Motive is a Heart Matter

What makes the Day of Judg­ment so unner­ving is that all our posing and all our cha­ra­des will be pulled back, all sec­rets will be made known, and our Lord will “expose the moti­ves of men’s hearts” (1 Cor. 4:5, empha­sis added).

This is the point of the famous Ser­mon on the Mount. Jesus first says we haven’t a hope of hea­ven unless our righ­teous­ness “sur­pas­ses that of the Pha­ri­sees” (Matt. 5:20). How can that be? They were fas­ti­dious rule kee­pers, pillars of the church, model citi­zens. Yes, Jesus says, and most of it was hypoc­risy. The Pha­ri­sees pra­yed to impress men with their spi­ri­tua­lity. They gave to impress men with their gene­ro­sity. Their actions loo­ked good, but their moti­ves were not. Their hearts, as the saying goes, weren’t in the right place. A person’s cha­rac­ter is deter­mi­ned by his moti­ves, and motive is always a mat­ter of the heart. This is what Scrip­ture means when it says that man looks at the out­ward appea­rance, but God looks at the heart. God doesn’t judge us by our looks or our inte­lli­gence; he jud­ges us by our hearts.

It makes sense, then, that Scrip­ture also loca­tes our cons­cience in our hearts. Paul says that even those who do not know God’s law “show that the requi­re­ments of the law are writ­ten on their hearts, their cons­cien­ces also bea­ring wit­ness” (Rom. 2:15), such as when your child looks guilty for having told a lie. This is why it is so dan­ge­rous to har­den our hearts by silen­cing our cons­cien­ces, and why the offer of for­gi­ve­ness is such good news, to have our “hearts sprin­kled clean from an evil cons­cience” (Heb.10:22 NRSV). Oh, the joy of living from right moti­ves, from a clean heart. I doubt that those who want to dis­miss the heart want to dis­miss our cons­cien­ces, set aside the impor­tance of character.

(Waking the Dead , 43–44)