God Loves… Himself

Jeremiah 8:8 “How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie. 11 “They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.

Matthew 9:18 Now when Jesus saw a crowd around Him, He gave orders to depart to the other side of the sea. 19 Then a scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” 20 Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”21 Another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” 22 But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.”

The claim that Jesus Christ puts on His disciples is absolute. He tells them to deny themselves and to take up their crosses daily in order to follow Him. He tells them that they must hate their relatives and their lives if they are to follow Him. He tells them that they must be humbled as little children in order to be born again. But these things are easily ignored by the proud and the self-absorbed. They think that they can follow Him as they please and that they can follow Him and have the world too. This is too much for the proud and selfish heart and so that heart must deny Christ or change His commands and/or standards.

In Matthew 9:19 a scribe came to Jesus and told Him that he would follow Christ wherever He went. Jesus, who knew the hearts of all men, had an answer for the scribe that went directly to his selfish and proud heart. We can see that the scribes and Pharisees lived easy lives as compared with the average person. The scribes did not labor or work as the normal person did, but instead they were able to spend their days in study and in discussions of religious things as they pleased. But they did not have many hard things that came around to them.

The same thing is true today as well. Scholars spend their time studying the things of religion in an academic way and they make quite amount of money in one sense. They spend their time in study and discussion and for the most part have easy lives. As long as they publish enough and stay close enough to established beliefs they don’t have much to worry about. What we must see is that there are direct parallels from the time of Jesus to the modern times. While there are certainly differences, there are also many parallels that we must take note of. What we must see is that it was and is far easier for scholars to debate and write about the Bible than it is for them to follow Christ in life as a whole. It is far easier to debate and write on what it means to follow Christ than it is to actually in real life follow Christ.

The scribe in the historical narrative as given by Matthew came to Jesus and told Him that he would follow Jesus wherever He went. Jesus’ reply, however, was surely an arrow to the heart of the man and the heart of self. In other words, Jesus told the man that he would have to give up his life of ease and life of a scholar to truly follow Him. This scholar would have to leave his house of comfort and family and follow Christ who had no pillow and no creature comforts to speak of. This scholar would have to leave his life of books and nice discussions and follow Christ as a common man and suffer the hardships of being virtual beggars while being ridiculed.

Oh how this is so contrary to human nature and to a person that is used to living an easy life that has few trials or hard things. The proud heart cannot bear to hear that it might be ridiculed and that it might have to live the life of a beggar. The selfish heart cannot bear to hear of losing all of its status in life and all of its belongings to traipse around the country being ridiculed by former colleagues. We have no record whether this particular scribe left everything or not to follow Christ, but we can see that Jesus answered people according to what was the hardest thing for them to turn from and follow Him. The rich young ruler had to sell all he had and give to the poor. The scribe would have to leave all comforts and follow Christ. However, it is one thing for us to talk about the scribe, but it is quite another for each person to follow Christ him or herself. It is not enough to know that we are to follow Christ, we must actually follow Him. It is not enough to know that we should repent of our darling sin or sins, but it is quite another to seek the Lord to tear that damnable pride out of our hearts and grant us humility before Him. Our proud hearts do deceive us in these things as they have deceived others for millennia. Will we seek Him in truth for true repentance from pride and self?

Jeremiah 8:8 “How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie. 11 “They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.

Matthew 9:9 As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax collector’s booth; and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him. 10 Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. 13 “But go and learn what this means: ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The pride of men and being centered on self is what it means to be a fallen person. Apart from being born again, a person will live and die and be in hell for all eternity in that proud and selfish nature. Oh how proud man will do anything to keep his pride intact. Oh how self-centered man will fight and do anything to keep from dying to self as Christ said must be done if man is to follow Christ instead of self. When man is fighting to keep self and pride from anything that will prick his conscience and bring him and his self-sufficiency down in the presence of God, man will change biblical truth and anything else to keep self and pride comfortable. This is where heresies and false religions come from. However, it is also the case that man within the realm of Christianity can bring in false teachings and false practices.

