The term self doesn’t appear by itself very often in the Bible. But while the term self is not all that common in Scripture, there is another widely used term that expresses the same idea: the heart. The term heart appears some seven hundred times in the Bible (about a hundred times in the New Testament), where it is always used figuratively meaning the center and seat of human life.

We can look at the heart as being the engine that runs our being. It is who we are: our self. Our heart is the core of our being as well as the umbrella over our entire nature. It all boils down to this: our beliefs, our mind-set, our choices and our behavior are all dictated by what is truly in the heart. Jesus said, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”(Luke 6:45)

Now in trying to understand the state of a person’s heart, the only difference between nonbeliever and believer is the condition of his spirit—dead or alive. The heart of a nonbeliever is precisely the same as what we’ve already identified as the flesh: man’s soul interacting with his physical nature through his mind, all unaided by God because his dead spirit is incapable of sharing in His life-flow. On the other hand, the believer’s heart, while still strongly pulled by the flesh, has the advantage of the influence of God’s life coursing through it by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself