God Loves… Himself

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 last point(s) of the comment by Adam are simply profound and revealing. The joys and the comforts found in this life keep the unbelieving soul from a sight of itself and its coming uninterrupted misery. The cares and amusements of this life for the unbeliever are nothing more than an attempt to hide the sight of self and its coming uninterrupted misery. This life, then, for unbelievers, can be interpreted as nothing more than a seeking of the pleasures and comforts of the things of self in order to hide self from self. The unbeliever spends his or her life in suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18),

This short passage by Adam is very suggestive of the way people suppress the truth about God and of His coming judgment upon them and their sin. They commit a sin, but instead of seeing it as an eruption of inbred malignity, they flee to the comforts and pleasures of the world to keep them from seeing themselves. When a person is giving himself to the joys, comforts, cares and amusements of this life, it is easy to think that God is pleased with you because He is giving you such good things. It is also easier to think good things about self as we fight to obtain a good opinion of ourselves. The sin that we committed will grow less and less as we fight harder and harder to suppress it in the darkness of an unregenerate mind.

But there is another warning hidden (or not so hidden) in this passage. The evil one hides sin from people by working to get them immersed in some of what is considered to be the basic things in life. If the soul does not seek the Lord for a true sight of Himself and then of the soul itself, the true nature of sin will be hidden in the joys, comforts, cares and amusements of this life. People are indeed amusing themselves to death, even eternal death. It is easier to watch movies, play video games, and even read novels than it is to seek a sight of the pure holiness of God and then of the nature of our own hearts. It is, we say, just innocent amusements and diversions.

One very serious and even vital issue can be drawn from this. People are always seeking to hide their own hearts from themselves, but in doing so they are also fleeing from the truth of who God is as well. Perhaps one way to keep from seeing the nature of God is to hide our own hearts from ourselves. As Calvin pointed out a long time ago, the knowledge of God and of our own hearts are inextricably tied together. We cannot flee from the knowledge of our own hearts without fleeing from the knowledge of God. We cannot flee from the knowledge of God without fleeing from knowledge of our own hearts. Perhaps the amusements of the world which are seen as innocent diversions are really not so innocent after all. They just help people flee from knowledge of their own hearts as well as knowledge of the living God. When they do that, they hiding the root of sin from themselves and as such they are fleeing from and hiding that which must be killed in this world because if left hidden it “can produce nothing but essential, uninterrupted misery.”

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 statement of Thomas Adam is one that is full of experiential truth. It speaks of how men have wicked hearts and the commission of sin is simply an eruption of a heart that hates God. But men respond to that in a way that simply covers over the sin and allows them to reinstate themselves to a good opinion of themselves. How the human heart is full of pride and self and does precisely what Adam says it does. But, he goes on to say, how much better to simply let the nature appear as it is and then to consider the nature of the root of that sin and what will happen if that root remains. What the soul does to itself, then, is fight and deceive itself that what it did was not all that bad. It may use certain forms of religion or even Christianity to make it feel good about itself. The soul will convince itself that what it did was not that bad or that it just slipped up for a moment. But the soul will fight to keep from seeing its own blackness and filthiness. The soul fights to keep from seeing what it is by nature.

The pride of the heart is so great that it blinds the soul to what it is by nature, but also the pride works to blind itself as well. No one wants to see self as wicked and vile by nature. People prefer to check their genealogies to see what famous people they have in the line or perhaps if there is royalty there. But regardless of their human genealogy, they fight to keep from seeing their spiritual genealogy which leads them back to the devil himself. Ever person is born dead in sins and trespasses and by nature is a child of wrath. Oh how unpleasant that is and how that makes us feel bad about ourselves and so we must hide that from our eyes and we must make ourselves think that we are not that bad. Jesus told the Pharisees that they were children of the devil and they hated that and shortly after tried to kill Him.

