God Loves… Himself

Nothing is more unknown to man than himself. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?

Imagine a man being in a dark cave and could not see himself or anything about himself because of the absolute darkness. If he felt something on him or had a pain, his eyes would be of no help. He could possibly guess but his way of understanding would be limited. Now imagine a person in the depths of a dark cave and that person was also deaf and had no accurate sense of touch. This person could form beliefs and have some information, but this person would be highly ignorant of himself and would have trouble forming true beliefs about himself. Such are those who are in spiritual darkness. They have no light and they are unable to hear spiritual things. They are unable to discern the truth about themselves spiritually and are deceived and do not know what is utterly vital about themselves. So many people are in that state and have no idea that they are in that state. To them what they think of as light is in fact darkness, and so what Jesus said about them is true: “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matt 6:23).

It might seem to be a cruel trick on people, but in fact it is a just judgment on them. People turn away from the light and even hate the light which shines in their darkness, but they do so out of hatred and so they are morally culpable for their state of darkness. Man does not know himself because he does not want to know himself and yet that is the judgment of God upon man for fleeing the light and suppressing the truth of God. So the heart that is in darkness, is deceived, and so flees from God is in a pitiable condition; it is also a heart that is under a severe judgment. It is a heart that must have grace to shine light into it so that it can see what its real problem is.

When we thing of something like the nature of man’s heart and the deception and darkness in and around it, the prophet Amos comes to mind and his preaching that a spiritual famine was coming upon the land. It also brings to mind the repeated teachings of Jesus that He came to bring judgment by blinding people to the truth. When preachers and teachers are blind to the truth themselves, they are a judgment of God to the people. When preachers and teachers do not preach in such a way as to expose the nature of the deceived and darkened hearts of people to themselves, they are a judgment of God to the people. A preacher can be very orthodox and yet not expose the nature of the heart to people so that they can truly see their utter need of grace, and so that very orthodox preacher in terms of confessions and creeds can also be a judgment of God to the people.

When preachers and teachers don’t understand the nature of the human heart and they are teaching others who don’t understand the nature of the human heart, the devil laughs. Any religion that comes from a deceived and darkened heart will be far from the truth in what it should be. This is a terrible statement in light of what is going on in the United States and the world today. Many are stuck in the mire of liberalism, or morality, or of some form of orthodox teaching. Yet few really want to see their hearts in truth. But why is that? It is because their hearts deceive them about the need to know their own hearts. So this deceptive and darkened heart is satisfied without religion or perhaps with a lot of religion but it does not know that it is without Christ Himself.

Titus 1:15 has something to teach on this point: “To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.” This was in the context of those in the local church. Until people have truly repented, which at the very least implies some knowledge of their own hearts to some degree, everything they do (including their religion) is defiled. Their works are defiled, their preaching is defiled, and the best things they can do are defiled. Such is the person that does not know him or herself. This shows how utterly vital it is to know our own hearts in a much greater way, yet in our day it would appear that people flee from even a slight knowledge of their own hearts.

Nothing is more unknown to man than himself. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?

Most likely there are very few people who even think that they don’t know themselves. On the surface, which is basically where most people live, there is not all that much to know. One has to understand the nature of the heart to some degree and then realize that there are depths to the heart before that one can begin to understand that there are motives and intents of the heart that are not on the surface and are not readily known to the untrained eye. It is also not obvious to the human being that there are spiritual powers at work influencing and deceiving the soul in ways that it does not know about. The human soul cannot fathom that it is the slave of sin and of the devil as it lives under the dominion of darkness unless God opens the eyes to see these things. But even more, the human soul does not realize that it deceives itself and loves to do so.

What this leaves us with is the startling realization that human beings are very ignorant of themselves, but even more startling is that they want to remain ignorant and do not want to come to the light to see who they really are. If Jeremiah 17:9 is correct (and it certainly is), then Thomas Adam is right that nothing is more unknown to man than himself. This also helps us to see part of what is going on in Romans 1:18-32. The human soul suppresses the truth about God because it does not want to keep the truth of God in its knowledge, but it does that in order that it does not have to see itself and so that it can continue in its sin following its own way.

We can think of a man who is sick but does not want to admit that he is sick. That man will refuse to hear what anyone else says because he does not want to hear that he is sick. The soul that is deeply asleep in its self-love does not want to be awakened to the truth about itself. However, it is utterly vital that people hear about themselves as they are headed to a day of light and truth where all things will become clear. As Anthony Burgess said in A Treatise of Sin: The Deceitfulness of Sin Unmasked, “who can mourn enough, to see such presumptuous sinners everywhere?” The quote below also strikes at those who want to hide themselves from themselves.

Doth God know all things, all they sins, all they duties, all thy thoughts and ends? Then be thou quickened up to all sincerity in the ways of godliness, what a vain thing will the applause of men, their good words do thee? When God shall say, Depart thou hypocrite into the everlasting fire; What a dreadful thing is it for thee to applaud thy own self, and others to bless thee; and God to curse thee because of thy unsound and rotten heart (Anthony Burgess, from A Treatise of Sin: The Deceitfulness of Sin Unmasked).

