Pride ― C.S. Lewis

“Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive—is competitive by its very nature—while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to your­self. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

―  C.S. Lewis

Is good advice any use to us? ― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Good advice! But is good advice any use to us? What would be your position if I had nothing to say to you except that you ought to give up sinning, that you ought to live a good life? Suppose I just left you at that? Is it easy to live a good life? Is it easy to resist temptation and sin? Put a reform program before people, and the answer in the Old Testament is this: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” (Jer. 13:23). Listen to Solomon writing in the book of Ecclesiastes — a wise man, a man with great experience. He came to the conclusion: “That which is crooked cannot be made straight” (Eccl. 1:15). It cannot be done. Education cannot straighten out men and women, can it? Read the proceedings of the police courts and the divorce courts and of any other court you like. No, no — “That which is crooked cannot be made straight.” It is no use telling us to do good things, for we cannot.

These people talk beautifully, they write very well, but they leave me with no power, they give me no help. There is the standard, and I am left alone to live it, to imitate Christ! How can I? Oh no, it is all useless. These people know nothing about the power of the devil. “Ah,” they say, “but that is apostolic doctrine. People today cannot possibly believe in the devil. The apostles believed in the devil, of course, but they lived 2,000 years ago. We are modern men and women; we know biology, we know geology — we don‘t believe in the devil.”

Don‘t you? Then in the name of God I ask you to explain your world. Freud goes a good way, but he does not go far enough. The Bible says there is only one explanation of the state of the world, and that is the power of the devil and the power of evil. But these people do not know life; they do not know themselves. The world is as it is because of the power of the devil. We are under the dominion of Satan. “The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not,” wrote Paul (2 Cor. 4:4). The world is enslaved; it is in bondage. The world is not free. Behind all that psychoanalysis may reveal, there is a malign power — “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience,” as Paul describes him in Ephesians 2:2. So what is the use of good advice? The devil defeated everyone of the greatest saints of the Old Testament — every one of them. He not only defeated the first man and woman — Adam and Eve — when they were perfect, but he has defeated all their progeny, the greatest included. What is the value of good advice when you are fighting the devil?

I do not know what you feel, but what I feel like saying is this: Thank God for apostolic doctrine! Thank God for this teaching that the first Christians coveted and in which they desired to be built up. What is it? It is this: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” — why? — “for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16).”

― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

apostolic doctrine ― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“There is such a thing as apostolic doctrine. I am a preacher for one reason only, and it is that I have believed the apostolic doctrine and teaching. I have no other teaching. I do not stand here to say what I think. I am simply repeating what I find in the Gospel. I am expounding the Scriptures, the apostolic doctrine. But the importance of doing this is seriously questioned today. Indeed, it is not only controverted but ridiculed and dismissed, and I must of necessity deal with this criticism…

My dear friend, have you believed? Have you received this apostolic doctrine? I can test you simply. If you have believed this and received it, you have new life, spiritual life, and that will show itself in this way: You will be hungering and thirsting for more. It will become the greatest interest of your life. You will still be interested in other books, but you will find, as I find and I say this to the glory of God that there are many books I would like to read, but I just do not have the time. I am too busy reading the Bible and books that help me understand it.

Now I am not criticizing the others. I like to read books on history. I like reading biographies. I like reading about music. I like reading about medicine, aspects of science, psychology, philosophy, and so on. But my problem is to find the time. I find life here in this Book. It moves my heart. It melts me. It fills me with righteousness. It strengthens my feeble will. I want this. And men and women who have spiritual life in them, the life of God in their souls, will be like newborn babes, desiring ― the sincere milk of the word‖ that they might grow (1 Pet. 2:2). If you do not have that desire, you are dead. Whether you are a church member or not, if the Bible is still boring, if you find prayer difficult and a task, you are dead, and therefore you have one thing to do: Go to God, repent, confess your sin, tell Him you realize you are dead, and ask Him to give you life anew, to breathe His Spirit upon you and give you new life from among the dead.”

― Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authentic Christianity

Love — Robert South

"Love is such an affection as can not so properly be said to be in the soul as the soul to be in that. It is the whole man wrapt up into one desire; all the powers, vigor, and faculties of the soul abridged into one inclination. And it is of that active, restless nature that it must of necessity exert itself; and, like the fire to which it is so often compared, it is not a free agent, to choose whether it will heat or no, but it streams forth by natural results and unavoidable emanations. So that it will fasten upon any inferior, unsuitable object, rather than none at all. The soul may sooner leave off to subsist than to love; and, like the vine, it withers and dies if it has nothing to embrace. Now this affection, in the state of innocence, was happily pitched upon its right object; it flamed up in direct fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat from the burning of a fever." —  Robert South

We must pray with love — Fénelon

"We must pray with love. It is love says St. Augustine, that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds. We cease to pray to God as soon as we cease, to love Him, as soon as we cease to thirst for His perfections. The coldness of our love is the silence of our hearts toward God. Without this we may pronounce prayers, but we do not pray; for what shall lead us to meditate upon the laws of God if it be not the love of Him who has made these laws? Let our hearts be full of love, then, and they will pray. Happy are they who think seriously of the truths of religion; but far more happy are they who feel and love them! We must ardently desire that God will grant us spiritual blessings; and the ardor of our wishes must render us fit to receive the blessings." — Fénelon

There is no new thing under the sun

“Today people no longer recognize the category of the moral. Modern men and women say, “We have a new morality.” But that is simply a repetition of what the devil has suggested before. He puts an idea back into some cupboard and brings out another one, and everybody forgets the old idea. He lets a century or two pass, then brings the first one out again. “Brand-new!” people say. “A new morality.” But it is as old as Adam in its sinfulness! Nothing new at all, nothing original in any sense whatsoever. All perversions and all foulness are described in the Bible as well as in the pages of secular history.

For many centuries the Bible has told us, “There is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9), and there certainly is not. All the arguments against Christianity, against this faith and way of life, have been put forward many times.”

― Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authentic Christianity