www.despair.com --"Increasing success by lowering expectations" (so much like the Old Adam and the Old Eve)
Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present
unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work
--Martin Luther
(Heidelberg Disputations, Thesis 11)
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.
Matthew 23:27
Those in love with their own moral beauty can't see past it and delude themselves as to the condition of their hearts. Even Job protested that he was not like other men (or even Adam himself) who covered their transgressions by hiding their iniquity in their heart (Job 31:33).
Sometime ago as we were studying Psalm 51 ("Create in me a clean heart, O God!"), one of the group asked: "What do we pray for after we've received a clean heart?" i.e. what's the next step, how do we make 'progress' in the Christian living thing? I had to have some help with this one so I asked around my circle of theologians. The answer: "You pray for a clean heart." There is no 'progress' to made after receiving a clean heart.
Such reasoning can be traced back to Martin Luther who--when expounding on the petitions of the Lord's Prayer--made this comment regarding "Thy will be done...": Of course, God gives you a free will. Why do you want to make it yours? The very act of "making it yours" destroys its freedom. In the same way the very act of claiming a 'clean heart' demolishes its cleanliness. According to Luther the only progress is to begin anew--that is, to be returned by confession and repentance to your baptism wherein your sin is forgiven and the life of Christ is yours.
Yet there are those who persist in boasting and claiming: "I gave my heart to Jesus!" As if Jesus would want such a dirty and corrupt piece of garbage. No, Jesus is going to put it and you out of your misery: in his mercy you're going to die but thanks be to God that you'll rise with Christ to walk in newness of life. Now the heart at the center of you is no longer yours but Christ's. As long as it stays his, it's the most beautiful, free, and joyous thing imaginable; but--as soon as you try to make it yours--well, the very act of claiming it destroys it.
Moral beauty is no deeper than our deeds and ugly goes clear to the bone--for it's out of the heart. But those--who through the Word of God--have been put to death and received the life of Christ--have Jesus' heart and can never be truly ugly and possess a beauty beyond that of morality for it is of the Holy Spirit---they no longer live but Christ lives in them (Galatians 2:20). But... try to affix the possessive "mine" to such life and beauty and immediately it evaporates, thrusting one right back into the need to plead: "Create in me a clean heart, O God!"
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow; it is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12
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