HEART THEOLOGY acronym

H: Holy Heart of love. God the Father is love and has a heart full of overflowing love which created the world and all good things to spill over His benevolence towards all creation that He may share His goodness with all from this selflessness and humility made known to us through Jesus Christ. From the overflow of His heart, He has always been propitious towards mankind and never needed anything or anyone to render Him propitious. God desires all people to believe in His love and goodness.

E: Everyone is Enabled to come to Him if they so choose to do so even within the fallen state of creation through the ordinary means of grace of the gospel message, the Spirit’s working, spiritual perception, mental understanding, and through a heart of humbly receiving the free and gracious gift of eternal life.

A: Atonement is provisional for all people to be reconciled back to the heart of the Father through faith in Jesus Christ’s demonstration of the Father’s love for us in the Son’s incarnation, life, suffering, death, and resurrection. Through this, all receive the Spirit of Christ’s life and power within them as their salvation and new heart to live out of His nature and through all the benefits of Jesus that He obtained on our behalf; whereby, our obedience is because Jesus learned the way of obedience having never sinned; our victory in faith is because Jesus overcame that victory for us; our death to sin is because our corrupted flesh was crucified with Christ; and our resurrection from the dead will be because Christ’s resurrected life dwells in us.

R: Return or Reap. Return to the heart of the Father through faith in Jesus Christ to obtain life or reap the consequences of sin which is separation from the life of God forever as eternal death, the cessation of all life. The judgement of God is retributive, governmental, and consequential. Jesus will return one day to judge the living and the dead according to the deeds they have done, to purge all evil on this earth in preparation for His eternal and physical kingdom where all sin and death will be destroyed under the authority of His feet, and all those who choose sin now shall reap the inbuilt natural consequences that sin produces which is deprivation, corruption, and death. But those who return in faith to the Father in heaven who made them, shall receive forgiveness, life, and peace forever.

T: Truth & Theology properly understood can set people free from sin, the devil, the world, and religion. Freedom begins through faith in the truth and continues to grow with greater degrees of faith and through the destruction of lies and doubts to which faith then overcomes the post Adamic corruption of the heart, is purified from the sinful inclinations, and enters into God’s rest and peace which continually abides. Faith guards the heart from sin and the devil, hope guards the mind from the world, and love guards the body from evil. Through these three virtues: faith, hope, and love, the spiritual life ascends towards God in increasing virtues, and spiritual life and power to purge the heart, mind, and body of the remnants of sin and imperfections through the indwelling Christ-life being allowed access to every part of our being. Though sinless perfection is never attained in this life. But where faith, hope, and love all mature through the crucifying of the flesh and the renewing of the mind, perfect love and the maturity of Christ is attained and maintained through active choice.

S: Salvation begins with faith along with a change of mind and heart, progresses in sanctifying growth, and culminates in the glorification of our bodies when we see Christ face to face. Persevering faith is required all the way to the end to make it into the eternal kingdom of heaven, of which it is possible to forfeit through apostasy. Even so, the grace and power of God is abundantly sufficient to work on our behalf to keep the faith through our eternal High Priest; and we have no reason to fear, being securely established in covenant with God by the shed blood of Christ.

Heart Theology