Knowing Our Motives

Today's Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:7
"The Lord looks on the heart."
Read it online at the Bible Gateway: (NIV) (NASB) (KJV) (The Message)

Our motivation for commitment, discipline, and obedience is as important to God as our performance, perhaps even more so. As Ernest F. Kevan wrote, "The law's demands are inward, touching motive and desire, and are not concerned solely with outward action."

David said, "The Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought" (1 Chronicles 28:9). The apostle Paul echoed the importance of motives when he wrote that, at the Lord's coming, he "will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart" (1 Corinthians 4:5).

To be acceptable to God, our motives must spring from a love for him and a desire to glorify him. Obedience performed from a legalistic motive—from fear of consequences or to gain favor with God—is not pleasing to him. Abraham Booth (1734?806), an English pastor and author, wrote, "To constitute a work truly good, it must be done from a right principle, performed by a right rule, and intended for a right end." Booth defined a right principle as our love for God. He defined the right rule as God's revealed will in Scripture. The right end—the right goal—is the glory of God.

Our good works are not truly good unless they're motivated by a love for God and a desire to glorify him. But we cannot have such a Godward motivation if we think we must earn God's favor by our obedience or if we fear we may forfeit his favor by disobedience. Such a works-oriented motivation is essentially self-serving, prompted more by what we think we gain or lose than by a grateful response to the grace he has already given us through Jesus Christ.