Indeed the pride of human beings blinds them to the disgusting filth of their hearts and what they are by nature, but they also don’t want to face the truth of God regarding their eternal destiny if that nature is not changed. The heart that is so wicked will be unmasked some day and be forced to cut through its hypocrisy and the blinders that pride has brought up. It will be forced to see its own utter nakedness in terms of goodness and righteousness. It will be forced to see the serpentine nature that it has and how all of its life in lived in hatred and rebellion against God. On that Day all the things that the human soul tried to hide itself from others and itself will be bared and brought up into the open. The soul will then see how it had been deceived by the devil, the world, others, and then by its own pride. It will then see that its own nature brought “nothing but essential, uninterrupted misery.” It will then see that all of its righteousness is nothing but filthy rags. It will then see that all of the things it pursued in life were nothing but things that the soul was using to fill the empty void and to blind itself to its own heart.

Indeed, as Adam says, the soul would be much better off to see its own nakedness and what it is by nature now and in this life. The soul would be much better off seeking God to open its eyes to what it really is than to try to cover it over with a refuge of lies. Oh how people seek to make themselves feel good in their sin but that is part of the very disease that needs to be revealed. Every human being that is born has a cursed heart and as cursed nature and sin is the fruit of that. So even in trying to stop the sin the human heart will only try to stop sin in a sinful way. True repentance is not when a particular act is stopped, but when the soul has been turned from its very core from a love for sin to a love for God. But until people see that their very nature is the problem, they will not seek the Lord for a new heart, but instead they will seek the Lord to feel better about themselves so they can have a good opinion of themselves once again and dream that God has a good opinion of them too.

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).

This is another revealing statement that tells us many things. The first thing that it points out is that sin comes from the heart or the inner person. The external action of a person is really something that reveals what is in the person. Sin is the eruption of something in the inner person. If the action is rank and obvious sin, then it is certainly the sign of a heart that is given over to sin. If the action is of a religious nature, it can still be a sign of an inbred malignity toward the Gospel of grace and the life of grace. So regardless of whether a person is outwardly wicked or outwardly righteous, both can be eruptions of an inbred malignity of heart.

This leads us to the second point. The openly wicked life of a sinner is an eruption of inbred malignity against God. In other words, all the sin of an unregenerate person is directly against God. The openly religious life of an unregenerate sinner is also an eruption of inbred malignity against God as God saves and sanctifies by grace alone. The religious life, regardless of how committed it is, shows a heart that is opposed to the God that saves by grace alone. The Pharisees are still the best display of this. In all they did they were serving themselves which is open idolatry. They thought they could fulfill the righteous commands of God which were given to show men that they cannot be righteous in and of themselves and so drive them to Christ for righteousness. The whole life of each Pharisee (unless converted at some point) was nothing more than an eruption of inbred malignity against God.

This principle also shows us why Jesus was harder on the Pharisees than on the openly wicked. Indeed the open wickedness of a life demonstrates a malignity against God and His holiness, but the self-righteous heart is a demonstration of a malignant heart against the holiness, grace, and self-sufficiency of God. The heart of the self-righteous or the unregenerate religious person is as much against the holiness of God as the openly wicked since the self-righteous and religious person has to water down the laws of God and then in pride think that s/he can and does keep them. In other words, the unregenerate but very religious person lives in as much if not more rebellion against God as the openly wicked.

The third point in the statement by Adam above shows the wicked heart of man and how all men are liars. After the malignity of the heart is demonstrated, “we quickly heal ourselves again, and reinstate ourselves in our own good opinion.” The human heart out of self-love will move to heal itself in order to have a good opinion of itself. It will justify its own actions and its own motives by many manipulations of facts and the laws of God in order to think well of itself again. The openly wicked person will tell self that it had good reasons for what it did and try to blame others or society. The openly wicked person will also tells self and others that at least it is not as bad as others and that it has done many good things. But the very religious person will look to itself and its own works as a way of righteousness but also claim that Christ has saved it. The openly religious person will look to self as its own reason for why Christ should show grace. The openly religious person may not think that s/he is looking to works or depending on self since his or her theology may teach grace, but down deep that person is using the teaching of grace to hide a malignant heart against grace. For grace to be grace alone it cannot have the act of a human being as its motive or any merit as a cause for what it does. But the religious person will use grace to hide its malignant heart and as such it can return to having a good opinion of itself again.