The Old Testament Jews fell from following God over and over, but they would still keep up the outward performances or practices in some way. This should be a great and solemn warning to people today as well. It is not enough to have even biblical practices as the outward practices and the outward morality can be done with human strength and out of love for self and pride. Human beings can be kept from outward sin by circumstances and pride of appearance, but the heart can be a cesspool of sin at the same time. A man can be outwardly holy, even a stringent holiness, and be an orthodox preacher at the same time while his heart can be unregenerate and full of pride and self. A man can be meek and mild on the outside and a vicious murderer on the inside. A man can be very virtuous while committing adultery with hundreds of women in his heart.

While the examples from the previous paragraph may seem extreme to some, they also point to man in the worship of God. The externals are thought to be important, which they are, but they are not as important as keeping the heart in the presence of God. Not only can men be wild and wicked at heart while being outwardly moral, they can be extremely idolatrous in the love of self and the religion of self as they do outwardly religious things for self rather than out of love for God. Oh how wicked the Pharisees were when they would denounce Jesus the Lord for being around sinners. Did they not realize that He was around sinners when He was around them? Oh how their hearts rose in pride and self when He spent time with sinners rather than themselves.

Would Jesus spend time with modern religious people who spend themselves in moral issues today? Would Jesus attend professing churches to hear liberalism in the guise of Christianity today? Of course not as that is not even Christianity at all. But would He attend professing churches who focus on outward morality and religious activities? I would argue that He would most likely think of those folks as modern Pharisees. Who are the folks that Jesus would hang around today? He would hang around sinners, whether they were converted or not. But He would hang around humbled sinners who were not seeking to have their pride and self fulfilled. He would be around those who were broken sinners in need of grace and realized their need of grace. He would be around those who were in need of a spiritual Physician and not those who could handle things themselves or get help with external counseling. As Scripture teaches, God dwells with the poor and contrite and so Christ calls the weary and heavy-laden to Himself and not the proud religious people. We must learn this in our day and so must every person of all time.

Jeremiah 8:8 “How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie. 11 “They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.

Matthew 9:9 As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax collector’s booth; and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him. 10 Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. 13 “But go and learn what this means: ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The human heart is proud, so very proud. This is an aspect of the fall where mankind fell into a self-centered heart that will always want to rule self, put others down, and be self-sufficient as much as it can. Since the proud heart is full of self and in its great pride wants to be better than others, it will look down on others who are not as good as itself. Since the proud heart is so full of self and pride, it cannot imagine that the Word of God will set out standards that it cannot meet in its own power, so it will water down the Bible with proud reasoning and then exalt itself in its own mind while seeking the honor of others for keeping its own standards.

But human nature is not changed. It never was tainted with any thing worse than inordinate self-love; it is tainted with that still. Human nature considered in itself, like the nature of other animals, remains essentially the same in very period and condition…but till a new nature is imparted, selfishness gives essentially the same form in the sight of God to every human character. He that “hateth his brother is a murderer;” he that cherishes an impure desire is an adulterer; he that covets is an idolater.” In this polluted principle lurk the seeds of all sin; and where nothing else of a moral nature exists, as in all cases where “true holiness” is wanting, it constitutes the whole character in the sight of God. Of course the character of all unholy men, however variously compressed by restraints, is specifically the same. Edward D. Griffin

The Scribes and the Pharisees were born dead in sins and trespasses and were by nature children of wrath, but they were so proud they would not admit that. Instead of bowing to the true God, in the idolatry of their own nature they took the Bible (OT in their time) and twisted it to become what they wanted. This is what sinful man did then and this is what sinful men do now. Rather than seek the Lord for a broken heart and a new heart, the proud human heart that is so blinded by love of self and self-exaltation will take truth and turn it into a new religion of self. This is precisely what the Scribes and the Pharisees did. They used scholarship and outward holiness as ways for their pride to come up with a religion that used the words of the Old Testament and still allowed them room for their pride. Not only did it leave them room for pride, their form of religion fed and puffed them up with more pride.

