October 27 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works" (Rev. 2:23).

Devotional

Whose prerogative is it to search the heart? Who can fathom this fathomless sea of iniquity? Who can follow it in all its serpentine windings? Who can detect its deep subtlety? Who? "I the LORD search the heart and test the mind" (Jer. 17:10).

A mere creature—such as those who deny the deity of Jesus would make him—cannot know the heart. It is a perfection peculiar to God. By its own nature it must be incommunicable; for if it were communicable to a creature, it could not be peculiar to God himself. If it were possible, we say, that God should delegate the power and prerogative of searching the heart and testing the minds of the children of men to a mere created being, then it could not properly be said of him that he alone searches the heart.

And yet this attribute does belong to Jesus. Is not the evidence of his deity most conclusive, then? Who can resist it? From this attribute of Christ what blessedness flows to the believing soul! It is at all times a comfort to him to remember that Jesus knows and searches the heart. Its iniquity he sees and subdues, for the promise is, "he will tread our iniquities underfoot" (Mic. 7:19). He detects some lurking evil, some latent corruption, and before it develops itself in the outward departure, the overt act, he checks and conquers it. "Cheering thought," the believer may say, "that all my inbred evil, the hidden corruption of my heart, is known to my Savior God. Lord, I would not conceal a thought but would cry, 'Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!' (Ps. 139:23–24)."

He sees, too, his own gracious work in the soul. The little spiritual life that he has breathed there, the little grace that he has implanted there, the little spark of love that he has kindled there, the faint and feeble longings after him, the inward strugglings with sin, the hungering and thirsting for holiness, the panting for divine conformity—all is known to Jesus.

Because the Lord Jesus knows and recognizes his own work, he quickly detects the counterfeit. The outward garb and the unhumbled spirit, the external profession and the unbroken heart, do not escape his piercing glance. Other men may be deceived; the Lord Jesus, never. We may not be able to discern between the wicked and the righteous, between nature and grace, between the outward profession and the inward reality. But Jesus knows what is false—the mere effect of an enlightened judgment and an alarmed conscience—and what is genuine—the product of his sovereign grace.

Search me, O God, and know my heart today;
try me, O Savior, know my thoughts, I pray.
See if there be some wicked way in me;
cleanse me from every sin and set me free.

(J. Edwin Orr, 1936)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.