God Loves… Himself

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).

Throughout the Scriptures we see person after person and event after event that demonstrates to us that the character of man is that of a proud sinner and in reality nothing more. We see this in open sin and we see this in professing religion as well. The devil was lifted up against God by pride and this is true in the heart of all his (the devil’s) children. Those children are all those who are not born from above by the sovereign grace of God.

In the story of Nebuchadnezzar we see a man proud of what he had done and yet he had not seen the hand of God in giving him what he had, so Nebuchadnezzar reflected on things and looked to his own might and power.  “The king reflected and said, ‘Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?’” (Daniel 4:30). While the Westminster Shorter Catechism had not been written at the time, it is still the case that he should have known that his purpose in life was to glorify God and do all for His glory rather than his own. The pride of man puts him at war with God and God will bring down the pride at some point and time. Nebuchadnezzar was indeed a proud sinner. A person with even a small degree of true humility is sickened at the thought of doing what Nebuchadnezzar did.

Belshazzar was the son of Nebuchadnezzar and was throwing a great party after his father died and he was not king. He had the vessels from the Temple of God brought out and they were using them to drink from. This was when the hand appeared on the wall and wrote a message. No one could read it so Daniel was brought out to interpret it. His words to Belshazzar were about his father”  “But when his heart was lifted up and his spirit became so proud that he behaved arrogantly, he was deposed from his royal throne and his glory was taken away from him” (Dan 5:20). The words of Daniel were quite clear and to the point. When Nebuchadnezzar was proud, God brought him down and took his glory from him. He continues in verse 21: “He was also driven away from mankind, and his heart was made like that of beasts, and his dwelling place was with the wild donkeys. He was given grass to eat like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until he recognized that the Most High God is ruler over the realm of mankind and that He sets over it whomever He wishes.” Daniel set out the history of Belshazzar in a pointed way and left no room for doubt as to whom the true God is.

Daniel then pointed directly at Belshazzar and spoke to the king directly: “Yet you, his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, even though you knew all this, 23 but you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of His house before you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines have been drinking wine from them; and you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which do not see, hear or understand. But the God in whose hand are your life-breath and your ways, you have not glorified” (5:22-23). The point was and is very clear. Belshazzar was a proud sinner and he had ignored what had happened to his dad and instead had lived for pleasure and for his own glory. In doing so he had exalted himself against the Lord of heaven. A person with a small amount of true humility would indeed be sickened at the thought of that Belshazzar did.

In one sense the Bible is a record of proud sinners and then a humble Savior saving some of those proud sinners from their pride and self-exaltation. No one is truly saved that is not saved from the reigning power of pride and self-exaltation. The desire for glory and honor drives many professions today, perhaps as much as greed. The desire for honor drives some people in virtually all they do. Yet the Christian is to deny self and seek the glory and honor of God in all s/he does. The difference is not small, but perhaps so great that it cannot be truly measured other than in the eyes of God. The unregenerate proud sinner can seek self and the glory of self in the world or in religion. The regenerated person with some true humility is simply nauseated by self being praised or honored instead of the Lord of glory.

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).

The basic issue of the unregenerate human soul is pride. While it may appear on the surface that the problem with the unregenerate soul is unbelief, yet if one looks a little deeper one sees that it is pride that keeps the soul from believing. In other words, an unregenerate soul is a proud soul. It may be very nice and very religious, but its unbelief is a result of pride. On the other hand, we can see that proud souls must be humbled in order to believe. God gives grace to the humble, but opposes the proud. Pride, then, while opposite to humility, is also opposite to grace. It is impossible for a proud and self-focused person to love the truth and reality of grace, though the proud and self-focused person may like or even love (in a sense) a false idea of grace

Habakkuk 2:4 “Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; But the righteous will live by his faith.

The text in Habakkuk shows us that the proud person’s soul is not right within him, but a righteous person lives by faith. The contrast, on one hand, is between the soul that is not right and a righteous person. On the other hand, the contrast is between a proud person and faith. True faith will always live in a humble soul while the proud soul cannot have faith as the two cannot live together or the two (faith and pride) cannot reign in the same soul. This is not to say that converted people are without pride, but that grace will break the proud heart (while it will not totally do away with pride in this life) so that the humble heart may have grace and as such faith receives grace and so grace reigns in that soul. Every soul is either at the mercy of self and the devil by pride or at the mercy of God by grace. So the essential character of the unregenerate is proud sinner, but since no one is delivered from pride and sin to perfection in this life, in many ways the regenerate also should see self as a proud sinner.