The quote above gets at how chilling a thing it is for people to flee from the knowledge of their own hearts and be satisfied with their own standards and the applause of self and good words of others. It is so easy to see in this context how many will cry out “Lord, Lord,” did we not” do this and that in your name? But they don’t know their own hearts at the moment and it appears they still don’t know their hearts at that moment on judgment day. While others may applaud our outward actions, the Lord knows the depths of the heart and if it is in reality an unsound and rotten heart judgment will declare the reality of it despite our pretenses and our desire for it to be something else. Oh how human beings can applaud others for outward things while the heart remains rotten to the core. It also makes it even harder to admit our own rotten hearts while our own deceptive hearts and the applause of others combine to deceive us. Perhaps Thomas Adam was right when he said “Nothing is more unknown to man than himself.” If so, we have a lot of work to do in seeking the Lord to show us our own hearts.

Nothing is more unknown to man than himself. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?

The statement by Thomas Adam and then by Jeremiah 17:9 are shocking to those who are secure in thinking that they have everything under control. If but once a soul begins to question what it means to really know self, that soul may experience a major earthquake in its own estimation. It will discover faults and cracks running everywhere with its new lenses on. It will begin to wonder how these things can be. Though it may accept the biblical teaching that man is born dead in sins and trespasses, that is still a far different thing than coming to the stunning realization of what that means for my own heart this moment and then for eternity.

International Outreach has recently published a tremendous book for those who wish to have their own heart unmasked to themselves. It is by Anthony Burgess (originally written in 1654) and is entitled A Treatise of Sin: The Deceitfulness of the Heart Unmasked. In that great work he does not just state that the heart is more deceitful and all else, but he goes to great lengths to take the mask off of the heart in order to reveal what it really is and see it for what it is. It is not a book to be read as an academic exercise as such, but it is a book that needs to be read with an open Bible and a praying heart. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; 24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way” (Psa 139:23-24).

It is not just helpful and even needful to know that the heart is deceitful and therefore unknown to self, but we must be shown the ways that it is deceitful. It may be important to point out that the religious person is certainly not immune from his or her heart being deceived in the ways that will be described. In fact, the religious person has ways of being deceived that the non-religious person does not. The heart is so wicked that it will take the things of God and use them to deceive itself. There are many religious people in the world who have wicked and vile hearts and simply have covered them over with religious things. The Pharisees used religion to cover their wicked hearts and give them excuses to carry out their wicked deeds.

Burgess starts off by making a statement about how this verse implies a great depth in the heart. Perhaps another way to look at this is to think of most people thinking of themselves as having hearts that are open and easily seen to themselves. However, a heart with great depth has places that are not easily seen. But the heart puts up an image that one does not even understand the depths of it and so it is quite hidden to them. So the heart can have windings and crevices of desires and motives that are hidden to people and as such make them unknown to them and deceive them as well. Psalm 4:4 teaches us to “Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still.” As Burgess puts it, there may be thousands and thousands of lusts in the heart that simply don’t appear at first glance. We must spend time in prayer and meditation seeking for God to show us our hearts if we truly want to see them as they are. While we may not understand it, our sin means we deserve to be hardened in our sin which includes the deception of sin that goes with it.

Man is thrown in utter dependence upon God to know his own heart and therefore how utterly needful it is that he have grace or he will perish. This is so like our great God who will have all men to recognize the truth that all souls are utterly dependent upon Him in all ways and at all times. In the fall Adam and Eve left their utter dependence upon Him in order to trust in themselves and seek their own wisdom. The fallen heart is now blind to its own sin and must turn from its pride and self-reliance in order to see just how sinful it really is. To repeat a point from the previous paragraph, God is under no obligation to show us our sin. We are under judgment for it and part of that judgment is the blindness and deception of our sin. We are to seek Him for mercy to open our eyes to it and then for grace to repent of it. O how desperately we need to see our own hearts.

Nothing is more unknown to man than himself. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?

The heart of man, being more deceitful than all else, cannot understand itself and therefore man does not truly know himself. Psychology or any science cannot reveal man to himself, but instead the heart is so deceitful that those who try to understand it apart from God’s revelation of it are deceived in that way as well. The more any person tries to understand his own heart apart from the Word of God and the illumination of the Spirit the more that person will be deceived. The person may find out many things about the heart and even its evil, but even those things will deceive the heart and hide it from itself.

One reason that the heart of man is so unknown to him is that the heart deceives man about how hard it is to know the heart. Men are proud and think they are smarter than they are and so they are quite easily deceived as to the nature of their own hearts and into thinking that they know who they really are. While it may be scary to sleep in the same house with someone who is unknown, people have no idea of who they really are. They have no idea of the things that they are capable of. Since man does not know his own heart, he is not as nice as he thinks he is and is not as in control as he thinks he is.

