After the commission of sin, or any eruption of our inbred malignity, we quickly heal ourselves again, and reinstate ourselves in our own good opinion. How much better would it be to let our nature appear in its frightful nakedness, and to consider that the cursed root of all still remains, and that, if not here destroyed, in another world it can produce nothing but essential, uninterrupted misery, when we have no longer the joys and comforts, cares and amusements of this life, to keep off the sight 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).
The statement of Thomas Adam is one that is full of experiential truth. It speaks of how men have wicked hearts and the commission of sin is simply an eruption of a heart that hates God. But men respond to that in a way that simply covers over the sin and allows them to reinstate themselves to a good opinion of themselves. How the human heart is full of pride and self and does precisely what Adam says it does. But, he goes on to say, how much better to simply let the nature appear as it is and then to consider the nature of the root of that sin and what will happen if that root remains. What the soul does to itself, then, is fight and deceive itself that what it did was not all that bad. It may use certain forms of religion or even Christianity to make it feel good about itself. The soul will convince itself that what it did was not that bad or that it just slipped up for a moment. But the soul will fight to keep from seeing its own blackness and filthiness. The soul fights to keep from seeing what it is by nature.
The pride of the heart is so great that it blinds the soul to what it is by nature, but also the pride works to blind itself as well. No one wants to see self as wicked and vile by nature. People prefer to check their genealogies to see what famous people they have in the line or perhaps if there is royalty there. But regardless of their human genealogy, they fight to keep from seeing their spiritual genealogy which leads them back to the devil himself. Ever person is born dead in sins and trespasses and by nature is a child of wrath. Oh how unpleasant that is and how that makes us feel bad about ourselves and so we must hide that from our eyes and we must make ourselves think that we are not that bad. Jesus told the Pharisees that they were children of the devil and they hated that and shortly after tried to kill Him.
Indeed the pride of human beings blinds them to the disgusting filth of their hearts and what they are by nature, but they also don’t want to face the truth of God regarding their eternal destiny if that nature is not changed. The heart that is so wicked will be unmasked some day and be forced to cut through its hypocrisy and the blinders that pride has brought up. It will be forced to see its own utter nakedness in terms of goodness and righteousness. It will be forced to see the serpentine nature that it has and how all of its life in lived in hatred and rebellion against God. On that Day all the things that the human soul tried to hide itself from others and itself will be bared and brought up into the open. The soul will then see how it had been deceived by the devil, the world, others, and then by its own pride. It will then see that its own nature brought “nothing but essential, uninterrupted misery.” It will then see that all of its righteousness is nothing but filthy rags. It will then see that all of the things it pursued in life were nothing but things that the soul was using to fill the empty void and to blind itself to its own heart.
Indeed, as Adam says, the soul would be much better off to see its own nakedness and what it is by nature now and in this life. The soul would be much better off seeking God to open its eyes to what it really is than to try to cover it over with a refuge of lies. Oh how people seek to make themselves feel good in their sin but that is part of the very disease that needs to be revealed. Every human being that is born has a cursed heart and as cursed nature and sin is the fruit of that. So even in trying to stop the sin the human heart will only try to stop sin in a sinful way. True repentance is not when a particular act is stopped, but when the soul has been turned from its very core from a love for sin to a love for God. But until people see that their very nature is the problem, they will not seek the Lord for a new heart, but instead they will seek the Lord to feel better about themselves so they can have a good opinion of themselves once again and dream that God has a good opinion of them too.
God Loves... Himself 
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