In one sense the phrase “proud sinner” is nothing more but a redundancy. It is the case that very sinner sins from pride and every proud person sins by being proud. When one sees the very nature of pride and of self, then one can see that the answer for that soul is not being good and nice, but to have a change of heart. A person can be good and nice and yet be that way out of pride. A person can be very religious and be given to prayer and fasting and giving of alms, but still only do those things out of pride (see the Pharisees in Matthew 6). That leaven of pride ruins all that is thought and said to be Christian because all that is truly Christian (faith and actions) are to be done to the glory of God rather than the glory of self. It is only grace that can work in the soul to deliver it from pride and self so that the glory of God will shine through the soul.

This should show us how a proud heart can feed upon that stench and corruption with which a little humility would make us sick to look at much rather than feed upon. The Pharisee loved to pray in order to be seen by men. The Pharisee loved to think of self as righteous and loved the thought that others saw that he was righteous when he prayed. In other words, the pride of the Pharisee fed on being seen as righteous by men. The pride of the Pharisee fed on his own perceived righteousness and filled him up with a sense of his self-righteousness. On the other hand, a truly humble heart is sickened at self when it sees self doing things like that. It is not that the humble heart is completely delivered from all pride and all self, but it has enough humility to loath itself for the pride and self that is left. It is much like Paul who cried out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24).

The proud heart feeds on religious actions because of what those things do for self. The humble heart is nauseated at doing things for self and desires to have a heart that is pure and so do all things out of love for God and His glory. The proud heart can go home after doing a religious action and dwell on that much to its own satisfaction, but the humble heart grieves over what it has done by self even with mixed motives. The humble heart hates the remaining self and pride and longs to be delivered from it so that it can live fully to the glory of its Beloved. While the humble heart is never fully delivered in this life from pride, it hates the pride and self that it must battle with.

Most men’s notion of sin is only this, that whatever it is they themselves are not guilty of it. None are so absurd as to think, that they do all they should do, or that they are guilty of no deviations from the rule of right; but that their state is sinful upon the whole, or that sin is damnable, they do not believe. (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).

This comment is so true, even among those that have a confession that states the doctrine and nature of sin. It is one thing to agree that people sin, but it is quite another to admit that I sin. But even when people admit that they sin, what are they admitting to? It is one thing to agree with a confession that sin is worthy of damnation, but it is quite another to confess from the heart that my sin means that I am worthy of damnation. It is one thing to admit that I make mistakes, but it is a far different thing to admit that I sin. It is one thing to say that men are sinners by nature, but that is far from admitting that by nature we are sinners and as a result all that I do (even the best things) are sinful and worthy of the eternal wrath of God.

It is quite easy for human beings to see what is wrong with the behavior of other people, but it is virtually impossible to get past the self-defense and self-justification walls when it comes to the person himself. People who steal hate it if their possessions are stolen. People who lie hate being lied to. Part of the fallen human nature is to look at self through the lenses of self-love and what is good for self-love rather than look at things from an objective moral standard. King David thought a man who had many sheep was worthy of death for taking the sheep of a poor man, yet he had many wives and took the wife of a man who had one. How sinful passions and desires can blind the eyes of self to what self really is and what self is really worthy of.

While it is relatively easy (as Adam points out) to get people to admit that they have done things that were not quite perfect or that they have not done things that they should have, that is not the same thing as getting them to see from the depths of their hearts that they are sinners by nature and all that they do comes from that sinful nature and sinful heart. The self acts as the supreme judge in all that comes to it and makes judgments based on the desires and intellectual reasons of self, but when the biblical truth shows us that self is the real problem, then we can see that all that I have ever done has been wicked and evil actions that were done out of love for self and so enmity toward God.

It is also hard for people to see the evil of sin as against God when it is viewed from the lenses of love for self, what is good for self, and the benefits for self. When people think of sin from the view of self and love for self, they will not see sin as damnable. Instead, they may see it as a mistake and maybe even as wrong, but down deep they do not see it as damnable. Even worse, when things are viewed through the lenses of self, their own nature is not seen as damnable, but as neutral at best. Some, however, seem to think of themselves as basically good. This means that they cannot see the evil of their sin which flows from evil and sinful hearts. Since they think of themselves as basically good, despite what creed or confession they hold to, they will not view themselves as damnable at all. They may even thank God that they are not like other people and so in some way give the praise to grace, but that does not mean that in the deepest parts of their beings that they really believe in grace as taught in the Bible.

