#15 Virtue

From Spiritual Breadcrumbs, by Samuel Froehlich

Virtue is not worth anything merely because it is the opposite of vice. Reason would say that the reprobate is rejected of God and the virtuous man is acceptable to Him. But it is not so, otherwise the virtuous Pharisees would have been most beloved of the Lord and the reprobate publicans and others would have been the most disdained by Him – and it is exactly the opposite. That is not the rule that applies with God; the naturally virtuous are the farthest from Christ. Virtue is only the avoidance of great vice, and thus a whited sepulcher that on the inside is full of mold and filth. Thus it is all the same if I say a “virtuous man” or a “hypocrite”; there could be no hypocrites if they did not have an appearance of godliness, and this appearance of godliness is human virtue. Sanctification through the Spirit of Christ, indeed the entire work of conversion and regeneration of man, has no greater enemy than human virtue. Not vice, but virtue blocks the Saviour from the path to the heart. Virtue is in a word the Pharisees’ righteousness; but the leaven of the Pharisees is hypocrisy.

Matthew 5 verse 20: For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Luke 12 verse 1: In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, "Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."