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 heart of man that God has not changed is so incredibly wicked in the eyes of God that man cannot fully describe it, so man flees from it and tries to heal himself and still have a good opinion of self. However, what must happen is for man to recognize what is the real nature of his heart and stop trying to hide it from himself. But for that to happen man must realize if this cursed root is still in his heart when he dies that heart has produced nothing by uninterrupted misery for him for eternity. The whole of life will then be spent to see that the joys and comforts, cares and amusements of the time on earth simply kept his eyes off of the misery of his own heart and was an attempt to hide the truth of self from self. Religion is one way man tries to hide the truth from self.
Psalm 81:15 “Those who hate the LORD would pretend obedience to Him, And their time of punishment would be forever.
The truth of Psalm 81:15 is seen in the religious and yet unconverted person. While they hate God in reality, they pretend obedience to Him. While it seems strange to some, the most religious people (The Pharisees are one example of this) actually hate God more than some that don’t have religion at all. Their pretended obedience actually demonstrates a hatred for the omnipresence and omniscience of God by accepting the fact that He knows that their so-called obedience is faked. Their pretended obedience is an act of atheism in that they are denying the holiness and justice of God in thinking that their pretense of obedience is acceptable. Their pretended obedience is an act of hatred in that they think they can please God instead of relying totally and utterly on His grace. Indeed, their punishment will be forever.
John 7:7 “The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.
John 15:23 “He who hates Me hates My Father also.
We can see the malignity of the hearts of the world in its hatred for God by the hatred it has when people tell the world that its deeds are evil. The people of the world hated Jesus when He told them that their deeds were evil, but what the world was blind to was that when they hated Jesus they hated His Father as well. Jesus, who was love incarnate, was hated by the world when He spoke the truth to them. The problem is not with Jesus and with the truth, but the response of people to Jesus and the truth He spoke demonstrated the malignity of the hearts of the people toward God. This is still the case in our day. When people speak with venom or animosity toward the true Jesus, the malignity of their hearts are erupting into plain view. What happens after the eruption is that people then try to justify their eruption with various explanations and excuses, but all that does is to show that their heart is indeed wicked and wants to return to a good opinion about itself.
Titus 3:3 For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.
The text just above (Titus 3:3) shows the life of a malignant heart. It is a foolish heart that lives in the deception and enslavement of its various lusts and pleasures, but those also flow from a malignant heart. The malice and envy of the malignant heart can be explained away by various ways of psychology and of human behavior, but in the eyes of God the malignant heart lives in malice, envy, being hateful, and hating others. Even the nicest unregenerate person’s niceness is the eruption of a hateful heart. Even the most religious person’s religion is an eruption of a hateful heart. Despite the clear evidence of Scripture and of the human heart people want to retain a good opinion of themselves and so this is denied and justified. Again, just more evidence of the sin of the heart.
God Loves... Himself 
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