Consider, the greatest sins may be hid under the greatest duties, and the greatest terrors. See that the wound that sin has made in your soul be perfectly cured by the blood of Christ! Not skinned over with duties, humblings and enlargements. Apply what you will besides the blood of Christ, it will poison the sore. You will find that sin was never mortified truly, if you have not seen Christ bleeding for you upon the cross. Nothing can kill it, but beholding Christ’s righteousness. Thomas Wilcox
The heart is deceptive, sin is deceptive, and the devil is the deceiver. The sentence above that “the greatest sins may be hid under the greatest duties” is more insightful the more one thinks about it. There are at least two ways of looking at the meaning, with one being that people can hide their sins under doing great duties and so they don’t look at their sins because they are focused on their duties. The second way is that people’s greatest sins are in doing the duties but the duties hide the sin from the understanding of the person, or the sin is in the heart of the person and they are blinded by the external actions or duties. It could also be true that both ways of understanding the statement are true.
We can take a minister as an example. The minister is caught up with religious activities and even fervor and so cannot see anything but what he is doing. He can be orthodox in his theology and quite moral in terms of his external behavior, but his heart is the issue. This man can be doing all he does out of the love of self though he may think that he is doing it all for the glory of God. After all, he knows that a person should do all for the glory of God and he says he does all for the glory of God, so he assures himself that he is doing all to the glory of God. But this minister has deceived himself and is actually doing all from his own strength (strength of the flesh) instead of receiving his strength from grace. The deception of the heart is so strong in that the person knows what is right and he tells himself that he is doing what is right but his own motives and intents are hidden from him.
We can also think of a pastor standing in the pulpit to preach. The man has worked hard on his manuscript and has consulted multiple commentaries. The man has spent time praying over the sermon and during the week has spent time in reading the Bible. All of the actions of this man are commendable, but in many ways they don’t tell us what is in the heart of this man. The sermon is delivered, even delivered well, and it is straight from the Bible and is very orthodox. But where is the heart of that man? He can be deceived by how orthodox the sermon is and perhaps how orderly and even how well it came off, but that tells us nothing how the heart. Did he love God in the preparation of the sermon? Did he love God in the giving of the sermon? Perhaps this man preaches orthodox sermons in order to make it appear that he is righteous. This man can be covering over a heart that hates the true God with sermons that are orthodox. This man can be hiding an adulterous heart (spiritually adulterous) and an idolatrous heart under the guise of orthodox sermons. The man can be quite deceived himself and yet his sin is being hidden under his great duty.
We can also imagine this man (the minister) has having what appears to be a perfect family (whatever that may mean). The family is ordered well, the wife is a great helper to him, and the kids are nice kids. But once again, we are looking on the outside and we are not looking at the heart of the man or the family. The two Greatest Commandments do not tell us many things, but they do tell us to love God with all of our being all of the time. All the external things of family and church can be ordered by human flesh, carried out by human flesh, and in so doing hide true unbelief and enmity toward God underneath outward acts of righteousness.
While this little BLOG used ministers as an example, this can be true of any man in virtually any situation. Men will go to great lengths to hide their true heart from others and even themselves, but men can be greatly deceived by religion. The very outward acts that religion requires of people can be done in the flesh and men use that to deceive themselves. The very outward acts of religion that religion requires of people can hide the reality of the spiritual realm and the utter necessity of a new heart and of true love. We make the horrible assumption that if we are doing the outward acts then of necessity that shows a new heart and we must have true love. In that case, once again, the greatest of sins (self-righteousness and true unbelief) are hidden by and underneath the greatest duties.
God Loves... Himself 
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