Feeling a Falsehood

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, repentance, Sovereignty of God

…we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. – 1John 1:8

Let not him that is deceived trust in vanity: for vanity shall be his recompence. – Job 15:31

Awakened sinners often say, “If I could feel my heart was right towards God, then I could believe that He would look upon me in mercy.” How wrong is this! If you did feel that all was right, it would be an untruthful feeling, for by nature all is wrong. “Oh, sir,” say you, “if I could but feel that now at last, I am as I ought to be before God, as tender and as penitent as He would have me to be, then I could have hope.” No, but my dear friend, such a feeling would not be according to truth, for no man is as tender and as penitent as he ought to be; and if you felt you were, you would be feeling a falsehood, and so the truth would not be in you. I do not want you to feel that you are what you ought to be: I pray that you may own that you are not what you ought to be; I would have you feel unrest, and absence of anything like satisfaction, for such feelings will be according to the truth. I beseech you never claim to experience feelings which you do not feel, nor make hypocritical confessions of sin which you have never committed, nor pretend to a repentance which is not in you, for the Lord hates all shams, and will only deal with you according to truth. If you are conscious of impenitence, go to the Lord and tell Him you have a hard heart, which will not feel either the terrors of His law or the meltings of His love: in fine, go to Him just as you are, and confess what you are, and ask Him to deal with you in Christ Jesus as He sees you to be. That is the only way, and the plan of pretending that we are now free from sin will not work and bring us blessing; for “we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

God Sees Sin in Us

Sherry Christian Life, prayer, Character of Jesus, Attributes of God, promises, confession of sin, Sovereignty of God

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. – 1John 1:8

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived… – 1Corinthians 6:9

Be not deceived; God is not mocked… – Galatians 6:7

While the man who has deceived himself says, “I have no sin,” he has not deceived the Lord. God sees sin in us if we do not. The ostrich is reported to bury her head in the sand, and then to suppose herself safe, but she is the more speedily taken; and we may shut our eyes and say, “I have no sin,” but in so doing instead of securing eternal salvation we shall as practically give ourselves up to the destroyer as the bird of the desert is fabled to do. Let a man say, “I have no sin,” and he has condemned himself out of his own mouth, for the text says of such a man the truth is not in him, and he who hath not truth in him is not saved. The absence of confession of present sin means the absence of the light of truth, and sincerity. All sorts of people God saves, however black their sins, but the man of a false spirit, the Pharisaic washer of the outside of the cup, while the inside is foul, is the last person who is likely to be saved. A main point in conversion consists in a man’s being honest, for it is the honest and good ground which receives the seed. If you preach the gospel among the roughest and most profane of men, there is more hope of success among them than among hypocritical professors. Open enmity and opposition are better than that pretended friendship which begins and ends with the shallow compliments of empty formalism. Outward religiousness, unattended by heart piety, does a man serious injury, by rendering him superficial and unreal in all that he does in reference to God, and as God desires truth in the inward parts He will not parley with dishonest men. Pretend and profess and boast what ye will, but this know, that the living God abhors everything which is not according to the strictest truth.

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

Self-deception

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. – 1John 1:8

To deceive another requires a measure of cunning, but to deceive yourself needs far more. This self-deceit has taken you a good deal of persuading and ingenious trickery. Our deceitful heart reveals an almost Satanic shrewdness in self-deception, it readily enough makes the worse appear the better reason, and it states a lie so that it wears the fashion of truth. If you say you have no sin you have achieved a fearful success, you have put out your own eyes and perverted your own reason! You have fed upon falsehood till it has entered into your very being and rendered you incapable of truth. I know you claim to be very sincere in your belief of your own rightness, and it would be very hard to persuade you out of your fond notions; but this is all the worse, for so much the more completely have you deceived yourself. Now that you call darkness light, and boast that your blindness is true sight, we mourn over you as all but hopeless; and we fear lest the Lord should leave you to perish, because you cling so fast to a lie.

In how many ways men manage to deceive themselves! They can do it by irreligion and by religion too; by outrageous sin and by boastful sanctity. They can mislead themselves by precious hymns,—which rightly understood speak truth, but wrongly turned speak desperate falsehoods, by dwelling upon the work of the Spirit of God,—which rightly taken is greatly for our consolation, but taken after the Pharisaic manner may itself be misconstrued and made to furnish wind for the bubble of vain glory. O friends, it is not without effort that men pervert the best things into excuses for pride, yea, turn even their meat into poison. It is not an easy thing to get up the imposture of sinlessness, nor is it an easy matter to keep the cheat from collapsing. The baseless fabric must be deftly put together, and it will need much propping up and buttressing; it is almost as hard to seem to be as to be, perhaps I might say it is harder. Pity that men should be at such pains to make fools of themselves.

