When men love and admire us, we think it is for some merit in ourselves, and for a natural working of pride can love them again. It is for the same reason that we love God so little, notwithstanding his superabundant goodness to us in Christ, because it lays us low, strips us of all excellence, and can only be received in a deep sense of our own unworthiness. (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)
When men love and admire us, we think it is for some merit in ourselves, and for a natural working of pride can love them again. It is for the same reason that we love God so little, notwithstanding his superabundant goodness to us in Christ, because it lays us low, strips us of If it is true that men love those who love themselves and love those who build us up and speak highly of us from selfish hearts of self-love and pride, then surely this is clear why men love the true God so little and are so excited to hear of a false god that loves them like they want to be loved. God is opposed to all the selfish hearts of men who are taken up with themselves in self-love and pride. God is opposed to the proud and yet gives grace to the humble. God stands in battle alignment against the proud and will bring all the proud down to their faces in humility or will bring them down to an eternal hell.
Men are so taken with themselves, their thoughts about and esteem of themselves, and of what others think of them that they are in essence playing god in some way. Men are to love God with all of their beings and they are to treat the name of God as holy and are to pray that His name would be revered, yet men are so tender for their own name and are so hardened to how people speak ill of the name of God. People laugh at the television and movies when people use the name of God as common and throw it around and treat it as nothing more than to obtain money and laughs. But let someone slight them but a little and things are so different.
Men are repulsed at seeking the true God because it requires them to bow in utter submission and deep humility. A person that seeks the face of the true God must start with humility first. But this is exactly what the proud heart of man will not do and has no desire to do so. Proud man wants to keep his pride while he seeks the living God and he would have God do for him what he desires and when he desires. Oh how it is so hard to get men to see their desperate need of humility and lowliness, but instead resist this and hate the true God who would bring them down while they love the modern god that is preached because that god loves them as they are with their pride.
Men want a god that is like them and will give them what they want while leaving their pride and self-centeredness basically untouched. Christ tells men that they must die to self, but men think that surely he did not mean that and so they tell themselves that they must deny things that they give to self. But Christ said that we must die to self and all of its so-called rights. Christ teaches us that we must be turned and become like little children to even enter the kingdom, yet we still fight to keep some control regardless of how utterly absurd it is to do so.
For a person to receive Christ a person must receive Christ by grace alone and this teaches us the utter necessity of being emptied of self and pride and all the proud thoughts of our worthiness. The great and glorious doctrines of Christ alone and grace alone bring all the hearts of proud men crashing to the ground as grace will not stand with any hint of pride and worthiness in human being. Grace reigns and will not have any hopeful contenders standing around its throne. Oh the depths of lowliness and humility that are necessary for a person to give up all hope in self and look to grace alone. Oh how men must see that they must be utterly undone in themselves or they will not love the God of the Bible who does all for His own glory and His own worth. Oh how men should seek the Lord to be stripped of pride, self, and high esteem of self rather than seeking a god that allows them to have such poisons in the heart. Oh how we must see that pride and self are poison to the doctrines of grace, but also that those who love the god of the modern day don’t love the true God but instead just love themselves.
It is easy to fill the professing “churches” and the bank accounts of the same when self and pride are allowed to remain untouched and preachers make men think that God loves them as they are. Instead of teaching men that the love of God will change them to make them like the humble Savior, it makes them think that god loves them and so they will love that god rather than the true God. But true believers must understand this as well. The true God works true love for Himself in the hearts of His true people as He disciplines them. The false gods leave men in their self-love and pride and they do nothing but love themselves as they are deceived into thinking that the true God loves them. Believers must learn to strive for a deeper humility as they seek God to give them a love for Himself based on grace alone rather than love for Him based on worldly things He gives them.
God Loves... Himself 
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