Proud To Be Virtuous

By T. M. Moore

The less we are filled with pride, the more we advance in virtue, for this more than anything else is virtue, to hold ourselves in check. Just as the sharper our sight is, the more fully do we realize how far we are from the sky, so the more we advance in virtue, so much more do we learn the difference between God and ourselves. This is no small part of wisdom, to be able to know our own worth; for he knows himself best who accounts himself to be nothing. - John Chrysostom on Isaiah 14:13

Jesus told a parable about a righteous man who knew he was righteous, and so turned out to be not righteous at all (Lk. 18:9-14). The Pharisee was proud of his “virtue”, and boasted of it before the Lord as he compared himself favorably with a tax collector.

We recognize such “righteousness” as “self-righteousness”, and we agree with Jesus that there is no true virtue in such self-vaunting.

But in a day when so much immorality is to be seen on every hand, we can easily fall to thinking we’re somehow “better” than others who aren’t as “righteous” or as “virtuous” as we.

The remedy for this, Chrysostom explained, is to look to Jesus and not to the people around us. Compared with Jesus, we have a long way to go, and nothing about which to boast. Indeed, even the virtue we are able to demonstrate is not our own; it comes from and by our Lord Jesus, as He lives His life through us in the power of His Spirit.

We should, of course, strive every day to increase in virtue, studying God’s Word to discover new ways that we may increase in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. But we must at the same time study humility, trust, and self-denial. Otherwise we may end up prideful about our “virtuous” attainments, forgetting that any progress we make in becoming upright in virtue is only the work of God within us, willing and doing of His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12, 13).

How can we “hold ourselves in check” in this matter? First, by giving thanks to God for His work of sanctification within us. He alone must receive honor and praise for any good or any virtue which is seen in us. God makes us fruitful for virtuous living; we have no ability to do this of our own.

Second, rather than look down on others whose lives fall short of God’s virtuous standards, let us pray for them, try to get to know them, and show them the love of Christ in every way we can. Of course we will observe areas of others’ live that we know to be displeasing to the Lord. But we must judge with righteous judgment, and that does not include condemning others (Jn. 7:24; Matt. 7:1).

Finally, always remember that we will have barely begun to become truly virtuous even after many years of striving and growth. The standard set by our Lord Jesus Christ will always be far beyond our reach in this life. Only in the life to come, when we see Jesus as He is, will we truly be like Him (1 Jn. 3:2). This being so, let us, rather than rest on our laurels and become content in our attainments, press on to become more like Jesus everyday of our lives (1 Jn. 3:3).

Grow in virtue, beloved, but don’t let pride or self-vaunting spoil your attainments. Virtue with humility: this is the goal we seek.

For more by T.M. Moore, please visit Breakpoint.org.

Seek The Lord

“You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the LORD…” Jeremiah 29:13, 14

Foundational to the life of seeking, which is the calling of all who believe in Jesus Christ, is the responsibility and privilege of seeking the Lord. Before we seek anything else, we must learn to seek the Lord.

As God asserted through the prophet Jeremiah, He intends for us to find Him, on condition that we seek Him with all our hearts. The psalmist understood this most important objective, and he devoted himself to seeking the Lord early and earnestly (Ps. 63:1). In Psalm 105:4 the specifics of what we are to seek concerning the Lord are briefly stated: His presence and His strength. The teaching of the New Testament is along these same lines.

The true seeker is the one who seeks the presence and glory of God, to partake of Him in such a way that His strength comes to expression as glory and love in the seeker’s own life. Eternal life, which all have “found” who believe in Jesus Christ, is summed up by Jesus Christ as “knowing” the Lord (Jn. 17:3). What we seek in knowing the Lord is to encounter His glory, to enter into it, and, in the strength of the Lord, to show His glory to the world around us (Hab. 2:14).

But we must seek the Lord with all our heart, as He Himself instructs. This is the indispensable condition for seeking and knowing the Lord. We must be serious about seeking Him, daily and continuously devoted to the task, and careful to keep out of our lives anything that hinders our quest to know the Lord.

