We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others. (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 common thinking of the world and the religious world about cause and effect is exactly backwards. This is because we are born Pelagians and when people become religious they are not converted to Christ from their Pelagianism. But even true believers can be led down this path of faulty and sinful thinking as well. When we see a sinful act of a person, we think that they person has corrupted himself and brought guilty upon himself by that sin. We think of the cause and effect as the sin being the cause and the corruption and guilt being the effect. While there is some truth to that, there is also something very wrong with that. It is true that sin does corrupt and sin does bring guilt. But why did the person commit that sin in the first place? The act of sin not only brings corruption and guilt, it is a demonstration of a corrupt heart as well. A person that lives in what appears to be unrestrained sin is a person with a wicked heart that is being displayed in that unrestrained sin.
But we can also think of the nice religious person as well. This person is nice to others and has a strict moral code. This person goes to church and is committed to many things that the church does. In other words, this person is religious in much the same way that the Pharisees were. This person thinks that s/he is religious because of what s/he does. But it is the heart that determines these things. The heart that is full of self and pride is a heart that can and will do all of its religious activities out of pride and love of self. It will look down on the outwardly sinful and think of itself as better, though indeed it can pray and thank God that it is not like those other people. But what it does not realize in its darkness of love for self and its pride is that it does what it does from the same motive as those who are outwardly sinful. In other words, the very religious person and the very outwardly sinful person can and often do have the exact same motive and desire. Both live for self, are full of self, and are blinded by pride.
The sinful heart is put on display by the outwardly sinful person while the sinful heart is hidden more by the religious person, but that only makes it more deceitful. It is not the case that the very religious person is not living in sin and that the person’s heart is not on display, but it is the case that the pride of the very religious person is active in hiding the sinful heart from that person. In both cases, that is, of the outwardly sinful person and the very religious person, the heart is at work in deceiving them and that the wickedness of the heart is being put on display for those with eyes to see. Certainly God sees the corrupt heart on display in all the outward sin and in all the outward religious activity.
The proud heart of the self-righteous religious man is hidden from him because he judges mainly by outward actions. So the self-righteous religious person thinks that he is righteous because of his actions. Interestingly enough, many of those who are in outward sin are deceived because they think that they have good intents and motives in what they are doing. They might admit that what they are doing is wrong in and of itself, but the flatter themselves that they do them because they don’t intend wrong and that they really want to do good. So the religious person deceives himself by the outward action and the outwardly sinful person deceives himself by thinking that this inner being is better than that. But both are deceived because they don’t see the corruption of their hearts being the real problem in what they do. Both are driven by a love for self and both are blinded by that love of self as to their real hearts.
This gets at a vitally important issue. If preachers and teachers don’t deal with the issues of the heart, they will only be helping people deceive themselves in the things of religion. External morality is a great evil in the sense that it does not promote true love for God and it hides a man’s self-centered and proud heart from him. Being orthodoxy in doctrine is not the same thing as having a heart that loves God and is being freed from the bondage of sin and of a corrupt heart. An external repentance is not the same thing as a true repentance of the heart. If Thomas Adam is right that it is a fatal mistake to think of corruption as being from the commission of sin rather than from the heart, it is a fatal mistake for preachers to only preach to the externals in doctrine and practice as well.
God Loves... Himself 
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