It would be terrifying to be in the same house with a stranger or even one that you had known for a long time but didn’t really know, but then have the other person to become someone you were totally afraid of, had no control over, and simply clueless about what made them tick. That is the human soul that comes to a realization of its own heart after being so deceived by it for so long. Man is deceived about what morality is and about true religion. Man is deceived about his own motives and desires. So if God in His mercy opens the eyes of a person to see his or her own heart, that person will be shocked and sickened by that heart. How shocking it is to see the depths of evil that are in your own heart. How shocking it is to see that you are capable of any crime as well.

Because human souls don’t see their own hearts they don’t see their need of Christ as Savior from every single thing they have ever done and they don’t see the need for grace in their souls to do one right and spiritual thing. So those who so blinded to themselves by their own hearts are blinded to their utter and desperate need of Christ at each and every moment. So they walk in their own wisdom perhaps even thinking that it is the wisdom of Christ. They walk in their own strength perhaps even thinking it is the power of Christ. Oh the desperate need of human souls to know more of their own hearts so that they can see their utter need of Christ each and every moment of each and every day. But it remains true that nothing is more unknown to man than himself. Not many, however, are willing to look in their own hearts and see what is there.

O LORD, I yield myself to the clear radiance and full discovery of they word, to be convinced by it of sin. I know, with infallible certainty, that I have sinned ever since I could discern between good and evil, in thought, word, and deed—in every period, condition, and relation of life; every day, against every commandment. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

Yielding to the Word of God for our sin to be discovered is a hard step, but also one that needs to be taken over and over again. It is not a one time thing that we do and all is settled. It is the cry of a heart that knows God and wants all that is between it and God to be exposed, done away with, and repented of. It is another thing, however, to come to the realization that one has done nothing but sin “in thought, word, and deed” and that “in every period, condition, and relation of life.” This has happened “every day, against every commandment.”

While that seems like a brutal statement and one that goes beyond the realm of possibility and so Thomas Adam must be using hyperbole (many would say), I am sure he would have said that he was not able to explain the depths of the extent of sin to any degree of what it should be. It is one thing to think of this in a theoretical sense, but to have the Holy Spirit open the spiritual eyes of the soul and bring a person to see that this is true of “me,” that is quite another story. It is one thing to intellectually know that one is guilty of a crime, but it is quite another to have the judge declare you guilty of the crime and then pass the death sentence upon you. So in the spiritual realm a person can intellectually know that s/he is guilty of sin and sins in every aspect of life every moment, but to the sheer horror of knowing that by the light that the Spirit gives and the certainty of this is something that is very different than anything that the human intellect or power can bring.

In Isaiah 6 the LORD manifested Himself to Isaiah and it was a terrible sight to him. All of his supposed righteousness drained away and all he could think of was that he was a sinful man in front of a holy God. If we put the quote from Thomas Adam with the sight of Isaiah in Isaiah 6, we could see the depths of our sin each moment. If we knew with the sense of Isaiah that we live in the presence of the living God each moment, how vile we would be in our own eyes. If the Spirit opened our eyes to see the depths of sin in our hearts moment by moment, we would not live in trust of ourselves but would cry out to God for Christ and His Spirit each moment.

As out of a place as a very crude man who constantly uses foul language at church, so it is much worse for a person to utter words in the presence of a holy God that are not out of love for God. How awful to look back on your life and see and understand with some degree of illumination by the Spirit that you violated every commandment of God hundreds of times (if not more) every day for your whole life. Think of how you have thought of those heathens who bowed down before idols and then to know that you have been an idolater every day over and over. Think of how you have thought of those who speak God’s name with such vile language, but then realize that you have used His name in vain by thought and word during your singing of Psalms and hymns and even while you prayed or read Scripture.

The discovery of sin in the heart and then the depths and extent of sin in the heart is far more than a creed can do, it is the work of the Spirit of God to a heart that wants to see more sin in its heart in order to loathe it and repent of it. But for a person that desires a pure heart in order to see God (Mat 5:8), it is a process that a person must begin to want and long for. While we may claim that we love Christ, until we want to repent and be cleansed of our hidden sin the least we can say is that we don’t love Him as we should. Unless we are willing to pursue a path of painful self-discovery, we don’t really see ourselves as we are and we don’t understand grace. We will be walking around in life with a false view of ourselves trying to project a false view of ourselves to others as well. So many people are deluded by their deceptive hearts because they refuse to bow before the Lord in His Scriptures and pray that He would open their hearts to them. Meanwhile, they are filled with the refuse of hell and simply refuse to look at the truth of themselves. Every now and then someone will say something and the Lord will use that to give them a glimpse of their own hearts, but they usually react in anger against that one that said something rather than deal with their own hearts. Does anyone really want to know their own hearts? If not, What does that say about our attitude toward truth?