The heart of humanity is born dead in sin and it will use open acts of wickedness and very religious acts as well to have a good opinion of itself and to hide itself from others and itself. The true believer, however, knows that God sees the depths of the heart and that there is no use trying to hide sin. So the true believer cries out for mercy and does so while crying out against his or her own heart. The true believer knows that it cannot be healed by anything self does, but instead only the blood of Christ alone by grace alone can heal it.

When we open ourselves to others, it is partially and hypocritically, with prevarication and great tenderness to ourselves, and with design to be admired and flattered by them, rather than counseled and convinced. Alas! We do so to God more than we are aware of. (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).

Any person that has truly dealt long with his own heart knows that what Thomas Adam wrote above is true. Anyone that thinks that the statement is not true has simply not discovered the nature of his or her own heart. The natural human heart is proud and self-centered and desires to be admired and flattered by others. It will open itself up to others just to a degree, though not really. It does so to a small degree only in order that others will think more highly of him or her. In the modern day it is thought to be a good thing if a person is transparent. But the proud heart will not truly open up to confess the true depths of its sin. Indeed the proud heart will confess that it is terribly wicked and will say several things about how awful it is, but it will not truly open up to the sinful motives and sinful inclinations and desires of the heart. It opens up only in a general way and that is to gain the admiration of others.

The deceitfulness of the human heart and its desire to be admired and flattered by others is far stronger and more deceptive that we are willing to consider at almost any point in our lives. Children in school are driven by tenderness toward their own image before others and themselves. Young adults constantly want to be seen in a certain way. When people arrive at middle age they still want to be seen in a certain way and they still want others to admire them and then admire themselves. In the modern world self-esteem teaching continues to rage and the greatest crime of all it appears is to offend another. We don’t want to hear the truth about ourselves and are afraid to speak the truth. It is hard to get others to admire us if we speak evil of ourselves, though of course a partial opening might impress certain people. It is hard to get others to admire us and flatter us if we speak the truth to them about their sin.

Even more, according to Adam, we desire God to admire us and flatter us. In some ways this is what happens in the more open Arminian teaching which constantly tells people that God loves them regardless of what they do. It is flattering to people and makes them think that God makes much of them and is focused on them. This also teaches us that in confession of sin, even to God, we don’t speak the truth about ourselves and are hypocritical to God about our sin. Even in our confessions to God we are tender to ourselves and don’t want Him to really convict us of sin and teach us in our inner selves about our natures and of our sin. This tenderness toward ourselves and the refusal to seek God to truly show us our sin is a road to a hardened heart and then to hell. It is part of being on the broad road rather than the narrow one.

We cannot go to the bottom of sin without the convincing, searching Spirit of God. If the work is to be our own, we shall deal very tenderly with ourselves, that nothing can ever come of 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 is a very powerful truth that speaks to human self-love, the deception of our hearts, and the need for human beings to be in utter reliance upon God. We know how others and ourselves respond when something is said by another about something we have done wrong or about our sin. Oh how tender we are of ourselves and how hard it is to admit that we are wrong. It is always another person or the circumstances. It was always something the spouse said or did, but never self. A natural soul, even if as honest as a human being can be, will always try to insulate itself from guilt and from seeing itself under the wrath of God. The darkness and blindness of the soul keeps it from seeing what is truly obvious and instead it only sees things through the lenses of self.

The human heart will only seek conviction of sin to a degree that it is comfortable with. It will only seek conviction to the degree that it wants to repent of or is willing to repent of, though it may stretch that just a little beyond the comfortable part. Human beings, in their natural state, will only seek conviction if it will help them to be more self-righteous in their own eyes or in the eyes of others. But whatever else a human being does, s/he will not seek to die to self, self-righteousness, and pride until the Spirit of the living God opens the eyes of that person to see the horror and filth of sin. Not only that, the human being does not want to see that s/he has a sinful heart and is a vile and wicked being in the sight of God. Even more, the human being will fight with all of his or her strength that hateful doctrine of original sin. It does nothing for a person’s self-esteem and self-love to think of him or herself as dead in sins and trespasses and by nature children of wrath. The Spirit alone will take the soul by the hand (so to speak) and guide the soul into the depths of its own sin and to see itself what for what it is.

