GOSPEL DELTA

Calculated to Hide the Pride of Man

// November 14th, 2009 // Affection, Doctrine

It seems to me that much of the teaching we receive apart from Christ is designed to do one thing: help us to make much of ourselves. We are naturally drawn to these teachings because they lift us up and help us to tear others down. We are self-centered to the bone. At least Narcissus was satisfied to simply stare at himself in the mirror, we are so obsessed with ourselves that we kiss the image in the mirror. One thing that reassures me of the validity of Christianity is its brutal offensiveness. The natural conscience would never gravitate to a teaching such as Christ’s. Rather than building up the self, Christianity tears it down, in order that it might be replaced with a new self, the Holy Spirit’s new creation.

Preach the necessity for the Holy Ghost’s divine operations. … ‘Men must be told that they are dead, and that only the Holy Spirit can quicken them; that the Spirit works according to his own good pleasure, and that no man can claim his visitations or deserve his aid. This is thought to be very discouraging teaching, and so it is, but men need to be discouraged when they are seeking salvation in a wrong manner. To put them out of conceit of their own abilities is a great help toward bringing them to look out of self to another, even the Lord Jesus. The doctrine of election and other great truths which declare salvation to be all of grace, and to be, not the right of the creature, but the gift of the Sovereign Lord, are all calculated to hide pride from man, and so prepare him to receive the mercy of God.’
- C.H. Spurgeon (from Lectures to My Students)