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.
