#56 Our worst enemy

From Meditations on the Epistles of John, by Samuel Froehlich

Now, if one has heard this witnessing and realizes and admits that he cannot yet find the character of a child of God in himself and is troubled about it, one must not despair nor doubt but much more believe in Christ the Light, and such impartial self-knowledge and confession is a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, to which satiety is promised (Matthew 5:6):

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."

and although this hunger and thirst is not yet repletion, it nevertheless is blessed, for it is the return to the fellowship of God; God lets the upright succeed and to the humble He gives grace. However, a pardoned one shall then take heed that he consider no deviation from the light insignificant, as if this and that could not harm him, but shall preserve and purify himself from all that is unclean which would force itself upon him or he can fall again from grace. Here also self-deception is our worst enemy.