That idol, religious self
Back to Next Part Man's religion & God's religion 2
To have nothing and to be nothing but a beggar and a pauper—how this crushes human pride! We must have nothing in self to rest and hang upon. But the truth is, that until self is dethroned—until creature righteousness, creature piety, creature exertions, and creature strength are brought to nothing, we do not enter into the power, blessedness, and reality of Christ's kingdom—we are not fit guests to sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb. We cannot enter into the treasures of pardoning love—see the riches of atoning blood—and feel the glory and beauty of justifying righteousness—until that idol, religious self, is hurled from its pedestal!
While full of pride and self, we cannot follow Jesus into the garden of Gethsemane—nor see, by the eye of faith, the suffering, groaning, agonizing, bleeding Son of God—we cannot take our station at the foot of the cross, and behold the wondrous mystery of Immanuel, the God-Man, bleeding and dying there. While we are engaged in looking at our own pharisaic religion, our own piety, our own exertions, our own doings—we have no eyes to see Jesus, no ear to hear His voice. We are so enamoured with ourselves that the King of kings has no beauty in our eyes—He is to us as a root out of a dry ground, and there is no loveliness in Him that we should desire Him.
But when we begin to see the ugliness, the depravity, the dreadful workings of self—we see how impossible it is that self can ever stand before God. And when we feel the ruin of self, then we begin to feel what a glorious salvation has been accomplished, according to the counsel and mind of God. We then see the Lord of life and glory stooping down to save wretches who could never climb up to Him—pardoning criminals that have no righteousness of their own—and opening up the treasures of His dying love and risen glory to those who without Him, must utterly perish.
As this is revealed to faith, faith embraces it as the great "mystery of godliness"; hope casts out her anchor, and enters within the veil; and love flows out to Jesus, and embraces Him in the arms of affection, for such dying love as that which the Son of God manifested on the cross of Calvary.
Now this experience puts the sinner in his right place—it debases him in his feelings—humbles him in his soul—and breaks him to nothing. And at the same time, it exalts the Lord Jesus in his affections—and He becomes manifestly in his conscience as his all in all.
Back to Next Part Man's religion & God's religion 2