Ezekiel 28:17 – “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.”
The passage in Ezekiel 28:17 (and surrounding context) shows that Satan was beautiful, but that his heart was lifted up (pride) because of that beauty. It led to his fall and the fall of numbers of angels, as well as the promise he made to the woman that she would be like God (Gen 3:5). It is not that Satan lost all knowledge of God, but his pride gave him a focus on himself. That is the problem with human beings too. The fall has caused us to focus on ourselves and all of our lives are full of self unless God changes our hearts and gives us eternal life which consists in knowing and loving Him. It is lost on the modern day with its self-esteem and self-centered focus that a person can be very self-centered and very religious at the same time. We live in a time where biblical Christianity seems to be all but lost because the true doctrines of it have been twisted to man-centeredness. The promise of Satan that we would be like God has been swallowed by so many today, including Reformed conservatives. The quote below is the same quote as given in the last BLOG. It is devastating to what passes as Christianity in our day.
Now it might well seem as if all religion must, in the nature of the case, be theocentric; for if the word ‘God’ is to have any meaning at all, it cannot but signify the dominant centre of life and of all existence. And it is true that no religion is entirely lacking in awareness of this fact. All religions display at least some traces of theocentricity. Such traces, however, do not generally suffice to form what may be termed the leitmotif of the religion; they are not determinative of its character as a whole, but in one way or another are subordinated to the egocentric tendency. For illusion occurs in religion as easily as in the physical world. Even though I have learnt that the sun is the centre around which my earth moves, and I with it; I will tend to live and think as if the sun moved around my earth and me. Similarly in religion, although I readily admit that God must be the centre of existence, I do not as readily perceive or accept all that this implies; and it is the most natural thing for me still to live and think as if I myself were the centre around which all else, even including God, moved. I find it exceedingly difficult to rid myself of this illusion and allow God really to be the centre, that is, really to be God. (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)
Reformed theology is the theology that claims Luther and Calvin as those that God used to bring back the core of biblical truth from great darkness. However, one can have their doctrines without their theocentric focus. One can even have their doctrines and speak highly of God and yet miss the driving theocentricity that drove them in all that they did. One can have a creedal belief that all things are to be done to the glory of God and yet miss what that really means and not have a true love for God in the heart. It certainly seems possible that in the modern day that the Reformed theology that is having a resurgence does not have a thorough theocentricity at the heart of it. It is possible to love the doctrines of the Reformation because of their history. It is possible to love the doctrines of the Reformation because of their logical consistency. It is possible to love the doctrines of the Reformation because they are rather novel and can spark others to irritation. It is possible to love the doctrines of the Reformation because they are biblical. Yet all of those reasons and more can be from nothing more than a self-centered heart.
The Pharisees believed in the doctrine of election, but they did not love the true God. The Pharisees believed in many things about sovereignty, but they did not love the sovereign God. The Pharisees believed in some version of limited atonement as they did not believe there could be any atonement for the Gentiles. The Pharisees had their own version of depravity as well. However, though it all they were focused on themselves and nothing but themselves. When they prayer, they sought the honor of others (Mat 6:1ff). Their works of righteousness were done in order to be seen by men. The heart that is focused on self and the things of self can so easily be taken with a god of some sort while thinking of nothing else but self. Reformed theology can be nothing more than an illusion that we have been delivered from self while in fact we are still enslaved to self. Reformed theology, since it is closer to the truth, has the possibility of a great degree of delusion. The proud heart will believe that it is justified by faith alone because it believes that justification by faith alone is true. The proud heart will believe in limited atonement because it can so easily believe that Jesus would die for it and not others. A proud heart can believe in a great God that loves it because it loves itself so much. It is easy to love a God that loves self since self loves all that loves it. But that is not true love. Pride blinds in Christian things too, and perhaps even especially so.
God Loves... Himself 
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