"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16:24)
It is a distressing thing that a truth so beautiful [as justification by faith] should have been so perverted. But perversion is the price we pay for failure to emphasize the moral content of truth; it is the curse that follows rational orthodoxy when it has quenched or rejected the Spirit of Truth.
In asserting that faith in the gospel effects a change of life-motive from self to God I am but stating the sober facts.
Every man with moral intelligence must be aware of the curse that afflicts him inwardly; he must be conscious of the thing we call "ego", by the Bible called "flesh" or "self", but by whatever name called, a cruel master and a deadly foe.
Affections that do not terminate on God, terminate on self. Men who do not "seek the things that are Jesus Christ's," seek their own. Inordinate self-love is the ruling passion of their hearts and the governing principle of their lives. The glory of God the Christian must seek.
~A. W. Tozer~
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