Integrity

We need to consider for a moment the matter of integrity. Integrity, as I understand it, is to do the right thing when no one is looking. Integrity means that your heart is not duplicitous and multi-layered, but it is simple and uncomplicated. Integrity means that you are what you say you are and what you portray yourself to be to others. Integrity means that you are honest with yourself and with God, which makes you honest with all men. Integrity means you are true.

A lack of integrity always begins with the self-deception of the lying human heart. The fall of the human heart into self-deception began in the Garden of Eden. The "father of lies" deceived the woman, and the woman fed the man. Both the man and the woman fell into the grip of sin and death when the man sinned. Then, their eyes were opened, and they saw immediately that they were naked. There is no doubt that they saw the "truth" about their condition, but the truth they saw became distorted because it was a self-referential truth, a subjective truth that flowed out of their own perception of themselves rather than the pure truth about them that can only be seen by God, who sees all things perfectly. They were immature and unable to see in any objective way the truth about themselves. They could not make true judgments because of their limited knowledge. They were not wise. They received knowledge of good and evil without the wisdom to understand the implications of such knowledge. Thus, their knowledge became deception.

The very first thing that Adam and Eve did once they knew they were naked is to become self-conscious before one another. They felt the need to cover themselves in front of each other. Thus, they made aprons of fig leaves to hide their nakedness from one another. Their self-deception flowing out of their foolish immaturity forced them to try and deceive one another. They could not afford to be honest and open with each other any longer. So, self-deception led them into "other-deception." This is what Paul talks about when he says that fools seek to measure themselves by others, which is not wise. When Adam sinned, he was doomed to a life of trying to measure up to others because he forsook the only true measure of righteousness: Jesus Christ. And finally, when God came into the garden to confront their sin, they attempted "God-deception." Of course, that did not work very well, for God cannot be deceived, but they tried it. "Self-deception" leads to "other-deception" to "God-deception" (which never succeeds). Man lies first to himself; then, he lies to others; and, finally, he lies to God.

After the fall of man and his expulsion from the Garden, the heart of man began to develop layers of self-deception producing more other-deception and attempting more God-deception. God responded to man's lies by giving him over to his lies. Because fallen man "received not a love for the truth, God sent them a strong delusion that they should believe a lie and be damned." However, God did not abandon man forever in the grip of his lies. The father of lies had enslaved man in a web of deception, but Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life, came to confront Satan's lies and preach the truth to man. This truth is brought into contact with the lying the human heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who breaks the power of the lie and causes men to believe the truth of the gospel. When men believe the truth, the power of the lie is broken and deliverance begins to come to the lying human heart.

Of course, the truth does not deliver us completely from self-deception all at once. The conquest of any land given over to idols takes years. God does not give us victory all at once. We gain victory by degrees. This causes a tremendous battle between the father of lies and the Spirit of truth for the deceitful hearts of men. Certainly the battle was won at Calvary, but now that victory must be applied in our lives every day. We must confront daily the lying nature of our heart and submit ourselves to the Spirit of truth. And there is only one way to do this: we must submit our heart each day to the Spirit of truth to be measured against "The Truth," Jesus Christ. Our self-deception, like Adam's, comes when we take to ourselves the task of determining what is right and wrong rather than learning this in relationship with God. The only way we can become true again is to be filled with the Spirit of truth that goes all the way down into the deceitful heart of man and confronts our lies at their root in our heart. Only by measuring ourselves against the Truth, Jesus Christ, can we be set free from the prison of self-analysis and self-comparison that is based on fear of men rather than love of God. And this truth must get to the heart of the matter and become truth in the inward parts.

This is the point we must grasp. We must get to the matter of being true in our hearts, of being true within ourselves because we are filled with the Spirit of truth. This sort of truth can only be achieved as we allow the Spirit to confront our little daily self-deceptions and make us honest with ourselves and with others and with God. The only way this can happen is for God to reveal our own heart to us. It is only in the presence of God that we can be truly laid bare before Him, to become naked before Him and allow Him to reveal the true nature and motives of our own heart. This is why we need deep, spiritual self-examination. Now, I do not mean that we need morbid self-introspection. Rather, we need the Holy Ghost to take us by the hand and show us our nakedness rather than seeking out our own follies by ourselves. That is merely repeating the error of Adam and Eve when seek to know ourselves apart from relationship with God. We must allow the Spirit to speak to us in preaching, prayer and praise and truly reveal our nakedness in His way and in His time so that He may clothe us in garments of glory in His time and in His way.

The bottom line is this: we must be honest with ourselves if we ever want to be honest with others and with God. We must be willing to confront who we really are and fall before God in humble repentance. This is entirely different from self-condemnation. Condemnation flows from self-introspection, and it is a lying introspection because it is our own lying heart trying to tell what we are all about. We need the Word and Spirit to stand as the true measure of who we are. We must allow God to search us out and correctly identify the truth about us. He will speak the truth in love. He will tell us what we need to hear as we need to hear it. And He will not berate us or upbraid us. He will love us into change and not browbeat us into condemnation. His truth will produce integrity.