God Loves… Himself

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.

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.