 Not many in our day (if at any time in history) really think of themselves as worthy of nothing but eternal damnation. The words may come through clenched teeth in some because it is biblical, but to actually have that as the driving belief of the soul or conviction of the soul is something different. All human beings are worthy of nothing but damnation in and of themselves and it is only because of the grace purchased by Jesus Christ that any will have eternal life. When the hard things come our way in life we have no reason to complain or to say that we do not deserve them. Even in the hardest things that happen we are getting far less than our sins deserve. But even more, God uses the hard things to work in the hearts of His people those things that bring spiritual treasures. When human beings ignore how damnable they are, they turn their backs on spiritual growth and grace as well.

 It is to be feared, that a secret wish to be saved without holiness, is the great bar to our progress towards perfection.      (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).

It is a sad commentary on the human race that it is opposed to true holiness from beginning to end, but it is even sadder to think that profession believers desire to be saved from hell but not saved from sin itself. We want to be saved from the guilt of and punishment for sin, but we don’t really want to be saved from self and the desires of self. The wicked hearts of human beings want God to save them from all things that will harm them as long as it does not disturb their pride and their essential desire for self and the things of self. The ubiquitous self is every place and in every location of the heart and mind. It is the greatest desire of the heart and that self will use God to get what it wants and it will pursue religion for the safety of its own honor and self-preservation. But apart from a great work of God and of His power in the soul, people desire to be saved from various sins without being saved from the essential nature of sin itself.

 What does it say about a heart that desires for God to save it from the guilt of sin and yet does not turn from sin itself and has no real desire to do so? Indeed the heart may have some desires to flee from some sin because of the pain sin causes, some results of sin, or perhaps because of appearances, but it does not hate sin as sin or hate sin as against God. Despite the fact that holiness is to be like God and in reality (in terms of holiness) all the soul can do is receive from God, people are averse to holiness and do not want to repent of sin. Throughout history people have fought against holiness and called those who pursued it derogatory names.

 The desire to be saved without holiness has brought forth various theologies that are heretical. Men will defend their desires for sinful things by changing theology rather than being changed themselves. Men will go on the attack of those who think that men should seek holiness in order to defend their own sinful practices. It is much like Romans 1:18-32 where people have to suppress the knowledge of God in unrighteousness in order to continue their own wicked practices, so it should come as no surprise when men do that in areas of theology and holiness.

 There is no doubt that many want to be saved without holiness, but what is salvation without holiness? Indeed a lack of desire for holiness, to be like Christ, and to glorify the Father will never lead to maturity, but what can it mean to want to be saved without holiness? In a very real sense that is the same thing as saying a person can be saved without love, and yet we know that is impossible. So what Adam is most likely saying is that some people want some holiness but they don’t want to take pains with it and they really don’t want to die to self. This should grieve our hearts to think about it. Paul taught in the Scriptures, “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). It is hard to imagine a believer that would not want to be shed of the burden of sin more and more. So the very least thing we can say is with Adam, a lack of desire for holiness is a great bar to our progress.

We know that we should be good, and therefore conclude at once that we are so; especially if we can read, and abound with notions. Our pride asks for no proofs. (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 by Adam opens up a very deceitful method of the heart. Unless we begin to see things like this as true of our own hearts, we will be deceived by our own hearts. Every human being in the depths of the soul knows that s/he should be good. The standard of good, however, is another issue. But each human being concludes that s/he is good because s/he has taken the standard of good and twisted it fit and be conformed to self-centeredness, self-love, and pride.

The heart that has seen something of the glory of God has already seen something of the sinfulness of self and knows that it is not essentially good, but instead that it was born dead in sins and trespasses and by nature was a child of wrath. In other words, there is nothing really good about human nature, but instead human beings are born in sin and as such at enmity with the living God who is truly good. One thing that the unregenerate soul wars with God about is what is good and whether God or man is good. But the case is settled when Jesus said that there is only One who is good. The case is cemented when Jesus said that man can do nothing (spiritual or good) apart from Him as the true vine.

