God Loves… Himself

Alas! Who is humble? We disclaim perfection, and run down the preachers of it, from a general confused consciousness of our unworthiness, but cannot bear to be told of a trifling error in conduct. What management, gentle insinuation, and nice art of address, is necessary to prevent resentment in such cases, even from a friend! (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).

The Scriptures give us the words of Jesus in Luke 18:8 saying, “when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” We could also ask the question if Jesus will find humility of the earth. Humility is the root of all other graces and one only has faith and love to the degree that s/he has humility. But as Thomas Adam asks, who is humble? Well, one might say, those who believe in the doctrine of total depravity must be humble. Indeed, but is that correct? One can have a belief in the fact that he is totally depraved and yet not be truly humbled for it. One could, horrible as it may seem, have pride for believing in orthodoxy at that point as well. What, then, could it mean for a person to really and truly believe in depravity in a humble way?

One can believe in the total depravity of human beings as a theory and even of self without really being driven to the end of self by that. This is seen by how sensitive human beings are to the things of self. Yes, indeed, we all know that the meek shall inherit the earth, but how many people are there in the land today who are meek? We can be assured that there are far more people who know that the Bible teaches meekness than there are that are truly meek. But again, we live in a day where we are supposed to be nice and always smile and say nice things so that we will not offend others. If someone says something to us that is not nice, we are offended. Yet our theory of depravity tells us that we are far worse than what that person said. So why is that? It is because we don’t really believe in our depravity and we are not truly meek.

We are told today that we must be winsome if we are to be successful and win souls. Indeed, one could agree, that makes sense. But if so, make sense in what context? If the cross of Christ is truly offensive, then can Christ be preached in a winsome way and the cross preached in truth at the same time at all? A winsome preaching of the cross is simply taking the offense of the cross out of the way, which is the same thing as not preaching the cross at all. In other words, all this talk today about being winsome is to take the truth of the cross out. It takes humility to preach the cross because humility is the absence of self (to the degree one is humble) so that the truth of the cross would not be hindered by selfish considerations.

Men and women are extra sensitive in the modern day and that speaks to the pride of our hearts. We cannot bear to have someone tell us something that is not what we think of as positive and uplifting. Our pride will not bear anything less than perfection when others comment about us or something we have done. Nathan the prophet spoke clearly to David the king and yet David heard the Word of the Lord with humility and was brought to repentance. It is a sign of a proud heart when a person cannot bear to be corrected in any way. So where are the humble in our day? The humble in name are those who cannot bear for anyone to think that they are not perfectly humble, which shows that they are not truly humble. Ministers and conference speakers are told that they must speak gently and winsomely in order to be heard, but this is a vicious circle. Ministers and speakers desire to be spoken well of and so they speak in ways to get others to speak well of them. Yet the people want to be addressed in ways that will move them to speak well of the speakers. People love themselves and want to hear how God loves them, but this is a dangerous thing.

And by this rule every one may try his own religion. If it began in a belief that God loved him, and had bestowed salvation upon him, etc., and all his religious joy and sorrow, and darkness and light, respect his own interest in God’s favor, etc., it has the appearance of false religion. He who comes to the knowledge of the truth fixes on something infinitely more important than self, and his own personal interest, as the object of his regard and pursuit. He from that moment devotes himself to the glory of God, and the greatest general good, in the advancement of his kingdom. From this time he begins to pray, and say, “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And it now becomes his study and labor to promote this grand interest, by serving God and his generation, and thus he seeks first the kingdom of God. He whose religious discoveries, views, and exercises are not of this kind, and do not issue in this, may safely conclude himself a stranger to true religion…But, instead of this, how common is it to hear the preacher speak of religion as if it consisted altogether in selfishness!                Samuel Hopkins

This entry was posted on October 17, 2012 at 5:19 am and is filed under The Sinful Heart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.