527. Nevertheless, there are some people who are incapable of examining themselves: for example, children and young men and women before they reach the age at which they can reflect upon themselves; simple people who lack the ability to reflect; all who have no fear of God; some who have a mental or physical illness; and also people who, entrenched in the teaching that justification comes solely through the faith that assigns us Christ's merit, have convinced themselves that if they practiced self-examination and repentance something of their own selves might intrude that would ruin their faith and divert or redirect their salvation from its sole focus.
For the types of people just listed, an oral confession is of benefit, although, as discussed earlier in this chapter [516-519], it is not the same as practicing repentance.
[2] People who know what sin is and especially those who know a lot about it from the Word and who teach about it, but who do not examine themselves and therefore see no sin within themselves, can be compared to people who scrape and save money, only to put it away in boxes and containers and make no other use of it than looking at it and counting it. They are like people who collect pieces of gold and silver jewelry and keep them in a safe in a storage room for no other purpose than to own them. They are like the businessman who hid his talent in the ground and the one who wrapped his mina in a handkerchief (Matthew 25:25; Luke 19:20). They are like the hardened pathways and rocks onto which the seed fell (Matthew 13:4-5). They are like fig trees with abundant foliage that bear no fruit (Mark 11:13). They are like hearts of stone that have not turned to flesh ([Ezekiel 36:26]; Zechariah 7:12). They are "like partridges that nest but do not bear young. They amass riches, but without judgment. In the middle of their days they leave their riches behind and at the end of their [lives] they become fools" (Jeremiah 17:11). They are also like the five young women who had lamps but no oil (Matthew 25:1-12).
[3] People who take in many teachings from the Word about goodwill and repentance and who know all about the commandments and yet do not live by those things could be compared to gluttons who stuff food in chunks into their mouths and swallow it without chewing, so that it sits undigested in their stomach and then clogs up their chyle and causes chronic diseases, from which they eventually die a wretched death.
No matter how much light they may have, people like this can be called winters, frozen lands, arctic climates, and indeed snow and ice, because they have no spiritual warmth.
