In the Bible, the heart is your whole inner person: your thoughts, feelings, and choices. The Hebrew word is lev, and it’s the first of three words the Shema uses to describe how we love God. Because our hearts are broken by sin, the Bible doesn’t tell us to follow our hearts. It tells us to guard them and to let God give us new ones.
Your Heart Is Where You Think and Feel
After calling us to love God, the Shema tells us how: with all our heart, soul, and strength. Today, the heart usually refers to emotions. Biblically, it includes that. The prophet Jeremiah said God’s words were his “joy” and his “heart’s delight” (Jeremiah 15:16). But in Hebrew, the heart is also where our thoughts come from.
Proverbs 14:33 Wisdom reposes in the heart of the discerning and even among fools she lets herself be known.
We would say wisdom lives in the mind. Ancient Hebrew didn’t have a word for the brain that we know of. For them, the heart was the place of understanding. So when the Shema says to love God with all your heart, it includes the way you think, not just the way you feel.
Your Heart Is Where You Make Choices
The heart is also the home of your will, the part of you that turns thoughts and emotions into action. In other words, the biblical heart is your mind, emotions, and will together. These parts constantly affect each other. A feeling feeds your thoughts, and a thought you keep dwelling on starts shaping your desires and choices. That’s why the Bible gives this warning.
Proverbs 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Notice that the Bible never says, “Follow your heart.” It says, “Guard your heart.” Whatever you allow to shape your mind, emotions, and will eventually determines the direction of your life. James describes how unchecked desires lead to sin and, eventually, to death (James 1:14-15). You can read more in Guard Your Heart Above All Else.
Our Hearts Are Broken by Sin
There’s a reason we need to guard our hearts instead of following them. Every human heart is affected by sin, even the hearts of people we admire most.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Our minds can play tricks on us, our emotions can lead us astray, and our intentions can work against what’s best for us. Jesus taught that sin doesn’t start with outward behavior. It comes from deep inside.
Mark 7:21-23 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.
That makes the Shema a real challenge. Left to themselves, our hearts don’t love God with everything. So how can that change?
Only God Can Change Your Heart
You can try as hard as you want to control your thoughts, feelings, and choices, but you can’t fix your own heart. Moses knew this. As he finished his final message to Israel, he made a remarkable promise.
Deuteronomy 30:6 The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.
Later, the prophets promised that God would give his people new hearts and write his instructions on them (Ezekiel 36:26, Jeremiah 31:33). That promise comes true through Jesus.
Romans 10:9-10 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
When we admit that our hearts are broken and put our trust in Jesus, who took the penalty for our sin on the cross, God makes us new from the inside out.
The Takeaway
In the Bible, the heart is your whole inner person: your thoughts, emotions, and will. Because our hearts are broken by sin, we need to guard them instead of following them. We can only love God with all our heart when he gives us a new one through faith in Jesus.
