Spirit Jesus

…Let me now conduct you a step further, to another set of evil thoughts, which could not be very easily comprised in my outline of the decalogue.

There are self-righteous thoughts — the supposition that we are not so sinful as God says we are, the conceit that we may, perhaps, work ourselves out of our difficulties, and force our way to heaven.

Now, the fruit of such a thought as this will be amazement in the day when God will strip us of our self-righteousness, and make us stand naked, to our eternal shame.

Beware of self-righteous thoughts, my hearers! They are the Tarpeian rock from which Satan has hurled thousands of souls. It were better for you that a millstone were fastened about your neck, and that you were cast into the midst of the sea, than that you should thank God that you are not as other men, when after all you are as corrupt as other men, and will perish as they did.

Self-righteousness keeps you from coming to Christ, and certainly it excludes you from eternal life, and will close the gates of heaven against you. God deliver us from the fruit of such thoughts!

Then, again, proud, boastful, vain-glorious, self-seeking thoughts are alike obnoxious. How highly some people think of themselves! You can see it in their gait, and their speech bewrayeth them. Yet their wine is all froth, and their gold is counterfeit.

Their speech, when they begin to tell of what they have, what they can do, and what they did do upon such and such occasions — all this is an abomination to honest men; but their thoughts must be very abominable to God.

It is one of the things which He says He hates — “a proud look.” God grant us grace to be rid of every proud thought, for we have nothing to be proud of.

A proud man is nothing but a wind-bag, and when either the ills of life or the crisis of death shall put a pin into it, what a collapse there will be, how the haughty one will discover himself to be nothing but emptiness and vanity!

Get rid of proud thoughts, for, oh! what will they not do? Pride dragged an angel from heaven, and made a devil of him, and pride would drag any of us down to the level of the devil if we fall into its snare.

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