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"Before himself! But that means, finally, before God. God has posed to him this disturbing question, whether he is something or whether he is nothing. He feels that he is responsible for himself, that he is called to be something. All human need for acceptance wants finally to create the answer to this genuinely vital question: Am I anything right at all, or am I nothing? fI (114 f.).

"Just that is the basic sin: to want to be accepted before God by one's own power! Before God no one can be accepted as something by his own power; before God no one can boast. Such boasting violates the glory of God, the Creator. 'What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?' (1 Cor 4:7). In his drive for acceptance, man forgets that he is God's creature. And in that case it is of no consequence whether he speaks of God as the Pharisee does or whether he does not speak of God at all. Both are sin against God; both are man's wanting to be accepted before God by his own power, and so sin and self-deception" (116).

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