While the subject we have been looking at is humility, and for the last several BLOGS evangelical humility as Jonathan Edwards terms it, there is also another point that needs to be looked at in light of what evangelical humility is. There is also what Thomas Shepard calls an “evangelical hypocrite.” On great difference between professing believers that are conservative and moral and that of true believers is that one group are evangelical hypocrites and the others have evangelical humility. This is a vital distinction that gets to the heart of true Christianity. Below is a quote from Thomas Shepard and then a few comments on it by Alexander Whyte in a book he wrote on Shepard originally published in 1909.
‘Of all hypocrites,’ says Thomas Shepard, that pungentest of preachers, ‘take care that you be not an evangelical hypocrite.’ A hundred times and in a hundred ways Shepard says that. But what does the dreadful man mean? He means this: An evangelical hypocrite is a man who sins the more safely because grace abounds; who says to his lusts, both of mind and body, that the blood of Christ cleanseth from all such sin, and who reasons with himself thus: God cannot, by any possibility, cast any man into hell who loves evangelical preaching as I love it, and who would not sit a day but in an evangelical church. My evangelical brethren, let us take good care! For if evangelical hypocrites are to found anywhere in our day it is in a church like ours and under a doctrine like ours.
We have seen in the quote from Jonathan Edwards that a person must have evangelical humility to be a true Christian. It is not that this evangelical humility is an option, but if a person has evangelical doctrine without evangelical humility, that person is not a Christian. In his work on The Religious Affections that the quote we have been looking at was taken from, he quoted Thomas Shepard more than all other writers combined. For whatever it is worth, Shepard was also the founder of Harvard University. But if these men are correct, then it is possible for people to have correct doctrine, be upright morally, attend church every time the door is opened, and yet they may still be utterly lost. If these men are correct (“are” not “were” because of their writings we are looking at now), then a person may adhere to the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith and/or the Westminster Confession and be lost. A person may love those Confessions and their corresponding catechisms and still be lost.
If those men are correct, conservative churches may be full of politically and theologically conservative people who are lost souls. It would be possible to have seminaries to have conservative men who are gifted academically and yet be lost. It would be possible for ministers to be conservative and kind and gracious (in the modern sense) and yet be utterly devoid of saving grace. The Pharisees were conservative in virtually every way. They were very strict in their morality, or at least according to their standards. Jesus showed them and others the hearts of the Pharisees and that is when their sinful hearts were exposed. But if you saw them back then you would be impressed with their learning and their outward morality. What we don’t see today is a ministry that is willing to stand up and preach to the heart and expose sin at its very root. This leads to people today going on in their external theology and morality thinking that they are fine and that they are saved. As long as morality and theology are left to the externals, people will go on not knowing or not worrying about the stench of the pride of their own hearts. They will think that they have grace to be saved while they are in bondage to the inner sins of their hearts.
…without the least mortification of the pride of their hearts. But the essence of evangelical humiliation consists in such humility as becomes a creature in itself exceeding sinful, under a dispensation of grace; consisting in a mean esteem of himself, as in himself nothing, and altogether contemptible and odious; attended with a mortification of a disposition to exalt himself, and a free renunciation of his own glory… (Jonathan Edwards)
How many people today would go to any church that preached to the wickedness of their hearts? No, we want someone to build us up and to speak things that give us a high self-esteem. But a teaching and a preaching that is built on self-esteem is a teaching and a preaching that is not getting at the mortification of the pride of the human heart. Unless the pride of the heart is exposed and men turn from that in reality and in truth, then that person does not have a true humility. As Edwards points out, this evangelical humility consists “in a mean esteem of himself, as in himself nothing, and altogether contemptible and odious.” We live in a day when men prefer to exalt themselves rather than renounce their own glory. That is a sign of a wicked heart no matter the theology one holds.
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