The Most Fearful Fact of My Nature

The extreme hardness which comes over the heart of a backsliding professor of religion.

• This is a thing which is most painfully brought out in the case of Judas Iscariot.
• One might have thought that the sight of our Lord's trouble, and the solemn warning, "One of you shall betray Me," would have stirred the conscience of this unhappy man. 
• But it did not do so. 

One might have thought that the solemn words, "what you do, do quickly," would have arrested him, 

• and made him ashamed of his intended sin. 
• But nothing seems to have moved him. 
• Like one whose conscience was dead, buried, and gone, 
• he rises and goes out to do his wicked work, and parts with his Lord forever.

The extent to which I may harden myself by resisting light and knowledge is one of the most“fearful facts in my nature. 

• We may become past feeling, like those whose limbs are mortified before they die. 
• We may lose entirely all sense of fear, or shame, or remorse, and have a heart as hard as the nether millstone, 
• blind to every warning, and deaf to every appeal. 

It is a painful disease, but one which unhappily is not uncommon among professing Christians. 

• None seem so liable to it as those who, having great light and privilege, deliberately turn their backs on Christ, and return to the world. 
• Nothing seems likely to touch such people, but the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God. 

Let me watch jealously over my heart, and beware of giving way to the beginnings of sin. 

• Happy am I when I fear always, and walk humbly with his God. 
• I am the Christian when I am the one who feels my weakness most, and cries most frequently, "Hold me up, and I shall be safe." (Psalm 119:117; Prov. 28:14.)

Excerpt From

The Gospel of John

J. C. Ryle