Matthew 19:17 And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

It is the conclusion of the heart that is at war with God over what is good that enables a person to come to the conclusion that s/he is good. The heart that has seen the glory and true goodness of God will no longer argue that it is good. When self is the focus and self is making decisions and setting standards up for itself that it wants to be good then self may conclude that self is good. But when God is the focus and His is the standard of good there is no way that the soul can conclude that it is good.

Another part of this issue, as Adam sets out, has to do with the reading that people do. A person can be caught up with ideas and notions and either forgets about the heart and becomes consumed with notions or the notions and ideas make sense and so conclude that we must be good. But the heart that is devoted to Scripture will not come up with the idea that it is good. It can only come up with that idea because of deceiving itself or by reading these things from those who are deceived by fallen reason.

But perhaps the chief reason for all of this is pride. The pride of man simply does not demand proof for itself, but instead pride believes what it wants to and so assumes that about itself. This move of pride is not inconsistent with holding to an intellectual belief about the depravity of man, but instead the pride deceives and blinds the mind and heart in such ways that the person can actually think that the depravity of man is true and yet in a practical way deny its influence on himself. Pride is such a blinding force on the soul that men can see something as a biblical truth and yet flee from the meaning of that for their own hearts. The proud heart does not need any proof about itself as it is blinded to what it really is. The proud heart listens to itself rather than to what the evidence of the matter really says. Pride hears what it wants to hear and blocks the rest out.

If I bring my pride with me to the work of God, it will feed as sweetly upon it as upon any other distinction, and in the end fatally blast it. (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).

Pride is the enemy of the soul and anything that is of God. Interestingly enough, pride seems quite at home in religion in general and Christianity as well. Proverbs 8:13 tells us that “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverted mouth, I hate.” A person that fears the LORD will hate evil and yet pride and arrogance are part of the evil way that God hates. So when a person tries to keep pride or does not seek true humility in the work of God the pride will feed itself even in the work of God.

Proverbs 16:5 goes on to say that “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD.” The religious person that is doing religious work and perhaps even a good work must not bring pride to that work or as it is feeding on its own distinction it will be an abomination to the LORD. This is to say that when pride is brought into the pulpit, that sermon and the prayers are an abomination to the LORD. When there is pride in a prayer meeting, the prayers offered or heard in pride are abominations to the LORD. When a good work is being done and a proud heart is doing that good work, that good work is an abomination to the LORD.

The proud heart spoils all that is done from it. A proud heart means that the person is doing what is being done out of the love of self and the honor of self rather than the love and honor of God. The proud heart looks at what it has done and instead of looking at the grace of God it looks at the efforts of self in the admiration of self. The motives and intentions of the heart are for self and the fulfillment of pride or the goal of pride rather than the fulfillment of the commands of God out of love. Oh how the stench of pride overcomes all the sweet savors of loving obedience out of love for God.

When Proverbs 6:16 tells us that “There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him,” we need to listen closely and we must not imagine that our good works and religious things we do will cancel out that pride. God hates haughty eyes and haughty eyes are the result of a proud heart. The Scripture does not say God hates those things only when someone is doing them in the commission of open sin, but instead it simply says that He hates those things and that they are an abomination to Him.

Matthew 18:1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, 3 and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

In the passage just above we can see that Jesus hates pride. The greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the one that is the most humble. The priority of Christianity is not good works in and of themselves, but humble hearts that do the good works. It is only when the heart is humbled (emptied of self) that it can truly do what it does out of love for God. A heart that has not been emptied of self is full of self and so all it does is for self and from self. To the degree that the heart is full of self is the degree that the heart has pride and to that degree all that it does is from pride. That type of heart will rejoice in itself and be quite proud of the Christian work it does and that can include its own humility (or what it might think is humility). Even in the mature believer there must be a fight against pride or pride will feed itself on what the mature believer does as well. How appalling the nature of pride is and how utterly hateful it must be to God as the One who has made all things for Himself and then to behold people doing all things for themselves. How appalling pride must be to the God who revealed Himself in Christ as meek and humble and then to see wicked and sinful creatures doing things out of pride. How His people must seek humility.

If I bring my pride with me to the work of God, it will feed as sweetly upon it as upon any other distinction, and in the end fatally blast it. (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).

