Undivided – by Pastor Jonathan Lawson
“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” This is the promise God makes regarding the return from exile of the Israelites through the prophet Ezekiel in chapter 11, verse 19. This promise is fulfilled, as are all prophetic promises, in Christ Jesus, who makes us a new creation. But this idea of the undivided heart is central to the entire Biblical narrative and the story of God and His people. From the beginning, God cannot permit a half-hearted commitment to His will and His ways. A half-measure to God is a full measure to self. This is the nature of holiness.
We’ve been talking about our marriages and our families and how they are meant to be icons of God’s self-giving, fruitful, overflowing, and flourishing love shared in the community of the Trinity and between Christ and the church. This week, we are going to examine the “Undivided Life” of celibacy in singleness. When we are called to this estate, whether temporarily or for the remainder of our mortal lives, we are being set apart for God’s purposes. Our lives of single-minded purpose point to the day when we will “no longer give or be given in marriage.” Our lives in the here and now become a portal of testimony to the eternity that is to come. We accelerate and bring to the present moment the eschatological Kingdom.
While the church should rightly encourage and support the healthy development of marriages and families, we also must reawaken God’s ordained and blessed state of singleness and the “undivided life.” This is not a lesser state, nor a second option, but one which God uses alongside marriage and which carries its own privileges. We are all called to have undivided hearts; hearts of flesh which God has given us to replace the hearts of stone that marked our lives of rebellion and sin. God is the one who provided this heart, His Spirit, and the new life they are made to live. But we must let go of the old heart of stone, the one of divided loyalties and half-measures. If we let Him, He will give us a new way of being and doing.