This also shows us why the gospel that is being preached today (in the vast majority of cases) is a false gospel. It is based on the teaching that all a soul has to do is to admit that it is a sinner and to pray a prayer. It does not teach people that they must see themselves in the depths of their sin and unable to do one thing apart from the grace of God. It does not teach people that they must have a new nature in order to believe and to love God. Instead, it is nothing but men teaching other men external things about their sin and in so doing they leave the depths of sin untouched. That leaves men in their natural and fleshly state and in their own strength. This is why the depths of sin must be preached if the Gospel of grace alone is to be preached at all.

The soul must give up the idea that it is strong enough, wise enough and penetrating enough to discover its own sin. That is the work of the Spirit alone. The soul must give up the idea that it can repent in truth based on what it discovers, because God demands true repentance and not just of the things I am presently willing to repent of. Oh how so many are willing to repent of a sin if that sin is causing them trouble at the moment. Oh how so many are willing to repent of a sin if they think they can gain something better a little later on. But how few are there in our day (and perhaps most of the previous days in history) that truly desire for all of their sin to be exposed so that they can cry out to God to be delivered of it. If a person is not truly willing to do that, then perhaps they have not truly repented at all.

We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others. (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).

Paul spoke very clearly to the corruption of the heart and how it is exposed for what it is by the law in Romans 7:7-11. Though Paul was an expert in the Old Testament Law, he did not know the depths of its meaning until God opened his heart and he saw the deep corruption there. It is virtually sure that Paul had studied the commands of God before, but it was not until the spiritual nature of the Law pierced to the depths of the soul that he saw the nature of his heart. It is one thing to see the commands of God and think of them as external, but it is quite another to see them as reaching the depths of the soul and to the very desires of the soul. The Law, when spiritually applied, exposes the depths of the soul and in doing that it exposes the depths of the wickedness of the heart.

What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.” 8 But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; 10 and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; 11 for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.”

According to Paul, the Law is good. But what did the Law do to him and what does the Law do to all others? It shows us our heart and when the Law is heard the heart rises against it and so it is said that the Law produces sin. In other words, the Law shows the depths of the corruption of the soul and in doing so the soul can see the sin that is pouring out of it and therefore what kind of heart we have. The Law, then, is said to kill and result in death. If a person tries to be saved by the Law, it will result in eternal death which is hell. But if a person bows to God with a broken heart and cries out for grace, God may save that person.

We can see, then, by this example of Paul the nature of the heart and how right Thomas Adam is to say it is a fatal mistake to suppose we are sinners only by the commission of outward sin. Paul was a Pharisee and strove to keep the Law, but he only strove to keep it outwardly or externally. All the Pharisees and anyone else that strives to keep the Law on the outside without dealing with the heart have made or are making a fatal mistake. We simply must see our own hearts and bow before this living God in utter brokenness and helplessness praying for and seeking a new heart by grace. We don’t just need a new set of intellectual beliefs and better external behavior, we need a new heart. The old one is so corrupt that it will use religion as a way to deceive itself and send itself to the everlasting flames.

We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others. (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 essence of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (at least in one sense) is that the heart of Christianity is the heart. The driving issue that Christ dealt with was the heart. We can also think back (or read) through the Bible and know that God shows people their hearts or what their hearts are really like by giving them trials of faith. In the Parable of the Sower we see different kinds of seed that responded in different ways depending on the soil (the heart) and the circumstances that God brought to them. We see people (especially in the Gospel of John) believing in Jesus, but then falling away because they loved money or wanted comfort.