The scholars of their day and our day as well can spend careers and lifetimes studying the Bible out of pride and self, though they will have an outward form of humility. Their studies, coming from their proud hearts which rely on human wisdom, do not have the illuminating light of the Spirit. Even in conservative circles, since one is not saved by being conservative, the Bible can become captured by the human wisdom of scholars and twisted and turned to be man-centered in certain ways. The preaching of conservative men can become forms of legalism as with the Pharisees who were also conservative. The pulpits of the land can become filled with proud men who are proud of their being conservative and proud of knowing about Jesus Christ.

Proud man can refuse to have anything to do with sinners and severely criticize others for doing so as well, but that is also to be like the Pharisees. Proud men can think that by following their scholarly ways and their conservative ways (in their own strength) that they can be saved. Proud men can think that because they know a lot of facts about Jesus that they are saved. Proud men can think that because they preach conservative ideas about Jesus that they must be saved. Proud men can think that because they preach a lot of truth about Jesus that liberals would not that they are therefore saved. Apart from the sovereign grace of God in regenerating sinners, the worst of men and the best of men in the outward sense are all lost and under condemnation. While proud men think of themselves as holy and look down on “sinners” from on high (in their own mind), Jesus did not come to save the righteous such as the proud men, but instead came to save sinners. Oh how proud men hate the idea of being sinners, though indeed proud men will speak of their own mistakes in order to appear religious (in certain circles) or humble.

Jeremiah 8:8 “How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie. 11 “They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.

Matthew 9:9 As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax collector’s booth; and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him. 10 Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. 13 “But go and learn what this means: ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The Lord Jesus called a tax collector to follow Him and the man left his booth and followed Christ. Jesus went to eat with this man and man other tax collectors and sinners came to eat with Jesus and His disciples. The Pharisees, however, saw this and they were not pleased at all. They wanted to know why Jesus was eating with the tax collectors and sinners. Behind their words we see the heart of men who thought that if Jesus ate with them He would not be eating with sinners. These were men who thought of themselves as holy and that tax collectors and sinners would make them unclean if they were around them.

The pride of these men can be easily seen in the way they viewed the tax collectors and sinners, but also in Jesus’ response to them. These men had a religion and by following it they thought they were holy and that they were not sinners as other men. Oh how their pride had blinded them to the sinful nature of human beings and that they were conceived in sin and were born dead in sins and trespasses. They were proud of their external laws of holiness that they thought they kept and by keeping their external laws they believed that they were holy and pleased God. They were proud of how they kept the law in front of other men and wanted others to esteem them for their knowledge and their holiness.

These men might have impressed those who were ignorant of the truth of God, but they did not impress the Lord Jesus at all. His words were powerful and they were striking to men then, but they are also powerful and striking to us today who are tempted in the areas of pride. Men have proud hearts today and the hearts of proud men are prone to think that they have the power to please God by their works and self-wrought holiness. What the Pharisees needed to hear then as well as now is that Christ did not come to save the righteous, but He came to save sinners. Yes, it is also true that the true and spiritual nature of the law must be taught to men so that they may see that they are corrupt sinners, but they must know that corrupt sinners who have been broken from their own efforts at holiness are the only ones that Christ came to save.

Jesus used the illustration of a physician. Those who are sick need a physician, not the healthy. Christ is the heavenly Physician and the Physician of souls. Christ is the only Physician for those who are spiritually sick and know that they have no ability to help themselves at all. Christ was not looking for the Pharisees who were proud of their theology and their holiness, but instead He was looking for the broken and those who had no holiness of their own. Only those who were broken of heart and had no righteousness and holiness of their own would look to Christ alone for righteousness. Only those who had no strength and no hope in themselves would look to grace alone rather than to themselves for some help if not all help.

