My daughter, Leah, told me the title of a book she had seen in a Christian bookstore: If You Don’t Die to Self Soon, I’m gonna have to kill you! I wonder how many of our loved ones, friends, and associates feel that way about us? Some of us are so haughty that if there was a vacancy in the Godhead, we’d apply for it.
The only way to shed our filthy self-righteous rags is by way of the cross. Only then can we bequeath our leprous-soaked attire to the grave. After we leave our vile virtues behind, then will come to pass, “…and they shall walk with me in white.” As one writer said, “No grave, no resurrection: only resuscitation. A crepe with no bier to follow.”
In the latter part of the book of Job, after he silences his friends, Job attempts to prove his righteousness. He uses the personal pronoun “I” and “me” and “mine” nearly 200 times. But after God reduces him to nothing by showing him his utter corruption, he cries out, “I abhor myself, and repent…” It is then the “double-barreled blessings” of God are poured out upon him.
We all need to ask ourselves, “When was the last time I agonizingly repented of all the goodness, virtues, and morality that self has produced apart from God?”
“God is not deceived by externals.” (C.S. Lewis)
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