Pharisaism

    Man is a strange compound.  A sinner, and the worst of sinners, and yet a pharisee!  A wretch, and the vilest of wretches, and yet pluming himself on his good works!  Did not experience convince us to the contrary, we should scarcely credit that a monster like man, a creature, as someone has justly said, “half-beast and half-devil,” should dream of pleasing God by his obedience, or of climbing up to heaven by a ladder of his own righteousness.

     

Pharisaism is firmly fixed in the human heart.  Deep is the root, broad the stem, wide the branches, but poisonous the fruit of this gigantic tree, planted by pride and unbelief in the Adamic soil.  And what can “hew this tree down, yet leave the stump of the roots in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass in the tender grass of the field?” (Daniel 4:23).  The axe of the Spirit only.  Self-righteousness is not peculiar to this or that individual.  It is interwoven with our very being.  It is the only religion that nature understands, relishes, or admires.                   

 

--preacher J.C. Philpot

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