Behold the proud Pharisees, but behold our own proud hearts as well. Religious pride is obvious in the Pharisees, but it may not be so obvious to our own hearts. We can be proud of our theology, our works, our holiness, our evangelism, our buildings, or just about anything. But Paul told us that we are to boast in the cross of Christ alone. We have nothing to be proud of and about but Christ alone. We have nothing to boast about but Christ alone. Those who are proud of themselves or anything about them and their works have the same spirit as the Pharisees. Remember, Christ did not come to save the righteous or even to help the righteous save themselves or to supply any part of salvation to the righteous (self-righteous). But He came to save sinners who have nothing to add to Him and His grace. Broken sinners with nothing to offer are those He came to save, though that appears weak to many.

Jeremiah 8:8 “How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie. 11 “They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.

Matthew 5:20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The passage from Jeremiah (just above) is a devastating verse for those who take scholarship and learning and make it a means to change the law of the LORD. This leads to people being false prophets (as such) and telling people that they have peace when there is no peace. How easy it is for men to change the Law of God into something that it is not, whether it is setting out strict laws in a sense that are just manageable enough for a person to do what is said or whether it is not water things down to make things easy. I am sure that very few if any ever said that the scholars of Roman Catholicism of the 1500’s (and prior centuries) were stupid or uneducated, but simply that they used their scholarship to make the Bible say things it did not say. The wisdom of men cannot give us the spiritual teaching of Holy Scripture, but instead the Spirit of the Lord must teach us in the inward man. The Lord Jesus Christ is our Prophet and He must teach us.

Scholarship, while important as long as it is kept in its place, deals with the externals of Scripture. Scholarship cannot give wisdom to man in the inner places of the heart where it is the prerogative of God to teach as He pleases and if He pleases. The wisdom of man cannot reach the inner places where the wisdom of God alone can teach. The wisdom of man can teach about sin as to the externals and according to the letter of the law, but only the Spirit can truly reach the inward parts and show men the depths of their sin and give them a spiritual sense of this brokenness that they are born with. Only the wisdom that the Spirit gives can heal the brokenness that He brings to the inner parts of men. This is one reason why the scribes would try to heal the brokenness of the people and it would turn out to be only superficial. This is also why trying to heal people of a deep brokenness in our day through psychological methods rather than the inward teaching of Christ by His Spirit is so superficial in our day as well. It will always be superficial at any time in the future as well.

The only righteousness that the scholars (scribes) can come up with will always be some form of external righteousness, though they may speak of an inward kind in some way. The Pharisees and the Scribes during the time of Jesus on earth (and prior to His time on earth as well) had developed a rigorous standard of laws as they pursued holiness. Oh how impressive their external laws were, at least to unregenerate men. How impressive they were to men as they went along in their robes and in giving long prayers. But God looked upon their hearts and saw that all that they were doing they were doing for self and out of pride. They did not love God by their deeds and their actions; they were focused on themselves and hoping to impress men which demonstrated that what they were doing was out of love for themselves.

The standards of these men, though quite high in one sense, were still in the power of the natural man. They had watered down the standards of God and made them attainable by the natural man who would strive with great focus in his own strength. But the standards of God are not attainable by men in their natural strength because the standards of God can only be obtained by a spiritual strength and that can only come by grace alone. The natural man wants to do what he can and at times will agree to the help of grace, but the natural man cannot stand to bear the teaching that all he can do in the natural man is not only of now worth but that it is sinful.

This should make it quite clear that these men were deceived. No one sets out to impress others and say that impressing others is love for God. The righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees were only external, but Scripture is quite clear that the commands of God go to the depths of the soul. These men were deceived by their own pride and as teachers of men they deceived others as well. In that pride of their own nature they set up standards on how to keep the commands of God and yet that same pride blinded them to what the true standards were. That awful blinding pride then moved them to teach these things to others which only increased their own pride as they saw that they could keep them but others could not. Any standard that man comes up with that is not from the Word of God will lead to pride when it is kept and yet will lead to the bondage of others. Religious pride is a horrible thing in the hands of men who live by it and are damned by it as well, though indeed they may be highly educated and have vast amounts of scholarly knowledge regarding the Bible. After all, Scripture tells us that “Knowledge makes arrogant” (I Cor 8:1).

