Clean Hands, Filthy Hearts

July 23, 2023

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?” - Jeremiah 17:9

“Objection is sometimes made to the doctrine of total depravity. If men turn away from God in anger, I can understand it. If men turn aside from God in justice, I can understand it. But when they so hate God that they will not even have his salvation, when they refuse pardon through the precious blood of Christ, when they will sooner be damned than reconciled to God, this shows that their heart is desperately wicked. The cross rejected is the clearest proof of the heart depraved.” - C.H. Spurgeon

“(Martin) Luther's overactive mind was constantly finding ways in which he had fallen short, and so every time he went to confession, he confessed all of his sins, as he was supposed to do, but then, knowing that even one unconfessed sin would be enough to drag him down to hell, he racked his brain for more sins and found more…When would it end? But Luther didn't care. He was simply determined to keep digging until the got to the bottom of it all. But he never did. He did not yet understand that there really was no bottom, that we are sinful all the way down.” - from the biography, Martin Luther - the man who rediscovered God and changed the world, by Eric Metaxas

“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” - Romans 5:8

  1. Traditions vs. Commandments
  1. Source of Defilement
  1. The Answer to the human dilemna