One issue with the Pharisees was that they made the fatal mistake that Adam speaks of above. They believed that people were corrupted by the deeds that they did. Whatever their so-called creeds or intellectual theology was, their practice had to do with the actions and not the heart. What the Pharisees either did not recognize or at least did not want to recognize is that men are sinners and that sinful heart can be demonstrated in religious actions as well as outwardly sinful actions. They would pray in order to be seen by men and yet thought that was true prayer. They would give money to the poor in order to be seen my men and yet thought that was an act of righteousness. They would fast in order to be seen by men and yet thought that was fasting unto God. So the Pharisees lived by sinful and corrupt hearts and all they did was sinful though they deceived themselves into thinking that they were corrupt only if their deeds were corrupt. Instead of that, however, their sinful hearts made all their religious actions corrupt and vile in the sight of God.

Apart from a person coming to the stark realization of his or her own heart being evil and corrupt to the depths of it, there is no real hope for that person’s conversion. Until that happens, regardless of a person’s theological profession, that person will look to self in some way instead of losing all hope in self and looking to Christ alone. It is utterly fatal for a soul to be deceived by its good actions and as such think of itself as something less than corrupt in all of its parts. Part of this deception is pride which tries to hide a corrupt heart from itself and others. This is why the Pharisees and the religious elite of the day hated Jesus so much. In His life, deeds, and teaching their corrupt hearts was being opened up to them and their self-righteousness was being exposed for what it really was. Self-righteousness is nothing but the manifestation of a corrupt heart and sinful nature and is but a thin veil that tries to cover a filthy heart.

The teachings of Jesus which the crowds loved were hated by the Pharisees because it opened their hearts to them and demonstrated to them how thin a veil their own righteousness really was. It also threatened their honor and positions before the people precisely because of those things. Oh how their hearts would rise when Jesus would teach on the real issues of the heart and on what true righteousness really was, but instead of going to war with their own flesh they wanted to strike out at Jesus. Thus their actions demonstrated for all to see that they were wicked men who were trying to cover over their own corrupt hearts with external actions. Their hatred for Christ demonstrated just how much they hated true love (Christ incarnate) and true righteousness (Christ incarnate). The true heart of the Pharisees was put on display by their opposition and hatred of Christ. The true heart of the Pharisees is also alive today and yet the true Christ is not being taught, so the hearts of the modern Pharisees are still being hidden beneath robes of self-righteousness. Oh how we need true preaching today.

We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others. (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 great issue of Christianity is with God and the heart. God is not just sovereign over the external and outward things of life; He is sovereign over the heart as well. As Hebrews 3:10 sets out, God was angry with the Israelites because their hearts went astray: “THEREFORE I WAS ANGRY WITH THIS GENERATION, AND SAID, ‘THEY ALWAYS GO ASTRAY IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DID NOT KNOW MY WAYS’.” Matthew 12:34 also speaks clearly to this issue: “You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.”

The Pharisees had many external good works and certainly they were very religious, but the biggest issue was that their hearts were not changed and so they were opposed to the living God. Yes, they interpreted the Law of God and made laws that they said were to enable them to keep the Law, but the reality is that they had dropped the Law down from being a Law of the heart to one that could be kept by the external man. So while they were following the laws of God in the outward man, they violated them in the depths of their souls. A person that keeps the Law of God in the external man can be led to believe that s/he is then keeping the Law, that person is self-deceived. The Law of God is to be kept from the deepest recesses of the soul. The Law of God tells us to love God with all of our being and not just some of it. There is no keeping of the Law of God apart from a love for God and the desire for God in keeping the Law.

The Law was meant to strip us of all hope in keeping it and drive us to Christ as Savior and then as the life of the soul. The Law was never meant to be a way of salvation, but it was always a tutor to teach people of Christ and their need for Christ. But it has always been impossible to get across the point that people are sinners by nature and not just by act. It takes a work of the Holy Spirit to teach men that they are sinners by nature rather than by act alone. How the sinner by nature has pride and self to fight that teaching in order to leave room to feel good about self. How utterly impossible it is for sinners full of self and pride to think of themselves in the depths of their soul to be nothing but sin and utterly and totally helpless apart from the work of God in the soul.

