![[Photo hands holding a heart]](https://www.deankwilson.com/Blog_images/judging_the_heart.jpg)
| The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. |
| —Hebrews 4:12 |
The writer of the letter to the Hebrew Christians scattered across the then-known world spends a great deal of time emphasizing what we might jusifiably call “right living.” If they are to experience the fullness of the Christian life, right living is a choice that all followers of Jesus must make.
In the verse at the beginning of this blog post, the writer strives to illustrate how important and how powerful God’s written Word is to the success of a Christian’s ability to move toward right living. The writer uses terms of military power quite familiar to the people living at this time.The written Word of God is so powerful that it is like a sword that has been sharpened on both edges. It can penetrate to the depths of whatever it pierces. Just as such a sword will split bodily tissue and divide bone, muscle, and connecting tissue, so the written Word of God can divide the soul and spirit—that is, the human modalities of the emotional being and the spiritual being. Furthermore, the written Word of God judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
In our current societal norms, we tend to emotionalize almost everything. We particularly emotionalize all matters that relate to our spiritual human modality. We accept the falsehood that all matters relating to spiritual things must have a huge emotional connection. This is simply not true. Human spirituality exists separately from emotion. That is not to say that the spiritual modality—often referred to in Scripture as our “soul”—does not affect the other three human modalities: heart, mind, and strength. But, the very essence of our spiritual modality exists free from any anchor the other three modalities may try to attach to it. Thus, the written Word of God has power to divide our spiritual modality from any adverse connection to the other three human modalities that may hinder spiritual formation and development. Unlike the characterizations that our society may try to espouse, our spiritual connection to God exists in the supernatural realm. Our God is a spirit and our connection with Him resides in the spiritual world—a world beyond anything that exists in the common daily existence of our society. The written Word of God, the Bible, makes the spiritual and supernatural come alive. It does so by judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. In other words, we control our emotional human modality by allowing the spiritual human modality to regain and maintain its rightful control over all three of our other human modalities, but especially the emotional modality. If this seems too weird, please keep remembering the words of Jesus found in John 4:24:“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
