Sins Presence # 2

Sins Presence # 2

Now Christian reader, is it really and truly the desire of your heart that God will "hide pride" from you (Job 33:17)? If by grace it is so, then are you willing for Him to use His own means and method in accomplishing your desire, even though it is an unpleasant process, yes, galling to your complacency? If you are willing for your natural religiousness to be blasted and to be stripped of your peacock feathers, then it will be by evil remaining in you and bestirring itself to your grief!

Second Timothy 3:2 shows that pride springs from inordinate self-love. They who are undue lovers of themselves - soon grow proud of themselves; which is obvious to God, for it robes Him of His glory. Since God will be glorious unto His saints, as well as glorified by them - He subdues their pride by leaving that in them which humbles their hearts - but makes them admire Him the more for His longsuffering.

Divine light exposes filth within, of which they had no previous realization, causing them to cry with the leper, "Unclean, unclean!" (Lev. 13:45). They have such painful discoveries of indwelling sin as often makes them lament, "O wretched man that I am!" (Romans 7:24). But how thankful we should be if God makes us "abhor" ourselves (Job 42:6), and thereby make way for prizing Christ all the more!

In this life, holiness, my reader, consists largely of pantings after it - and grievings because we feel ourselves to be so unholy. What would happen to a man still left in this world - if he were full of sin one day and then made absolutely sinless the next? Let our present experience supply the answer. Do we not find it very difficult to keep our proper humble place, both before God and our brethren, when the evil within us is subdued but a little? Is not that evidence we require something to deliver us from self-righteousness? Even the beloved Paul needed "a thorn in the flesh" lest he "be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations" given to him (2 Cor. 12:7).

The man after God's own heart prayer, "O Lord, open you my lips; and my mouth shall show forth your praise" (Psalm 51:15): as though he said, "If You, Lord, will help me to speak aright, I shall not proclaim my own worth nor boast of what I have done - but will give You all the glory." As God left some of the Canaanites in the land - to prove Israel (Judges 2:21-22), so He leaves sin in us - to humble us.

We shall be sinless in heaven, and the sight of the "Lamb, who was slain" (Rev. 5:12) will forever prevent the re-entry of pride into our souls.

Our consciousness of sin's presence has, first, an emptying influence; it makes way for a pardoning and cleansing Christ, by convicting the soul of its deep need.

Second, it has a continual abasing influence, bringing us to realize more and more our utter insufficiency and complete dependence upon God.

Third, it has an evangelical influence, for it serves to make us more conscious of the perfect suitability of the great Physician for such lepers as we feel ourselves to be.

Fourth, it has a God-honoring influence, for it brings the renewed soul to marvel increasingly at His "longsuffering to us" (2 Peter 3:9).

Fifth, it should promote a spirit of forbearance to our fellows: we ought not to expect less failure in them - than we find in ourselves.

~A. W. Pink~

(The End)