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

Only Trust Him! Only Trust Him! 

Sherry sermon

You who are King of kings and Lord of lords, we worship You. Before Jehovah’s awful throne we bow with sacred joy.

Sermon Text

A Mere Say, A Delusion

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. – 1John 1:8

Whatever shape our denial of our sinful nature and state may take, please remember that that denial is a mere say, and nothing more, —”If we say we have no sin.” You know how little value we attach to evidence of the nature of “I say,” and “they say.” There may be no truth whatever in such evidence, and in the present case there is nothing whatever to warrant the proud saying—”We have no sin.” There will come a day when the righteous will have no sin, as a matter of fact; but now, whether saint or sinner, if you say, “I have no sin,” you say it, and that is all. The words sound very prettily, but there is no fact to correspond with them.

Moreover, the idea of having no sin is a delusion; you are altogether deceived if you say so; the truth is not in you, and you have not seen things in the true light; you must have shut your eyes to the high requirements of the law, you must be a stranger to your own heart, you must be blind to your own conduct every day, and you must have forgotten to search your thoughts and to weigh your motives, or you would have detected the presence of sin. He who cannot find water in the sea is not more foolish than the man who cannot perceive sin in his members. As the salt flavours every drop of the Atlantic, so does sin affect every atom of our nature. It is so sadly there, so abundantly there, that if you cannot detect it you are deceived.

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

Of Our Merit We Are Unfit for Pardon

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. – 1John 1:8

Some look upon sin as a technical term, and though they admit in words that they have sin, yet they practically deny it by saying, “I have a good heart at bottom; I always was well-intentioned from the very first. True, what I have done does not appear to be right according to the very severe judgment of the law of God; but I cannot help that; I only followed my nature, and cannot be blamed, for I never meant to do anything wrong, either to God or man. I have always been kind to the poor and have done the right thing all round. I know I have—of course we all have—erred here and there, but you cannot expect a fellow to be perfect. I can’t say I see anything to find fault with.” Thus, you in effect say you have no sin. Though you compliment God by saying with the church service, “We are miserable sinners,” you do not mean it at all; you mean that if you have sinned it has been your misfortune, and you are to be pitied rather than blamed. In so saying or feeling you prove that the truth is not in you, you are either deplorably ignorant as to what holiness is, or else you are wilfully uttering a falsehood; in either case the truth is not in you.

Some confess that they have sinned, they think themselves now to be in a proper and fit condition to receive pardon. “We have prayed,” say they; “we have repented, we have read the Scriptures, we have attended public worship, and are as right as we can be: we have tenderness and contrition, and every right and proper feeling; our wonder is that we do not receive salvation.” …The idea of fitness is only another form of the vain notion of merit, and it cannot find an inch of foothold in the gospel. True penitents can see nothing in themselves to commend them to mercy, and therefore they cast themselves upon undeserved favor, feeling both unworthy and unfit, but hoping to receive forgiveness freely.

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon

The Two Deceived Boasters

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, The Holy Spirit

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. – 1John 1:8

I do not suppose that many of you are likely to say you have no sin on the ground of a disbelief of natural depravity, for many of you know this truth, not merely as a matter of creed, but as a terrible fact, which has come home to you, and caused you keenest sorrow. If, however, any of you should venture to plead that you have no sin, on the ground that your nature is not evil, I do beseech you rid your heart of that lie, for a lie it is through and through. I mind not how honest your parentage, nor how noble your ancestry, there is in you a bias towards evil; your animal passions, nay more, your mental faculties are unhinged and out of order, and unless some power beyond your own shall keep your desires in check, you will soon prove by overt acts of transgression the depravity of your nature.

It is not uncommon for others to arrive at the same conclusion by another road. They have attained to the audacity to say that they have no sin by divers feelings and beliefs which they, as a rule, ascribe to the Holy Spirit. Now, if any man says that all tendency to sin is gone from him, that his heart is at all times perfect, and his desires always pure, so that he has no sin in him whatsoever, he may have traveled a very different road from the character we just now warned, but he has reached the same conclusion, and we have but one word for both boasters, it is the word of our text—”If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

Honest Dealing with God by C. H. Spurgeon