This saying of Adam demonstrates the hatefulness and harmful nature of pride, but also why God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. The proud heart is all about self and its own honor even in the things of God. A proud heart would be proud of grace and use it to honor self if God gave grace to the proud. But as a holy God He can only give grace to the humble because true grace is always and only given to the praise of the glory of His grace. The nature of faith is that it receives grace, but pride will not receive real grace for the real reason that it is given. Grace is never given so that man may proudly use it, but that man may be instruments of the glory of God.

Habakkuk 2:4 “Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; But the righteous
will live by his faith.

The text of Habakkuk tells us that not only is pride wrong and sinful, but it quite opposite of true faith. The soul of the person that is proud is a soul that is not right. It is a soul that is wrong and off the path of what God created it for. On the one hand the proud person has a soul that is not right, but in contrast the righteous person lives by faith. This gives us a contrast between pride and righteousness and then pride and faith. Hebrews 11:1 teaches us that without faith we cannot please God, so if pride and faith are opposites, we learn that we cannot please God with a proud heart. In other words, the heart that has pride in it, regardless of the outward actions, is a heart that cannot please God. We can see how the Pharisees had all the right actions, but they were proud and did not have true faith or Christ. For a soul to truly seek grace is for a soul to seek to be delivered from pride.

Faith, as the eyes and sight of the soul, is required to behold the glory of God and the kingdom of God as well. Faith, as that by which the soul receives grace, is necessary to walk and live by grace. Faith is also necessary to do anything by grace and as such pride which kills faith (so to speak) means that the soul is disabled to do one spiritual thing which must be done by grace. Without any faith, then, pride can move the soul to do all of its religious actions. The soul that is driven by pride can do virtually any outward act that a Christian does and be quite proud of it. The proud soul can have pseudo-humility and even deceive itself that it is humble. Oh how religious people can deceive themselves about their spirituality and have so many deceptions of the heart as their pride feeds on all of their religion.

Isaiah 2:11 The proud look of man will be abased And the loftiness of man will be humbled, And the LORD alone will be exalted in that day. 12 For the LORD of hosts will have a day of reckoning Against everyone who is proud and lofty And against everyone who is lifted up, That he may be abased.

As Isaiah 2:11 shows us, it is not just the openly wicked person that God is opposed to, but it is all those who are proud and lifted up. Every religious person must come to the point of realizing that pride will ruin all of his or her religion. Pride means that the self is feeding on the things of self and the things of pride in religious things as well. That is what the Pharisees did. They did their religious actions and then admired themselves while thinking that they were serving God. Oh how deceptive our hearts are when the Bible speaks of how humility is necessary to do anything by grace and faith and our pride deceives us through pseudo humility. How we must have the humility of Christ as our life rather than working up our own humility by pride.

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.

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).

It may be supposed that the eruptions of inbred malignity would be crass and open sin, but perhaps we should not jump to that conclusion so quickly. If the attitude and words of Jesus toward the Pharisees are to teach us, then we must wonder what it is about the Pharisees that pushed Him to be so critical of. One could even say with a great deal of accuracy that Jesus was more critical of the Pharisees than those who lived in open sin. Even in our most religious acts the eruption of inbred malignity can occur.

Romans 1:28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,

Romans 8:7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

The verses above serve as a reminder, even a remarkable one, that modern Evangelicalism (as such and as a movement) is flat wrong. People have no good in their hearts and they need more than a little prayer or a walk down the aisle to be converted. They need new hearts and a new nature. They are not just those who have decided to do a little wrong here and there, but they are wicked people with wicked hearts and they hate God. The hearts of open sinners and unconverted religious people are all hostile toward God.

The hearts of unconverted people, then, in the very best things that they do, are nothing less and nothing more than fountains of constant eruptions of an inbred malignity. We hear of the great doctrine of the total depravity of man and we either brush it off or accept it in the intellect. But it is far more than that, at least as it is found in the Bible. It is not just that men don’t do things as well as God expects, but that they don’t have one bit of good in them. In other words, all the righteous acts of men don’t have the slightest bit of good in them. But not only do they have no good at all in them, they are full of hate for God. Surely, people say, this is not right. How can it be that the nice acts and religious acts of my neighbors, my family, and myself are hatred of God? The religious acts of the Pharisees were acts of hatred for God when they did not subject themselves to God and they did this by bringing the law down to where they thought they could keep it in their own strength. All unconverted hearts do the same thing and justify themselves in doing it.

