There are a number of verses in the Bible that we tend to quote without having studied the context, and often theologies are built on these contextless verses. Today I want to probe one Christian favorite and see if we can better understand what this verse really means.
The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?“I the LORD search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10, NIV)
In Christian circles today, Jeremiah 17:9 is often understood to mean that the heart cannot be trusted, and therefore you should not “follow your heart,” but we can see by the end of the verse that this is not what Jeremiah is saying: “Who can understand it?” The deceitfulness of the heart is seen here in its unwillingness to be understood, not in its attempts to lead you down a path of sin. What does Jeremiah mean by this? A little context will help.
Jeremiah 16:1-17:4 is a prophecy of the coming judgment upon Judah, with a word of hope (16:14-15) mixed in. This is common in Jeremiah, as God raised up Jeremiah in the last days of Judah’s independence as a nation. By the end of Jeremiah’s life, Jerusalem would fall for its wickedness. But God’s love for Jerusalem and for his people was real and meant that a restoration was coming. In Jeremiah 29:10-14, God will promise that after seventy years of punishment, he will restore his people. Of course, seventy years is a long time to wait for restoration, and most of the people living in the time of Jeremiah would not live to see this day! But Jeremiah 17:14-18 gives a word of hope for the immediate future:
Heal me, LORD, and I will be healed;
save me and I will be saved,
for you are the one I praise.
They keep saying to me,
“Where is the word of the LORD?
Let it now be fulfilled!”
I have not run away from being your shepherd;
you know I have not desired the day of despair.
What passes my lips is open before you.
Do not be a terror to me;
you are my refuge in the day of disaster.
Let my persecutors be put to shame,
but keep me from shame;
let them be terrified,
but keep me from terror.
Bring on them the day of disaster;
destroy them with double destruction.
Jeremiah is mocked by the people he prophesies to, but he knows that God is his refuge who will let his persecutors be terrified but keep him from terror. He will be saved.
So what is this section from verses 5 to 13 that moves Jeremiah from this word of destruction to this confidence that he will be saved? It is a reflection on God’s justice! “The one who trusts in man … and whose heart turns away from the Lord” is under a curse (17:5) and “will not see prosperity when it comes” (17:6), but “the one who trusts in the Lord” is blessed (17:7) and does not need to fear in the hard times (17:8).
The problem, of course, is that only God knows the heart! Who is the one whose heart is turned from the Lord, and who is the one whose confidence is in the Lord? We may try to discern this ourselves, but “the heart is deceitful above all things” (17:9). Jeremiah’s point seems to be that someone could profess that they have put their trust in the Lord and even think that they have put their trust in the Lord, when all of this is a mask for what is really going on in their heart. Likewise, someone could seem to have a fickle faith, but at their core is a trust that is in the Lord and not in men. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
None of his hearers understood Jeremiah’s heart. To them he looked like a prophet who didn’t trust God. They sang songs about Zion and the temple of the Lord that made them confident that Jerusalem would not fall (were they singing Psalm 46?). The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Jeremiah’s answer is that God can understand it. God knows that the trust his opponents were putting in the Lord was not a real trust, while Jeremiah’s sense that God would let Jerusalem fall was a true faith. “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve” (Jeremiah 17:10). When the Lord searches the heart of Jeremiah, he finds goodness. Is Jeremiah’s heart “deceitful”? Only in the sense that if people in his day tried to understand it, they would judge him wrongly. Is the heart of Jeremiah’s opponents deceitful? Jeremiah says it is in the sense that people would look at them as people of faith.
Jeremiah 17:9 does not mean that we cannot trust our hearts. It means that we do not see people’s hearts the way God sees them. In this sense the heart is deceitful. Does this mean we have no hope of understanding our hearts? No. The infilling of the Holy Spirit gives us the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16) so we can start to see things as God sees them. But we should also be cautious about assuming either our goodness or our wickedness, because appearances can be deceiving. Place your trust in God, and he will give you a pure heart (Psalms 51:10), and he will give you the desires of your heart (Psalms 37:4), and that is a good thing!
