“Resolved, frequently to take some deliberate action that seems most unlikely to be done, for the glory of God, and trace it back to the original intention, designs, and ends of it; and if I find it not to be for God’s glory, to repute it as a breach of the 4th resolution.” (Resolution 23)
The language of this resolution sounds a bit funny at first, but after several readings and some deliberation it becomes clear. Here is a man that wanted to check on his heart to see what it was really like. He didn’t just want to do this every now and then, but he wanted to do this frequently. In other words, he was going to check his heart on a frequent basis to ensure that it was not growing hard or indifferent to God. What he was going to do was take some of the things that he did deliberately and check his intentions and goals in it. If we are interested in the truth about ourselves, we will check the hardest things. So it is not just some action or affection that happened suddenly, but a deliberate action.
Not only did he check his deliberate actions, but he wanted to find out those things that were most unlikely to be done for the glory of God. Again we see that he went after the hardest things for himself instead of the easiest. Instead of looking for those thing that he would likely have done for the glory of God, he checked himself on the things that were the most unlikely to be done for the glory of God. Here we see what a man does that is serious about his heart in light of eternity. He does not settle for the obvious and the easy things, but he goes to the depths even in the hard things. It is simply a logical deduction of I Corinthians 10:31. We are to do all for the glory of God and that does not mean the easy things or even most things only, but all things. Whatever we do that is not to the glory of God is sin and we must check our hearts in light of that.
Edwards would take a deliberate action and trace it back to the real reason why he did it. He wanted to know the original intent for the action. Here we see a way to do serious work on our hearts. We must ask what we really intended by what we did, not necessarily what we wanted to intend. We must be brutally honest and trace these things out in our hearts all the while asking God to reveal these things to us. We must understand what Scripture teaches about the heart and how deceitful it is. We must not rest content with what we want to be true of ourselves, but what is actually true of ourselves. To get past the self-deception that the heart always wants to throw up to us, we must pray for light and for insight into our own hearts.
Man will never fully escape pride and self-love in this life. Therefore, man is an enemy to himself and the truth about himself. Pride will always want to put the best foot forward about self and even mask what is really true about ourselves. By definition pride exalts self and so a proud man is not one that is accurate about himself. A person that is not aware of the influence of self-love will make judgments about self and its motives with self-love guiding the examination process. Rather than be deceived and fooled about ourselves by self-love and pride, which wants to see self in the best light and judges self by the worst in other people, we must judge self by Scripture. This is quite clear from Jeremiah 17:9-10: “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it? 10 “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give to each man according to his ways, According to the results of his deeds.” The heart is so deceitful that it cannot be understood apart from the LORD. He has given us His Word and Spirit for the work.
Let us be very clear about this issue. We must do all that we do to the glory of God or it is sin. We must not give God a general nod and tell ourselves that we have acted for His glory. We must not think that our actions that conform outwardly to the Bible are in reality for the glory of God. No, our motives and intentions must truly desire the glory of God in what we do. The inward man must be moved by love for God. We must search our hearts and do it thoroughly and judge them by Scripture. Whatever is not truly for the glory of God is sin and there is no little sin because there is no little God to sin against.
God Loves... Himself 
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