God Is Greater Than Your Heart and Knoweth All Things

Nobody in that building has ever spoken to him the way he speaks to himself.

That is the thing worth establishing before anything else, because people assume a person like this has been beaten down by somebody. He has not. His father is not cruel. The people at church are kind. If you played back to any of them the sentences that run in his head at eleven at night they would be genuinely upset.

The voice is his. He built it out of something, probably a long time ago, and it has been refining itself ever since, and it now knows him better than any human being does and uses everything it knows.

It never accuses him of anything false. That is its main weapon. Every charge it brings is drawn from something that actually happened, usually years ago, and it presents them in the correct order with the correct details.

John writes one sentence to people in exactly this condition, and the second half of it is the surprising part.

He assumes it will happen

The first thing to notice is that John does not treat this as unusual.

And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. (1 John 3:19-20, King James Version)

If our heart condemn us. He writes it as a normal condition of a believing life rather than as a symptom of something having gone wrong.

That alone is worth a great deal. A person who assumes the condemning voice is evidence of a defect in himself will hide it, and a thing hidden gets stronger. John puts it in a letter to a whole congregation as a thing that happens.

And the verb before it, in verse 19, is assure. He is writing to produce assurance in people, which means the whole passage is aimed at exactly this and knows what it is aiming at.

You are addressed directly by a sentence written for this. 1 John 3:20 assumes the condemning heart rather than treating it as a defect, and it is by the Spirit that a person knows they abide in Him, 1 John 3:24, which is the assurance the passage is producing.

The comparison is about size

Then the answer, and it is a comparison rather than an argument.

God is greater than our heart.

He does not say the heart is wrong. He does not tell anybody to argue with it, or to list evidence against it, or to reason with it, all of which fail, and every person who has tried knows they fail because the voice has better material.

He says God is bigger than it. Which is a statement about jurisdiction rather than about accuracy: whatever verdict the heart is issuing, there is a larger authority in the room, and the larger authority has already ruled.

That reframes the whole nightly business. It is not a court case a person has to win. It is a lower body issuing opinions above its level.

You are under a greater authority than the one issuing the verdict. 1 John 3:20 makes it a comparison of size rather than a contest of evidence, and it is by His Spirit given to us, 1 John 3:24, that a person knows whose ruling stands.

And knoweth all things is the strange comfort

Then the clause that makes people flinch when they first see it.

And knoweth all things.

Almost everybody, reading that quickly, hears a threat. The heart says: it is worse than it looks. And the verse appears to answer: and God knows even more than that.

Read it again in context and it is doing the opposite. The heart is accusing on partial information, and John's answer is that God has the complete file, and the complete file is why He is not moved by the summary.

The condemning voice only ever has fragments. It has the moment and not the cause. It has the failure and not the eleven years around it. It does not know what a man was carrying that week, and it does not factor in anything, because factoring in is not what it is for.

God knows all of it, including the parts that would excuse nothing and explain a great deal, and He has ruled anyway.

You are fully known by the One who has already ruled. 1 John 3:20 offers His complete knowledge as the comfort rather than the threat, and it is the Spirit who searches all things, 1 Corinthians 2:10, including the parts of a person nobody has ever seen.

The psalm says the same thing about His knowledge

David says it plainly and it is worth putting next to John.

For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. (Psalm 103:14)

Knoweth our frame. The word is about construction, what a thing is built out of. He factors in the material.

And remembereth, which is the verb people find hardest to believe. He does not have to be reminded that a person is limited. He is not disappointed in the way a man is disappointed when he suddenly recalls that somebody is only human.

The accusing voice never does either of those things. It has no category for frame and no memory of dust. It measures a man against a version of himself that has no limits and never gets tired, and then reports the gap accurately.

You are measured by Somebody who factors in what you are made of. Psalm 103:14 says He knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust, and it is by His Spirit, Romans 8:16, that the witness of belonging is borne rather than deduced from performance.

Paul asks who is bringing the charge

Romans puts the same thing as a courtroom question, and the question is about standing to sue.

Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. (Romans 8:33-34)

Who is he that condemneth. Paul asks it as a question with an obvious answer, and the obvious answer is: nobody with standing.

And notice where Christ is described as being and what He is described as doing. At the right hand, making intercession. Which means that at the exact moment the voice is running at eleven at night, there is somebody speaking on the other side, continuously, and He has better standing than anybody.

I find it useful to hold both of those at once. The voice is talking. And so is He, and He has been for longer, and He is the one at the right hand.

You are represented continuously while the accusation is running. Romans 8:34 says He maketh intercession for us in the present tense, and it is the Spirit who also maketh intercession, Romans 8:26, which puts two on that side and none with standing on the other.