It is so hard to see our own pride apart from having it shown to us by God in His Word or His opening our eyes to see His glory shining out. This is why the method of setting out a true and God-centered Christianity is necessary. No one will ever see his or her own sin until s/he sees something of God shining forth in His truth. A true sight of our own pride and the sinfulness of that will only come when what happened to Job and Isaiah happens to us to some degree. “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; 6 Therefore I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). Before Job was claiming that he was innocent and righteous before God. God never really answered Job’s questions directly, but once Job saw something of the glory of God he had no more questions. It was enough that God was God. This is what has to happen to the soul today as well. We must see God and His truth in order to see the depths of our own pride.
Then there was Isaiah. He was a prophet and a well-known man in the land. Surely he was a righteous man if there was one. However, everything changed the day or time he saw God.
“6:1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. 2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.’ 4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. 5 Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.'”
This text shows us what would happen in our day if God would open our eyes to see Him in His glory. He is not a safe God that we can just casually get along with, but He is the God of glory that if we saw Him without Him hiding Himself to a great degree we would die. It is in the light of God that our own sin and pride becomes obvious. It is like letting light into a dark room so that we can now see the dust and the dirt. Isaiah saw himself for the first time and he cried out in anguish that he was unclean.
“In Luther, the theocentricity of primitive Christianity returns; and it is the determining factor of his whole outlook. His opposition to Catholicism is due ultimately to nothing else but this. In the Catholic conception of Christianity, it is in the last analysis man who occupies the centre of the religious stage; in Luther’s reforming conception it is God. Luther seeks to eradicate every vestige of the egocentric or anthropocentric tendency from the religious relationship. There is no place for the slightest degree of human self-assertion in the presence of God. Here, man must be content to receive undeserved the gifts God wills to bestow on him, and to obey without thought of reward the commandments God pleases to give him. In other words, he must let God really be God, the center around which his whole existence moves. This theocentric emphasis can be described as the fundamental motif of Luther’s entire thought.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)
True Christianity is theocentric as the heart of all truth and love. Luther’s opposition to Roman Catholicism was due to its inherent man-centeredness. Would Luther oppose the professing Church of today? Would he oppose so-called evangelical Christianity and would he oppose what passes today as Reformed because of man-centeredness? I believe that he would. But let us not forget that Luther’s view of God was also developed by a dark view of his own sin. In our day we have virtually done away with sin and have replaced it with a few mistakes of people. This would not happen if we saw ourselves in light of the glory of God. During the Reformation we also had the teaching of John Calvin. He said this: “We must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty.” And again, “it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy-this pride is innate in all of us.” Man is full of pride in religion and in all areas until he sees something of the truth and glory of God. Christian practice can be nothing but the efforts of self and pride until a person sees God. Roman Catholicism was swamped with the pride of man-centeredness in Luther’s day and needed to be awakened by a God-centeredness. The same thing is true today. Christianity would hardly be recognizable by Luther and Calvin because of its man-centeredness. We must have God come down to show us our pride.
God Loves... Himself 
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