Romans 10:10

10. The heart In modern language the heart is held to be, as a mental term, the seat of the feelings or sensibilities. And as modern science claims to have shown that the head, the brain, is the seat of thought, so we often have the antithesis head and heart as expressing intellect and sensibilities. But this antithesis is unknown to antiquity, especially to the Bible. But a single passage in the whole canon attributes thought to the head. (Daniel 7:1.)

As this passage locates the seat of faith in the heart, it becomes important to know the precise import of that term. In his Biblical Psychology Dr. Delitzsch goes into an extensive research on this subject, and brings out some striking results. As the bodily heart is the centre of the bodily system, so the mental heart is the centre of soul and spirit. And, as the centre of the interior self, it manifests itself in various directions. It is not merely the fountain of the sensibilities and emotions, natural and moral of the desires, the loves, and the hates; but it is also the seat of the perceptions, reflections, meditations, reasonings, and memories, and the spring of the purposes, plans, determinations, and volitions. It is then in the very centre of our spiritual being that faith has its seat and its spring. So that, in accordance with modern mental science, we may define New Testament faith as being that belief of the intellect, consent of the affections, and act of the will, by which the soul places itself in the keeping of Christ as its ruler and Saviour. Hence both the Greek noun for faith, and its usual cognate verb believe, would, perhaps, both generally be more closely rendered by the word trust.

Unto righteousness This self-surrendering trust being accepted, the believer is pardoned and held as righteous; by the Holy Spirit he is in measure sanctified and made intrinsically righteous. But true faith will ever go from heart to mouth, from belief to confession and profession; and this in its fulness results from present justification to final salvation. The true mode of profession appointed by Christ for every Christian includes always the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist. The self-esteemed believer who neglects these appointments of Christ disobeys Christ, and is very likely to lose that salvation that results from confession.