Nothing is more unknown to man than himself. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?
Part of the reason that people do not know their own hearts is because they walk in great darkness and part of that great darkness is that they walk according to self-love rather than the love of God. One aspect of walking in self-love is self-flattery, and in fact self-love leads one to view self in a self-flattering way. Since the heart is unknown to the person who is dead in the sin of self-love, this person is virtually always living in the flattery of self. All things must be judged by the truth and justice of God rather than the standards of a self-flattering and fallen human being. As seen in Proverbs 16:2, “all the ways of a man are clean in his own sight”. In contrast to that, however, the motives are weighed by the LORD. In Proverbs 21:2 it says “but the LORD weighs the hearts.” In other words, the man does not know his own heart and so does not take into consideration his sinful and selfish motives. He has flattered himself by looking at the outward action through the eyes of self-love and does not notice the wickedness of his own heart.
In much the same way we see in Proverbs 16:25 that “There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” So men have ways that seem right to them, but in fact those ways lead to death. Why do they seem right to men when in fact those ways lead to death? One reason is because men flatter themselves in their own eyes that they know what is right and that they wouldn’t do what is wrong. It seems right to men because they judge on the basis of what is good for themselves or on the basis of what they want to be right. But they don’t know their own hearts and so what they do leads to death.
Proverbs 26:28 sets out very clearly that “A lying tongue hates those it crushes, And a flattering mouth works ruin.” What the verse does not state is that a lying tongue can hate the liar because lying can end up crushing the liar. It is also true that “a flattering mouth works ruin” to those it flatters, but the flattering mouth can also ruin the one doing the flattering when that person is flattering himself in his own eyes. The one driven by self-love (all those who don’t love Christ in truth) is one who flatters himself and as such works ruin to himself. In much the same way we see that Proverbs 29:5 tells us that “A man who flatters his neighbor Is spreading a net for his steps.” But it would also be true that the man who flatters himself is spreading a net for himself.
The person who is full of self-love judges all things by his self-love and so “is pure in his own eyes, yet is not washed from his filthiness” (Proverbs 30:12). While walking in sin those who are guided by self-love flatter themselves by telling themselves that they are pure. It is flattery of self and working ruin to self because they are nothing but filthiness and sin. Psalm 36:1, a Psalm of David, says that “Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart; There is no fear of God before his eyes. 2 For it flatters him in his own eyes concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it.” How devastating it is to those who refuse to look at their own hearts and seek a full discovery of it. Not only does a person flatter himself regarding sin, Psalm 36:1 says that the transgression itself speaks to the ungodly within his heart. Because the transgression speaks within the heart, the sinner does not fear God because of the sin. The text tells us that this is because the transgression flatters him “in his own eyes concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it.”
Those who live in self-love live in self-flattery and as such they are crushing themselves, ruining themselves, and spreading traps (nets) for their own feet. But what is hidden from these people who deceive themselves is that it is sin itself which is deceiving them about being discovered and hating it. Sin does not want to be discovered and it does not want to be hated, because it does not want to die. But when we see that sin is essentially self-love working in the heart we see that it is self-love that does not want to deny self and die to self. Self-love and self-flattery are ruining souls because it does not want sin to be discovered and hated. How terrible it is to be in the grip of a deceitful person, but how more terrible to have our own hearts be so deceptive toward us. How utterly helpless we are to discover our own sin and how desperately we must have the Spirit open our eyes to it.
God Loves... Himself 
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