Our pride, as delicate as it is, can be content to feed upon that stench and corruption which a little humility makes us nauseate…The character of man is, proud sinner. (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).
David was a man that had a lot of pride in the Bathsheba incident and yet did not recognize it at the time. He specifically and clearly committed adultery with a woman and then was guilty of murder (though the hands of others and in planning) in the death of her husband. Yet for some reason he was blind to what he did. When Nathan the prophet came to him and told him a story about a rich man that took the lamb of a poor man, David was outraged. When Nathan told David that he (David) was the man, that opened the eyes of David and he saw his sin. Before that, however, he had not had eyes to see his sin but had a pride that blinded him to his sin.
After Nathan confronted David and told David that his sin was against God and was even a despising God and His Word, David saw his sin without the blinding power of pride. When he saw it and the Lord had worked in his heart, David confessed his sin and with some humility he was sick of himself and his sin. This can be seen in his confession as given in Psalm 51. When David had some humility he now took the side of God against himself and confessed that God was just in whatever He did with him.
The Pharisees were very proud of their religious action and in reality did it all for themselves. They prayed in order to be seen by men. They gave alms in order to be seen by men. They fasted in order to be seen by men. In other words, their pride fed upon the attention of others and they admired and thought highly of themselves because of what others could see them do. But a person with just a little true humility would be nauseated and bow in confession of his sin if he prayed in order to be seen by men. A person with just a little humility would see the horror of self-centeredness and self-love in giving alms in order to be seen by men. A person with just a little humility would be sickened and grieved at his own idolatry if he found himself fasting just in order to impress other people.
The heart of self and of pride is a heart that is at the service of self and pride in all that it does, but strangely enough the proud heart seems to find itself at home in religion just as much as anything else if not more. Oh how the proud heart can feed itself with high thoughts of self in its religious actions. Oh the terrible destruction that pride brings to the soul when the soul is full of pride and blinds itself to its own poverty by dwelling upon its fictitious spiritual riches. The character of the religious man is also proud sinner and nothing more or less. The proud sinner is full of self as it goes on in its very religious ways. But the humble soul is sickened by itself and wars against self by mortifying the sins of self as it seeks God for grace to die to self. True Christianity is not the life of a holy self, but the death of sinful self and pride that the glory of God may shine through.
God Loves... Himself 
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