context. In the New Testament, the word also refers to the heart, albeit in a way that encompasses the physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of our human experience.
How does the Bible use this word?
For us moderns, the Greek noun kardia refers properly to the heart as an organ of the human body. However, for Jesus and the disciples, it has a far more encompassing domain than simple anatomy. In fact, in the over 800 occurrences that we find in scripture, it never refers to the heart in the anatomical sense. In the Greco-Roman world in which the New Testament subsists, the word kardia was an expression of a person’s inner character or nature. It might be thought of as the part of the human person where affection, desire, and spirituality find their seat.
Where in the Bible?
Since we now understand how the ancients thought of the term, we can see examples of this in the words of Jesus himself:
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Matthew 5:28
You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart (καρδίας) the mouth speaks.
Matthew 12:34
For out of the heart (καρδίας) come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
Matthew 15:19
As we can observe, Jesus is quite fond of using this illustration of the heart being the source and center of a person’s inner being. Certainly, Jesus is not saying that the organ of the heart is somehow where our words come from. Rather, because the heart is the faculty of our inner nature, we can expect that the words that we use will be a reflection and expression of this inner nature. The solution is not to somehow work to give the appearance of holiness. For this, Jesus sharply chastised the Pharisees:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Matthew 23:27-28
Jesus recognized the problem was not able to be fixed by manipulating our surroundings or our appearance. The problem with humanity is that it is corrupted from the inside out – not the outside in. The solution is not to purify ourselves on the outside. What humanity requires is a purification of the heart – indeed a new heart all together.
Create in Me a New Heart, O God
In the Father’s abundant love for us, he recognized our need for a new heart. For us, he sent his only son into our flesh, to live the perfect life entirely according to the law. He bore the cross on our behalf, swallowing up our pain, despair, and separation from God into his own being – and when he died, we died along with him. In his resurrection, we participate in this newness of life by faith, a newness of life that creates in us a new heart by the power of the Holy Spirit – that we might be rulers with Christ as members of the new humanity. This reality is something that begins now in this life, and we are called to take this message of new life out into the world, that God may use us as his own hands to redeem all things and make all things new.