The Bible does not sharply separate the mind and the heart, because both refer to the thinking, intangible part of the human being. However, there is a need to make a distinction between someone who appears to believe and someone who truly believes. Thus human tradition invented the distinction between assent (mind) vs. trust (heart). This is not the biblical distinction. But as God said, “These people come near to me with the lips, but their hearts are far from me.” He made the distinction between the lips and the heart, not the mind and the heart. If a person believes at all, he believes with the spirit, or heart, or mind, but if a person does not believe, he can lie and say that he believes, and like the Pharisees did, even become a defender of the faith.

This is the condition of many of those who defend the faith today, including some who have internationally known ministries of apologetics. They vehemently defend what they claim to be an orthodox and historic faith, but in reality they hold to a bitter resentment toward what the word of God teaches. So they seek to destroy those who obey it. Their efforts serve to advance their own tradition and to smother out those who disagree, including those who are more correct.

Jesus asked, if one son says he would do what his father commands, but then does not do it, and if another son says that he would not do what his father commands, but then goes and does it, who does the will of the father? It is the second one, the one who does what his father commands. So if someone claims to defend the Lord, but then disobeys what this same Lord commands, such as to heal the sick and cast out demons, to prophesy and to perform miracles, does he really follow the Lord? He is an imposter and a deceiver.

James wrote that the person who is a hearer of the word of God but who is not a doer of the word of God is someone who deceives himself. The distinction is between true assent and false assent. If a person believes at all, if he truly assents, he does it with the heart, but a person can say anything he wants — he can lie. He does not assent, or believe, but he lies and claims that he does. And James says that he can even lie to himself. The truth about him is revealed in whether or not he acts on what the word of God teaches and commands.

So many defend the faith, so many are proud of their stance on the inerrancy of Scripture, but they would not lift a finger to obey the Lord in something like healing the sick. Perhaps the Bible is wrong, and this is not something he should do? No, this person makes it his own calling to defend the Book as inerrant. Yet he refuses to obey. When you show him what the Bible says, he makes all kinds of complicated excuses. He defends the Lord or the Bible only as a matter of personal principle or ideology, but he rejects the Lord or the Bible when it comes to the substance, when it comes to what the word of God actually says. Thus he destroys his own escape, and he multiplies his condemnation.