The theory of depravity is easily seen in the Bible, but many reject it because they cannot and will not understand it as true. Others accept the theory but cannot see themselves or those around them as sinful by nature. It is far easier to see sin as a theory of sin than to see myself as a sinner by nature and practice. It is far easier to think of myself as one that sins rather than one that is a sinner by nature. When one is a sinner by nature, then even the good things I do is sin and nothing but sin. When one is a sinner by nature, then one sees that the nature cannot be changed by anyone but God and so the sinner is unable to save or help self in that regard. When one is a sinner by nature then the sinner is utterly unable to do one thing good unless it comes in the soul by grace alone.

Thomas Adam tells us that “it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so [sinners] only by the commission of sin.” If that is a fatal mistake, it is also a fatal mistake to think of ourselves as anything less than sinners who are dead in sins and trespasses with no hope in ourselves and nothing in us to hope in. The denial of the fact that we are sinners by nature and our sin is an expression of that nature is in fact a denial of the new birth and the Gospel of grace alone. This also teaches us the necessity of preaching and teaching this vital truth so that men will not make this vital mistake and the glory of grace alone will be magnified.

We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others. (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 common thinking of the world and the religious world about cause and effect is exactly backwards. This is because we are born Pelagians and when people become religious they are not converted to Christ from their Pelagianism. But even true believers can be led down this path of faulty and sinful thinking as well. When we see a sinful act of a person, we think that they person has corrupted himself and brought guilty upon himself by that sin. We think of the cause and effect as the sin being the cause and the corruption and guilt being the effect. While there is some truth to that, there is also something very wrong with that. It is true that sin does corrupt and sin does bring guilt. But why did the person commit that sin in the first place? The act of sin not only brings corruption and guilt, it is a demonstration of a corrupt heart as well. A person that lives in what appears to be unrestrained sin is a person with a wicked heart that is being displayed in that unrestrained sin.

But we can also think of the nice religious person as well. This person is nice to others and has a strict moral code. This person goes to church and is committed to many things that the church does. In other words, this person is religious in much the same way that the Pharisees were. This person thinks that s/he is religious because of what s/he does. But it is the heart that determines these things. The heart that is full of self and pride is a heart that can and will do all of its religious activities out of pride and love of self. It will look down on the outwardly sinful and think of itself as better, though indeed it can pray and thank God that it is not like those other people. But what it does not realize in its darkness of love for self and its pride is that it does what it does from the same motive as those who are outwardly sinful. In other words, the very religious person and the very outwardly sinful person can and often do have the exact same motive and desire. Both live for self, are full of self, and are blinded by pride.

The sinful heart is put on display by the outwardly sinful person while the sinful heart is hidden more by the religious person, but that only makes it more deceitful. It is not the case that the very religious person is not living in sin and that the person’s heart is not on display, but it is the case that the pride of the very religious person is active in hiding the sinful heart from that person. In both cases, that is, of the outwardly sinful person and the very religious person, the heart is at work in deceiving them and that the wickedness of the heart is being put on display for those with eyes to see. Certainly God sees the corrupt heart on display in all the outward sin and in all the outward religious activity.

The proud heart of the self-righteous religious man is hidden from him because he judges mainly by outward actions. So the self-righteous religious person thinks that he is righteous because of his actions. Interestingly enough, many of those who are in outward sin are deceived because they think that they have good intents and motives in what they are doing. They might admit that what they are doing is wrong in and of itself, but the flatter themselves that they do them because they don’t intend wrong and that they really want to do good. So the religious person deceives himself by the outward action and the outwardly sinful person deceives himself by thinking that this inner being is better than that. But both are deceived because they don’t see the corruption of their hearts being the real problem in what they do. Both are driven by a love for self and both are blinded by that love of self as to their real hearts.

