It is the devil’s master-piece to make us think well of ourselves. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
One book put it well (1960’s) with its title Damned through the Church. The professing Church in the modern day appears to be little more than a way to take people away from the truth of who they are and the truth of God and His Gospel. Yes, this sounds like a depressed person preaching doomsday. Perhaps, but where is God in the professing Church of the day? Are people being moved by things of self (disguised as love) or real love for God?
What would be the case if the devil had replaced love for God with thinking well of self in the veneer of orthodoxy? Would it really be different than what we see today? I don’t think so. People can love orthodox teaching out of love for self rather than love for God. The Pharisees are excellent examples of this.
If the heart is more deceitful than all else, then the heart is certainly under attack by the deceiver (II John 7) who uses the deceitfulness of wealth (Mat 13:22) and the deceitfulness of sin (Heb 3:13) to deceive. Nothing is more deceitful to a heart that is full of self-love than to deceive it my working on it in ways that provoke it by self-love and built on ways to make people think well of themselves. When the message of the Church, whether in preaching or teaching or other ways, is built on the love of self, then the Church is really setting forth the teaching of the evil one. It is that bad and when that is done people are being damned through the Church.
Why is it that preachers will not preach to the heart and deal with sin in the people? Is it not from their own self-love in not wanting to “offend” people who will be “offended” if their high views of self are pointed out to them? I might add that what is known as “offend” and “offended” is in reality simply people getting angry. People get angry when they hear sin preached because it pricks their hearts and they don’t want to think that they are wrong because they love themselves.
The teaching about sin and self-love has literally almost disappeared from the teaching of the professing Church and that is because the teaching and attitude of self-love has been brought into the professing Church. People think that God loves them as they are and that they are to think highly of themselves because God thinks highly of them, but in reality the wrath of God is on them and they should repent of their high views of self. The very heart of sin is self-love and high views of self. People have not repented of sin until they have repented of self-love and thinking well of themselves. Until a person can bow to the biblical truths that s/he is an ungodly wretch, how can they believe that God justifies the ungodly? How can they believe the Gospel of grace alone until they see that they are so vile and wretchedly sinful that they cannot do one good thing to merit the least aspect of grace? In fact, one little work makes grace no longer to be grace (Rom 11:6). As long as a person has a high view of self that person will never be the humbled, contrite, and broken sinner that bows at the foot of the cross and goes to the throne of grace. High views of self are contrary to the character of God, of man, and of the Gospel of grace alone.
In trying to write as clearly as I can the book Damned through the Church speaks to the condition of the modern professing Church today. Preaching and teaching that does not address people as sinners is contributing to the deception of the people who want to be deceived and does in fact make the name of the book descriptive of what is happening rather than just a title. It may have been the case in history that people could go to most churches and hear the Gospel of grace alone, but that is not the case today. The Gospel is so lost today that it would be rare for one to attend a church and hear the Gospel rather than being deceived in a way that it could be said that the person was being damned through that church. When the devil works high views of self in the professing Church, he is doing his work of deception and damnation through the professing Church.
God Loves... Himself 
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