And let us here remark that nothing humbles a man like the mercy of God. Unkind, ungenerous remarks do not humble the soul, they rather gender pride. Under the criticisms of unkindness a man who is a man finds all that is strong within him coming to the front, and, as in Job’s case, self-assertion straightway leads the van. Reproach and rebuke tend rather to make men proud than humble, love is the melting power. Nothing weighs a man down like a load of blessing. When you see God blotting out your sin, accounting you righteous in his sight, for Jesus’ sake, and saying to you, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee,” where is boasting then? It is excluded. Love shows boasting to the door, and bars its return.
Peter was ready enough to speak of what he had done, but in the presence of his loving Lord, when be saw his ship sinking through the plenteous draught of fishes, he knelt down and cried in deep humiliation, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Marrow and Fatness," delivered March 29, 1874. Image by Hamed Saber on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
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