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March 17 The Gift of Truth
Honesty From the Inside Out
“Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy
holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and
speaketh the truth in his heart” (Psalm 15:1, 2).
The purpose of all God's commandments is to reveal man's duty
not only to God, but to his fellowman. In this late age of the world's
history, we are not, because of the selfishness of our hearts, to question
or dispute the right of God to make these requirements, or we
will deceive ourselves, and rob our souls of the richest blessings of the
grace of God. Heart and mind and soul are to be merged in the will of
God. Then the covenant, framed from the dictates of infinite wisdom,
and made binding by the power and authority of the King of kings
and Lord of lords, will be our pleasure. 43
The Lord has graciously given man a time of probation in which
to perfect a character for eternal life; but those who are selfish, those
who exalt self by seeking to abase another, making the most of every
mote and defect in his character, prove that there is a beam in their
own eye which unfits them for an entrance into the abode of life. The
principles of divine goodness must dwell in the heart, in order that
pure, generous, kindly thoughts and actions shall be manifested in
the life. Everything like secret working, like deception, like anxiety to
discover a mote in our brother's eye, like officious effort to remove the
mote when a beam is in our own eye, is abhorrent to God. Until the
accuser discovers the evil of his own heart, and feels sincere repentance
for his sin, and makes confession of his wrong, he can have no
clear vision to pull the mote out of his brother's eye. It is easy to
deceive ourselves, but we cannot deceive God, to whose ears smooth
words and fair speeches, which are only pretensions to piety, are as
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Unless the principles of heaven
are inwrought in the heart, all outward profession is pretension and
deception. God measures every man's piety by the character of his
motives. 44
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