“God has no need to know our failure and falling. Whether we are standing up and overcoming or falling down and stumbling, God knows that the flesh is corrupt all the same. God knows our natural form. God has no hope that we will fulfill His righteousness by our flesh. He knows that we have nothing but sin. When we do good, He knows we are corrupt; when we do evil, He also knows we are corrupt. He does not need to wait until we fail or fall to know we are incurable. But we need failures and falling because, if it were not so, we could not know the self. When everything is going smoothly, when favorable winds are in the sails and we are victorious and filled with happiness, we think we are quite good and have what others do not have. Although we dare not boast in an obvious way, when we have a slight advancement in spiritual life or a slight success in spiritual work, it is hard for us not to think of ourselves and consider that we are indeed holy, able, and far superior to others. At such times, we unavoidably lose our trust in God and become careless. Therefore, God allows us to fall from glory to dust. He allows us to sin, fall, and backslide, in order that we would know that the self is unbearably corrupt, beyond cure, and that we ourselves are the same as the worst and most evil sinner in the world. As a result, we dare not assume anything in ourselves or glory in ourselves or boast in ourselves; rather, in everything we trust God with fear and trembling. Brothers, we need failures and fallings to humble us, to cause us to know the self and to know the flesh.”

(Knowing the Self)