When have you appreciated God’s power enough to repent for your sins?

Book 3, Chapter 14: Meditation Upon the Hidden Judgments of God, that We May not be Puffed up Because of Our Good Works.

Chapter Focus: Forewarned is fore-armed. This is a serious meditation on the contemplation of our place, our works, our good intentions, in light of God’s holiness. Thomas tells us that God did not spare His Angels. How, therefore, do we merit any reckoning of our good works. In God’s sight these efforts and deeds are filthy rags (Is 64:5). Thomas takes us to the depths of the ocean to see our lowliness, and says emphatically that without the Lord, we are nothing. Usually in a meditation like this, Thomas ends with a hopeful note: Not here. He ends with “…the Truth of the Lord endures forever,” quoting Psalm 17 and Isaiah 40, but this is in the context of an admonishment against boasting.

So where does that leave us with this meditation?

Chapter 14, In Short.

1. What can I presume from You, O Lord; I, who am but dust.
2. O Lord, there is no holiness if You withdraw Your hand.
3. Oh, how humbly and lowly I ought to think of myself.
4. What is all flesh in God’s sight?

Question:

The Text of Chapter 14: Meditation Upon the Hidden Judgments of God, that We May not be Puffed up Because of Our Good Works.

Disciple: You thunder forth Your judgments over my head, O Lord, and You shake all my bones with fear and trembling, and my soul trembles beyond measure. I stand astonished, and remember that the heavens are not clean in Your sight (Job 15:15). You have charged Your angels with sin and did not spare them, what then shall become of me?

Stars have fallen from heaven, and what can I presume from You who am but dust (Rev 6:13)? They whose works seemed to be praiseworthy fell into the lowest depths, and those who ate the bread of Angels, I have seen delighted with the husks and pods of swine (Lk 15:16).

2. O Lord, there is no holiness if You withdraw Your hand.
If You cease to guide us, no wisdom helps us.
If You withdraw Your support, no strength is enough.
Without Your protection, no purity is secure.
If Your holy providence is not present, no guard that we can keep will aid us (Ps 127:1).

For when we are left alone we are swallowed up and perish. But when we are visited by You, we are raised up, and we live. For indeed we are unstable, but we are made strong through You. We grow cold, but are rekindled by Your fire (Heb 12:29).

3. Oh, how humbly and lowly ought I to think of myself. How must I weigh whatever good I may have done as if nothing was done at all (Is 64:5)! Oh, how profoundly I must submit myself to Your unfathomable judgments, O Lord, where I find myself to be nothing else save nothing, and again nothing, nothing! Oh weight unmeasurable, oh ocean which cannot be crossed, where I find nothing of myself as altogether nothing! Where, then, is the hiding-place of glory (Ps 32:7), where is the confidence born of virtue? All vain glory is swallowed up in the depths of Your judgments against me.

4. What is all flesh in Your sight (Is 40:6)? How shall the clay boast against the One Who fashioned it ( Is 29:16)? How can he be lifted up in vain speech whose heart is subjected in truth to God? The whole world can not lift up him whom Truth has established in humility. Nor will the one who has placed all hope in God be moved by the tongues of all who praise him. For behold, they themselves who speak are nothing at all; for they shall cease with the sound of their words, but the truth of the Lord endures forever (Psalm 17:2, Is 40:8).