THERE are some who boast that they have no religion, that they never made any profession, and that they are quite as good and perhaps better than many of the Christians they know.
And they think that they are all right because their self-examination pleases them. But they are all wrong, and I venture to say that they are dishonest when they begin to measure themselves with other Christians. I have met men of that sort before.
They choose the meanest and sourest scrub of a professor they know, and, because they are perhaps one degree less mean than he, they boast and claim that if the Christians are going to heaven so are they. Why do they not measure themselves against a truly consistent Christian, one who is out-and-out for God? Or better still, why do they not honestly come to God’s standard and measure themselves by it? Is it because in their heart they know that they have come short of that standard?
If you are one such, do not, I beseech of you, endeavor to deceive yourself any longer, for you are deceiving nobody else. God says that you are a sinner. Every truly sensible person believes what God says. If you will also believe the truth of God, there will be the end of your folly, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
J. T. M.