Truth in the inward parts — not propositional or confessional: Willing to do His will, just because He says so.

TRUTH IN THE INWARD PARTS IS NOT PROPOSITIONAL. NOR IS IT CONFESSIONAL.

"Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." This saying of Jesus mingled itself with his brooding, and by and by, though yet he was brooding rather than meditating, the form of Jesus had gathered, in the stillness of his mental quiescence, so much of reality that at length he found himself thinking of him as of a true-hearted man, mightily in earnest to help his fellows, who could not get them to mind what he told them. "Ah!" said the curate to himself, "if I had but seen him, would not I have minded him!—would I not have haunted his steps, with question upon question, until I got at the truth!"

TRUTH IN THE INWARD PARTS IS ACTIONAL: WILLING TO DO HIS WILL—DOING A THING JUST BECAUSE HE SAYS.

"Yet here have I, all these years, been calling myself a Christian, ministering, forsooth, in the temple of Christ, as if he were a heathen divinity, who cared for songs and prayers and sacrifices, and cannot honestly say I ever once in my life did a thing because he said so, although the record is full of his earnest, even pleading words! I have NOT been an honest man, and how should a dishonest man be a judge over that man who said he was the Christ of God? Would it be any wonder if the things he uttered should be too high and noble to be by such a man recognized as truth?"

With this, yet another saying dawned upon, him: IF ANY MAN WILL DO HIS WILL, HE SHALL KNOW OF THE DOCTRINE, WHETHER IT BE OF GOD, OR WHETHER I SPEAK OF MYSELF. He went into a place of prayer and shut to the door—came out again, and went straight to visit a certain grievous old woman.

Selah.

 

George MacDonald, The Curate’s Awakening, “Chapter XXXI: The Curate Makes a Discovery.”