“The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Jeremiah 17:9
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jeremiah%2017:9&version=AKJV
That says it in a nutshell.
I understand that the phrase “desperately wicked” can be accurately translated “incurably wicked” and leads to the fact that a human heart cannot be cured but a new heart must be given by being born again i.e. the encounter with Nicodemus.
The heart is a wonderful device to express God’s work of sanctification within our soul.
The heart pumps blood. As referenced in Scripture, it is a compartment of our soul used to output thinking. The mind is the input, recall, and memory storage device in our soul.
Without God the Holy Spirit working in our human spirit, making the Word of God spiritually known to our mind, then processing it to sanctify our mind, we don’t have the sanctified resources to pump out sanctified work by Divine standards.
Without Christ, we simply are performing human good works, acking in Divine righteousness, which at best is good for nothingness, and at worse a form of evil.
I immediately thought of that Scripture. Thank you for referring to it here.