Articles
Halfheartedness
“I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth” (Revelation 3:15,16).
GOD IS STEADFASTLY PATIENT WHEN OUR HEARTS ARE WEAK, BUT WHEN WE INDIFFERENTLY GIVE HIM ONLY HALF OUR HEARTS, WE INSULT HIS LOVE AND INVITE THE FURY OF HIS JUDGMENT. Of all the things we may do, perhaps none is more serious than to drift into complacency and carelessness concerning God. If God were our enemy, we would at least give Him our full attention, but when we are halfhearted, we simply don’t care enough to make up our minds whether we love Him or not. As conditions of the heart go, to be lukewarm is one of the very worst.
There is more hope and more possibility for us when we’re actively fighting against God than when we’re only halfhearted. God saw, for example, more potential for good in Saul, the firebrand and persecutor of the church, than in his more complacent colleagues, most of whom were probably so wrapped up in their respectable routines that they saw nothing about Jesus Christ to get excited about one way or the other. When Christ appeared to him on the Damascus Road, He said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (Acts 9:5). As long as he was kicking against the goads, Saul had a chance to feel the sharp consequences of his deeds. But those who neither devote themselves to God nor kick against Him are content. They feel nothing and are dead in the very worst sense of the word.
In the end, of course, there is no such thing as indifference to God. Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad” (Matthew 12:30). When it comes to God, there is no safe territory between love and hatred. Halfheartedness is simply one form of hatred, and it is the most repulsive as far as God Himself is concerned. For this reason, Jesus wishes to disturb us. “I did not come to bring peace but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). He came into the world not only to comfort the afflicted but to afflict the comfortable.
God will have all, or none; serve him, or fall down before Baal, Bel, or Belial; Either be hot or cold. God doth despise, Abhor, and spew out all neutralities. (Robert Herrick)
