by C. H. Spurgeon
"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags..."
Nothing is more deadly than self-righteousness!
The man who counts himself to be righteous by his own works, worships himself. Practically, the object of his adoration is his own dear, delectable, excellent self; all his confidence is in himself, his boasting is in himself.
O wretched egotist, you do at once lie and blaspheme!
Self-righteousness is born in the house of folly, and it is nursed by human fancy. Cease from doting upon your own fancied beauties and worshiping your own foolish image.
Self-righteousness is a great, God defying sin.
Soul poverty and destitution bring a man to God. Self-righteousness is the ruin of all who harbor it.
Self-righteousness most effectually bars a man from all hope of salvation. Beware, you who are self-righteousness, lest all your 'good works' be like millstones about your necks, to sink you low as the lowest hell.
This weed of self-righteousness will grow on any dunghill. No heap of rubbish is too rotten for the accursed toadstool of proud self to grow upon.
Among those who profess to be religious, self-righteousness very frequently comes in, because they have not truly received the religion of Jesus Christ.
If they were true believers they would be humble and contrite, for self-righteousness and faith in Christ are diametrically opposed.
He who is saved by grace finds no room for boasting in himself. A sinner washed in Jesus' blood and clothed in Jesus' righteousness, boasts only in the Lord. He is done once for all with that which glories in self. Self-righteousness is detestable in his sight. His cry is "God forbid that I should boast save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
The heavens are not pure in God's sight; he charges his angels with folly; and do you, who are defiled from head to foot, dare to talk about self-righteousness? Righteousness, indeed! when you are a mass of sin!
To what a pitch of madness does pride lift itself!
Oh, the absurdity of self-righteousness!
Self-righteousness is a mass of lies!
Self-righteousness is such a proud thing. God is always provoked with pride. It is one of the evils which his soul hates. He daily fits his arrow upon his string to fetch down the proud in heart.
This pride is loathsome to the last degree!
Self-righteousness is always afraid of the gospel, lest the uncompromising truth should unmask its self deceit.
See Jesus on the cross dying, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. As you see him dying, your self-righteousness will die. In the heights and depths of dying love I read the heights and depths of my accursed sin. In the infinity of the atonement I read the boundless blackness of my guilt, and lie humble before God.
When a man sees himself to be altogether lost and ruined, covered all over with the defilement of sin, and in no part free from pollution; when he disclaims all righteousness of his own, and pleads guilty before the Lord, then he is justified by the grace of God.
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From Self-Righteousness — a Smoldering Heap of Rubbish! a sermon by C. H. Spurgeon