Matthew 23:25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.

It is so hard (impossible apart from the Spirit) for religious people to gain insight from Scripture that contradict the heart of their religious fervor, but it may be that those who are deceived in and through their religion are as deceived as anyone on the planet. While many would think that I am speaking of Muslims, though there is a place for that, I am primarily speaking to professing Christians. We live in a religious nation (in one sense), but there is very little true Christianity. We have more Bibles and helps to study the Bible so the previous sentence may seem like nonsense, but we also have to take into account the repeated verses in Scripture that warns against deception. It would also be wise to consider how many times Jesus spoke against the most religious people in His day (time on earth in a human body) and reserved His strongest words of denunciation against them.

The Pharisees were known for their orthodoxy and their striving after holiness. The Scribes were known for their knowledge of the Bible and their scholarship in the Law. Yet Jesus spoke strong words to them (both) and against them time and time again. While Jesus never had a harsh word for humbled sinners, He had many hard words for the most religious of people who were proud. The same things are true today since it is also true that God does not change. The Scriptures tell us with great clarity that God opposes the proud and so He still opposes the proud regardless of whether they are rich or poor, religious or not, and religious leaders or religious followers.

It is a fact that God does not change, but it is also true that all men since Adam do not change as to their very nature from birth unless God gives them a new heart. All men are born dead in sin and trespasses and by nature are children of wrath. A person can become the most religious (in one sense) person in the entire world and yet be the most proud of that religion. A man can be the most articulate preacher and have a theology that is as orthodox as anyone and yet be proud of those things. A person can strive for humility and lowliness and think that s/he will get grace because of that, but that is nothing but wicked pride in a system of works. It is also true that a person can strive for humility and upon arriving upon something s/he thinks is humility is quite proud of that humility. Pride is not always what people think it is and it is possible to be in the grip of pride and have that pride blind you to the presence of that pride.

Could it be that the religion of America is really the religion that flows from a selfish, self-help, and do things our own way society? Could it be that the American society and culture are really opposites of true Christianity? Could it be that our culture has so inundated the professing Church and that same culture has so taken over the way of thinking and desiring that the heart of Christianity has been taken over and only some semblance of a shell remains? Could it be that while all that is happening we are being given over to our proud hearts and as such we are blinded by pride while true Christianity has virtually disappeared from among us? In many ways that is precisely what happened to the Old Testament Jews. They kept up some of the externals of the religion and yet the heart of it was taken away by the cultures and practices of the nations that the Israelites copied. They did not realize that they had left God but instead thought that they were being faithful to Him.

The Scriptures are explicit and they are clear. True Christianity cannot consist with pride. True Christianity is by faith, yet pride and faith cannot live together. We are also told that God dwells with the humble and the contrite in heart and that the only acceptable sacrifice is a broken and contrite heart (Psa 51:17). True Christianity is not consistent in the slightest with proud preachers regardless of how large the numbers are, how large the offerings are, how large the denominations are, and how large the buildings are. While we may fool ourselves and deceive ourselves about our pride as we think of our own humility, we must know that the proud heart can be proud of a deceptive and false humility. We can be deceived by our hearts into thinking that we must be humble because of things we do and of how we serve others, but serving others can be done by a proud heart.

It is the case that most people hate pride, but they hate it in others. What is so hard for people to grasp is that it is not just the athletes who pound their chests who are proud, but it can be those who are the busiest in the church and it can be the minister who gets the most converts and has the largest building program. Pride is a great affliction, but spiritual pride is an even greater judgment on individuals, churches, denominations, and even nations than the pride people have in life. Yes, it is true that “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” But the professing church is full of the world and those things.