Jeremiah 17:9; Obadiah 1:3; Psalm 10:4; Romans 8:7
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee.
The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.
The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): There is in the unregenerate an opposition to spiritual things and an aversion against them.
MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): He doth not say the carnal mind is an enemy, but in the abstract, it is enmity, which heightens and intensifies the sense. An enemy may be reconciled, as Esau was to Jacob; but enmity itself cannot be reconciled; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be—the carnal mind is rebellious in the highest degree against the will of God, unless it be changed and renewed.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): It is enmity itself against God—against His being; it wishes He was not; it forms unworthy notions of Him; thinks Him such an one as itself; and endeavours to bury him in forgetfulness, and erase out of its mind all memorials of Him: it is at enmity against His perfections; either denying His omniscience; or arraigning His justice and faithfulness; or despising His goodness, and abusing His grace and mercy: it finds fault with, and abhors His decrees and purposes; quarrels with His providences; it is implacable against His Word and Gospel; especially the particular doctrines of grace, the Father’s grace in election, the Son’s in redemption, and the Spirit’s in regeneration; and has in the utmost contempt the ordinances and people of Christ.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): What is the cause of it?
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): It springs from self-righteous pride.
JOHN GILL: Pride is naturally in every man’s heart.
JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): Our natural pride is a great hindrance to believing.
THOMAS MANTON (1620-1677): It was the sin of pride that changed angels into devils. Pride not only withdraws the heart from God, but lifts it up against God.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God.” He is too proud to bend his knee before his Judge; he is too haughty to put on sackcloth, and lay himself in the dust, though without deep repentance and humiliation, he must without doubt perish everlastingly.
THOMAS MANTON: Pride destroys love.
CHARLES SIMEON: In the most imperfect of the regenerate, there is a predominant principle of love to God; whereas in the best of unregenerate men there is a rooted enmity against Him—It deems His holiness too strict, His justice too severe, His truth too inflexible; and His mercy itself is hateful to them, on account of the humiliating way in which it is dispensed. Even the very existence of God is so odious to them, that they say in their hearts, “I wish there were no God,” Psalm 14:1.
JOHN DAVIES (circa 1798): Man naturally hates God, and all who are like Him, and all that is calculated to make man like Him.
ADAM CLARKE: It is irreconcilable and implacable hatred. “It is not subject to the law of God.” It will come under no obedience; for it is sin, and the very principle of rebellion; and therefore it cannot be subject, nor subjected; for it is essential to sin to show itself in rebellion.
JOHN GILL: Carnal men are subject to the law’s sentence of condemnation—but not to its precepts, by obedience to them—neither indeed can it be, without regenerating grace, without the power and Spirit of God—for carnal men are dead in sin, and so without strength to obey the law; and besides, the carnal mind, and the law of God, are directly contrary one to another.
MATTHEW POOLE: It is impossible it should be otherwise; there is in it a moral impotency to obedience.
CHARLES SIMEON: This incapacity to obey God’s law is justly adduced as proof of our enmity against Him: for if we loved Him, we should love His will; and if we hate His will, whatever we may pretend, we in reality hate Him.
JOHN GILL: Where is man’s power and free will?
JOHN CALVIN: The Scripture testifies often that man is a slave of sin.
JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): The Scripture avers, that “by one man’s disobedience all men were constituted sinners;” that “in Adam all died,” spiritually died, lost the life and image of God; that fallen, sinful Adam then “begat a son in his own likeness”—nor was it possible he should beget him in any other; for “who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”—that consequently we, as well as other men, were by nature, “dead in trespasses and sins, without hope, without God in the world,” and, therefore, “children of wrath;” that every man may say, “I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin did my mother conceive me;” that “there is no difference” in that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”―of that glorious image of God wherein man was created. And hence, “when the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, He saw they were all gone out of the way; they were altogether become abominable, there was none righteous, no, not one”―“that the wickedness of man was great in the earth”―so great, “that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” This is God’s account of man. And this account of the present state of man is confirmed by daily experience.
A. W. PINK: Such a conception of man—so different from man’s own ideas, and so humiliating to his proud heart, never could have emanated from man himself. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” is a concept that never originated in any human mind.
JOHN GILL: No wonder the carnal mind does not stoop to the Gospel of Christ, when it is not, and cannot be subject to the law of God. It is natural and deeply rooted in the mind, and irreconcilable without the power and grace of God. This enmity is universal, it is in all unregenerate men, either direct or indirect, hidden or more open.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): Man’s ultimate problem is his pride.
JOHN CALVIN: Pride is always the companion of unbelief.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): No sin is so deeply rooted in our nature as pride. It cleaves to us like our skin.
JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758): Pride takes many forms and shapes; and it encompasses the heart like the layers of an onion―when you pull off one layer, there is another underneath.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Self-righteousness is never meek. The man who is proud of himself will be quite sure to be hard-hearted in his dealings with others.
J. H. M. d’AUBIGNÉ (1794-1872): Offended pride is one of the most active principles of human nature.
R. C. CHAPMAN (1803-1902): Pride nourishes the remembrance of injuries: but humility forgets as well as forgives them…If the sufferings of Christ, who humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, be much in my heart, I shall see my worst enemy to be pride, especially pride of wisdom, pride of righteousness.
WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): There is no reasoning with a proud man; he castles himself in his own opinion, and stands upon his defence against all arguments that are brought.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Thus their pride deceives them, and by it slays them.
JOHN GILL: Hence we see the necessity of almighty power, and efficacious grace in conversion. It is Christ’s work to subject men to the law, which is done when He justifies by His righteousness.