God is pleased to reveal Himself and His glory to us in the pages of Scripture (2 Cor. 3:12-18) and in the created world around us (Ps. 19:1-4; Ps. 66:18). It is the glory of God to conceal Himself and His glory in the Scriptures and the creation; our duty, as His appointed priests and rulers (1 Pt. 2:9, 10), is to seek out the glory of God in each of these places, so that we might enter into His presence and be transformed by His glory (Prov. 25:2).

Thus, we are seeking the Lord when through reading Scripture, meditating on it and studying God’s Word, and by prayer and other disciplines, together with the study of God’s works in creation, we are daily and faithfully engaged in ferreting out His glory.

To seek God with all our heart is to be enthusiastic about meeting the Lord wherever He may be pleased to reveal Himself, and to devote ourselves to the task of seeking the Lord in His Word and creation according to the ways He Himself has provided.

God commands us to seek Him, and He promises that, if we will, if we will seek Him with all our hearts, then we shall surely find Him and the promise of full and abundant life which is to be known in Him alone.

Seeking the Lord takes time, discipline, and good habits of study and prayer. It must be a daily, consistent, and even conscious endeavor on our parts, seeking God as our greatest longing, highest desire, and most determined activity, every day of our lives. If we will seek the Lord in the ways He has provided, through Scripture and creation, then we shall certainly be able to fulfill the most fundamental obligation of those who have found the gift of eternal life.

For more by T.M. Moore, please visit Breakpoint.org

...So I began to examine the life and the teachings of these people, and the closer I looked, the more I was convinced that theirs was the true faith, that their faith was indispensable to them and that this faith alone provided them with the meaning and possibility of life.  Contrary to what I saw among the people of our class, where life was possible without faith and scarcely one in a thousand was a believer, among these people there was scarcely one in a thousand who was not a believer.  Contrary to what I saw among the people of our class, where a lifetime is passed in idleness, amusement, and dissatisfaction with life, these people spent their lives at hard labor and were less dissatisfied with life than the wealthy.  Contrary to the people of our class who resist and are unhappy with the hardship and suffering of their lot, these people endure sickness and tribulation without question or resistance - peacefully, and in the firm conviction that this is as it should be, cannot be otherwise, and is good.  Contrary to the fact that the greater our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life and the more we see some kind of evil joke in our suffering and death, these people live, suffer, and draw near to death peacefully and, more often than not, joyfully.  Contrary to peaceful death - death without horror and despair, which is the rarest exception in our class - it is the tormenting, unyielding, and sorrowful death that is the rarest exception among the people.  And these people, who are deprived of everything that for Solomon and [I] constituted the only good in life, yet who nonetheless enjoy the greatest happiness, form the overwhelming majority of mankind.  I looked further still around myself.  I examined the lives of the great masses of people who have lived in the past and live today.  Among those who have understood the meaning of life, who know how to live and die, I saw not two or three or ten but hundreds, thousands, millions.  And all of them, infinitely varied in their customs, intellects, educations, and positions and in complete contrast to my ignorance, knew the meaning of life and death, labored in peace, endured suffering and hardship, lived and died, and saw in this not vanity but good.

I grew to love these people.  The more I learned about the lives of those living and dead about whom I had read and heard, the more I loved them and the easier it became for me to live.  I lived this way for about two years, and a profound transformation came over me, one that had been brewing in me for a long time and whose elements had always been a part of me.  The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning.  The sum of our action and thinking, of our science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a spoiled child.  I realized that meaning was not to be sought here.  The actions of the laboring people, of those who create life, began to appear to me as the one true way.  I realized that the meaning provided by this life was truth, and I embraced it.

But at that point I took a closer look at myself and at what had been happening within me; and I remembered the hundreds of times I had gone through these deaths and revivals.  I remembered that I had lived only when I believed in God.  Then, as now, I said to myself, "As long as I know God, I live; when I forget, when I do not believe in him, I die."  What are these deaths and revivals?  It is clear that I do not live whenever I lose my faith in the existence of God, and I would have killed myself long ago if I did not have some vague hope of finding God.  I truly live only whenever I am conscious of him and seek him.  "What, then, do I seek?" a voice cried out within me.  "He is there, the one without whom there could be no life."  To know God and to live come to one and the same thing.  God is life.

"Live, seeking God, for there can be no life without God."  And more powerfully than ever a light shone within me and all around me, and this light has not abandoned me since.


-  from "My Confession" by Leo Tolstoy