The eighth step of pride: self-justification.57
Ladders
you admit your fault? You could hardly believe that you could be wrong and certainly will not let anybody else believe it. Thus your fault is made worse instead of being set right. If therefore, when you are corrected, you see yourself making excuses in your sin, you will know that you have dropped another step — the eighth, which is named self-justification.
The eighth step of pride: self-justification There are many ways of excusing sins. One will say: "I didn't do it." Another: "I did it, but 1 was perfectly right in doing it." If it was wrong you may say: "It isn't all that bad."
If it was decidedly harmful, you can fall back on: "I meant well." If the bad intention is too evident you will take refuge in the excuses of Adam and Eve and say someone else led you into it. If you defend your obvious sins like that, you are hardly likely to make known in humble confession the evil thoughts of your heart and the sins you have committed in secret.
The ninth step of pride: hypocritical confession Excuses of this kind are bad enough for the psalmist to call them "words of malice," but there is something even more dangerous than this stubborn and obstinate self-de fence, and that is hypocritical confession springing from pride. There are some who, when they are caught out in wrong-doing and know that if they defend themselves they will not be believed, find a subtle way out of the difficulty in deceitful self-accusation. These are the kind of persons
"who humble themselves deceitfully while their minds are full of evil." Their eyes are cast down, they humble them selves to the very dust. They wring out some tears if they
Ladders can, sighs and groans interrupt their words. They will not merely admit what has happened but will exaggerate their guilt. They accuse themselves of things so great, so incred ible, that you begin to doubt the charges you were certain of before. The things they say about themselves now can surely not be true, perhaps the other things are not so certain either. They are making statements they do not want you to believe, they defend the fault by confessing and hide it by false openness. The confession sounds very well but evil is hidden in the heart. The hearer is led to think that the accusation is not really true, it is only humility.
After all, the scripture says: "The just person is the first to accuse self." Such persons are willing that you think they are telling lies about themselves so long as you do not think they are failing in humility. They will not get much credit from God for either truth or humility. If their guilt is too great for any defence, they will assume the attitude of penitents hoping that their fault will be forgotten in admi ration of their candid confession. But the candor of their confession is all in outward show. It does not come from the heart and cancels no sin.
Pride is certainly paying a compliment to humility if it uses it as a disguise when it would escape punishment.
An earthen vessel is tested by fire and the true penitent by tribulation. Real penitents are not afraid of the difficul ties of penance. Whatever is enjoined upon them for their fault which they hate, they patiently embrace with a quiet mind. Those whose penitence is fraudulent will show soon enough that it was a sham humility if they are given the slightest reproach or penance. They murmur and growl and get vexed. No, they are not in the fourth degree of humility but the ninth of pride, which we have called hypocritical confession. You can judge for yourself what is the state of these proud persons' minds. Their fraud has failed them, their peace of mind is gone, their reputation has been