The heart that does not (See Rom 8:7-8 above) subject itself to the law of God is a heart that is acting in open hostility of God. The very religious person that does not subject himself to the law of God is acting in open hostility to God and as such his very religious acts are eruptions of inbred malignity against God. The human heart hates God and all it does is in hostility toward Him and that includes (perhaps especially so) the religious actions that water down the law of God and are done with love for self rather than love for God. Even the most pious actions of the most pious in appearance person is nothing more or less than the eruption of an inbred malignancy. The most pious actions of the unconverted have no love of God in them, no grace of God giving strength to them, and no blood of Christ covering them. Those pious actions of the unconverted come from a heart that hates God and is at enmity with Him. If only God would give us eyes to see what our hearts are really like we would cry out to Him for His mercy. It is a terrible burden to have a heart that is the offspring of the devil. The proud heart does not want to believe that and so flees from the truth of it.

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).

Statements like the one from Thomas Adam just above combined with Jeremiah 17:9 should give all who read the two great pause. Perhaps even great, great pause. It should bring about a seeking from the Lord to show us our own hearts. It should cause us to think through what we are doing and why we do it. It should cause and arouse us to examine our actions and then trace them back to the motives and intents so we can see who we really are. How deceitful the heart is in turning from sin which is demonstrative evidence of the nature of the heart to simply cover it over and reinstate self to its own good opinion. The heart that begins to examine itself with any degree of closeness will realize how often it has done precisely that. Oh how the human heart wants to have a good opinion of itself and the lengths it will go to reinstate itself and maintain that opinion. The human heart will do this until it is uncovered and exposed as naked and bare by the Spirit or in hell.

There are only two real options. One, the soul can continue to heal itself (not that this is a real healing) and have a good opinion of itself, or (two) it can seek the Lord for a sight of its own heart. Indeed it will take a seeing of the frightful nakedness of self and the sinking knowledge of the vileness of our own hearts, but that cursed root that Adam speaks of is there whether we recognize it or not. The apostle Paul covered over his vile and covetous heart with many works and external morality, but when that blindness was taken away and he saw the depths of sin in his own heart he felt the curse upon himself. But as so many actually do, if he would have covered over the sin of his heart and refused to look at it, then he would have felt better about his own righteousness and not have found Christ who came to save sinners.

If the soul refuses to see what it is in truth and continue on in its blindness and pride, it will be uncovered for what it is and the person will see and feel the truth of its wickedness in utter misery for eternity. While on earth the soul can flee from a sight of its own heart and to some degree the sense of its own misery by the creature comforts and amusements of the world, but in hell there is no comfort and no amusement. There will be nothing but the unceasing, unending, and unmitigated misery of the soul beholding its own sin as it is under the wrath of the living God. The eye of God cannot be hidden from here but only ignored, so there it will not be ignored. That eye that sees all every moment can bring every degree of filth that the soul fled from on earth before it and show it in its extreme hideousness. There the soul will long for the briefest of respites from a sight of itself and its own vileness, but it will not be allowed. Throughout all eternity without one moment of cessation, the soul will see its own nakedness, vileness and utter malignity of heart. But for now there is the opportunity to seek the Lord for the malignant heart to be made new and for its nakedness to be covered with robe of the righteousness of Christ.

From mere self-love no one would want to think such things of themselves that one actually is dead in sin and has a malignant heart of hate toward God. Self-love and pride keeps people from wanting to see themselves as being at enmity with all who oppose them. Self-love so desperately wants to keep a good opinion of self, yet the harsh reality of the eruption of that malignity keeps vying for attention. But the self-love and pride that does not want to see itself is also joined with the deception that is natural to pride. The proud heart wants to think the best of self, but the proud heart is also deceived by its pride. God opposes the proud and so the proud heart is the most helpless and yet desperate thing in the universe. The pride of the heart must be crushed for the soul to be humbled and so receive the grace of God. But even worse for the proud heart, it cannot humble itself and it cannot do anything to move God to show grace to it. This proud heart must be broken by grace as well. Yet the proud heart does not want anything to do with real grace, thought it might want just enough to make up for what it perceives as a slight deficit. How our hearts must be opened to see what they really are in order to truly cry for true grace.