“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9 KJV
Have you heard the question; can two things be true? You may have asked it yourself or even debated the subject. Two things can be true at the same time. In personal matters it is more of a perspective of one’s circumstances, balancing out and seeing both sides of the same coin. Certain events may cause you to have happy and sad feelings with both being true, but in substantive matters it is not so much perspective of the truth, but truth itself.
In the Beatitudes Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Considering both these statements are true, one will make you happy and the other quite sad, but it is not a matter of how you look at them. Jeremiah is stating the fact that man’s heart is sinful. Jesus concurs with Jeremiah’s assessment later in Matthew by saying, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:” (Mt.15:19) A more important question than “how can these two statements both be true” is how can a sinful, wicked, deceitful heart become pure?
Sad, but true, is the fact that each of us were born with a sin nature alienating ourselves from God. Our hearts are very much as Jeremiah and Jesus describe it. But Jesus made it possible for a reconciliation between God and us by paying the penalty for our sin by dying on the cross. Our sinful hearts become pure when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savoir.
Can two things be true at the same time? Yes! In our earthly bodies we still have the sin nature, Jeremiah is right. And Jesus is right, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
Word for the Soul 