This gets at a vitally important issue. If preachers and teachers don’t deal with the issues of the heart, they will only be helping people deceive themselves in the things of religion. External morality is a great evil in the sense that it does not promote true love for God and it hides a man’s self-centered and proud heart from him. Being orthodoxy in doctrine is not the same thing as having a heart that loves God and is being freed from the bondage of sin and of a corrupt heart. An external repentance is not the same thing as a true repentance of the heart. If Thomas Adam is right that it is a fatal mistake to think of corruption as being from the commission of sin rather than from the heart, it is a fatal mistake for preachers to only preach to the externals in doctrine and practice as well.

Alas! Who is humble? We disclaim perfection, and run down the preachers of it, from a general confused consciousness of our unworthiness, but cannot bear to be told of a trifling error in conduct. What management, gentle insinuation, and nice art of address, is necessary to prevent resentment in such cases, even from a friend! (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 Scriptures give us the words of Jesus in Luke 18:8 saying, “when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” We could also ask the question if Jesus will find humility of the earth. Humility is the root of all other graces and one only has faith and love to the degree that s/he has humility. But as Thomas Adam asks, who is humble? Well, one might say, those who believe in the doctrine of total depravity must be humble. Indeed, but is that correct? One can have a belief in the fact that he is totally depraved and yet not be truly humbled for it. One could, horrible as it may seem, have pride for believing in orthodoxy at that point as well. What, then, could it mean for a person to really and truly believe in depravity in a humble way?

One can believe in the total depravity of human beings as a theory and even of self without really being driven to the end of self by that. This is seen by how sensitive human beings are to the things of self. Yes, indeed, we all know that the meek shall inherit the earth, but how many people are there in the land today who are meek? We can be assured that there are far more people who know that the Bible teaches meekness than there are that are truly meek. But again, we live in a day where we are supposed to be nice and always smile and say nice things so that we will not offend others. If someone says something to us that is not nice, we are offended. Yet our theory of depravity tells us that we are far worse than what that person said. So why is that? It is because we don’t really believe in our depravity and we are not truly meek.

We are told today that we must be winsome if we are to be successful and win souls. Indeed, one could agree, that makes sense. But if so, make sense in what context? If the cross of Christ is truly offensive, then can Christ be preached in a winsome way and the cross preached in truth at the same time at all? A winsome preaching of the cross is simply taking the offense of the cross out of the way, which is the same thing as not preaching the cross at all. In other words, all this talk today about being winsome is to take the truth of the cross out. It takes humility to preach the cross because humility is the absence of self (to the degree one is humble) so that the truth of the cross would not be hindered by selfish considerations.

Men and women are extra sensitive in the modern day and that speaks to the pride of our hearts. We cannot bear to have someone tell us something that is not what we think of as positive and uplifting. Our pride will not bear anything less than perfection when others comment about us or something we have done. Nathan the prophet spoke clearly to David the king and yet David heard the Word of the Lord with humility and was brought to repentance. It is a sign of a proud heart when a person cannot bear to be corrected in any way. So where are the humble in our day? The humble in name are those who cannot bear for anyone to think that they are not perfectly humble, which shows that they are not truly humble. Ministers and conference speakers are told that they must speak gently and winsomely in order to be heard, but this is a vicious circle. Ministers and speakers desire to be spoken well of and so they speak in ways to get others to speak well of them. Yet the people want to be addressed in ways that will move them to speak well of the speakers. People love themselves and want to hear how God loves them, but this is a dangerous thing.

And by this rule every one may try his own religion. If it began in a belief that God loved him, and had bestowed salvation upon him, etc., and all his religious joy and sorrow, and darkness and light, respect his own interest in God’s favor, etc., it has the appearance of false religion. He who comes to the knowledge of the truth fixes on something infinitely more important than self, and his own personal interest, as the object of his regard and pursuit. He from that moment devotes himself to the glory of God, and the greatest general good, in the advancement of his kingdom. From this time he begins to pray, and say, “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And it now becomes his study and labor to promote this grand interest, by serving God and his generation, and thus he seeks first the kingdom of God. He whose religious discoveries, views, and exercises are not of this kind, and do not issue in this, may safely conclude himself a stranger to true religion…But, instead of this, how common is it to hear the preacher speak of religion as if it consisted altogether in selfishness!                Samuel Hopkins