“Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for You are my praise” (Jer 17:14).
This world has all sorts of disease and danger. At the spring of them all is the selfish pride that brought the universe to moral collapse.
When Paul called himself the chief of sinners, what did he mean? Didn’t he say he was “concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Php 3:6)? Alexander Maclaren writes, “Through all the respectability and morality of his early life there ran this streak—an alienation of heart from God, in the pride of self-confidence, and an ignorance of his own wretchedness and need.…deep, universal sin does not lie in the indulgence of passions, or the breach of moralities, but it lies here: ‘They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters’…That is enough to make a man brush away all the respectabilities and proprieties and graces, and look at the black reality beneath, and wail out, ‘of whom I am chief.’ ” May He be our praise today!