Why must we be born again? That is the question. What is it that makes the rebirth an absolute necessity if we are truly to become Christian? The first answer is this--the treachery and the insincerity of our natures. David admits that in these words: 'Behold, thou desirest truth (or sincerity) in the inward parts'. That is the trouble. You see the steps through which David has gone. He has been examining himself, he has come to recognize his sins, the things he has done. Then he goes a step further and says, "There is something rotten within me, within my heart, and in a sense I can do nothing about it, because I have come to see that I cannot trust myself. I lack sincerity in the depths of my very nature and being". What a terrible confession for a man to make about himself! And yet it is something that every christian must of necessity have come to see. Jeremiah put it in these words, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jeremiah 17:9). A great saint put it in a hymn in these words, "I dare not trust the sweetest frame." Do you trust yourself? If you do, you do not know yourself. Have you not yet discovered the twists and the turns and the perversion in your own heart? Have you not come to see the insincerity that is down in the centre? We are all hypocrites, we are all playing at make-believe, we are all pretending to be something we are not.
From "Out Of The Depths" by Martyn Lloyd-Jones (pg.77-78)
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