Human nature believes that God will accept something short of perfection. Each man has a different standard that he dreams up. Once there was a miserly old gentleman—his standard is that he will build an orphanage with his filthy lucre and that would satisfy the Most High. Another says, “I will never open my store on Sunday.” Perhaps he cheats enough on Monday to make up for it, but on Sunday he rests—that will do for his god. Another, who is living a wicked life in private, he believes in the doctrines and ordinances of his church, and thinks that will satisfy his god. But the man who is saved by the Grace of God says, “My God is infinitely just. Nothing will content Him but a perfect Righteousness. Nothing will please the God of glory but His Precious Son “alone.” As a moral Lawgiver, He will not put away sin till He has laid punishment upon One who stood in the sinner’s place. God so loved His enemies that He gave His Son. God is so just that He slew His Son on your behalf.
Don't die being “ignorant of God's righteousness.” See Romans 10:3-4. There are many souls today who are ignorant as to the true Righteousness of God’s Character. They do not know how intensely He hates sin, how His anger burns against injustice and untruth. They have never conceived an idea of how pure God really is, how infinitely holy. They have never understood words in Isaiah 6: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.” “You think,” says God, “that I am altogether such a one as yourself—that if you are pleased with your righteousness, I must be pleased with it, too. And if your poor pride and dead conscience is satisfied, therefore God must be satisfied, also.” You are satisfied with your own holiness, and you are ignorant of God’s perfect Righteousness!
Your salvation lies absolutely outside of yourself, in the Person and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not in what you do, but in what He is. If you add to that foundation one stick or stone of your own—thought, feeling, or work of your own—by way of trusting in it you have spoiled the salvation of Christ! It shall never be “Christ and Company.” Only Christ Himself, God manifest in the flesh, can save from the love of sin and the wrath to come. Therefore be sure that if Jesus is to save you, you must let Him do it, and you must stand out of the way, see.
Human nature is ignorant of the righteousness of the Law of God. You may hear the Ten Commandments read in church, or see them posted somewhere, but you will not know anything about them by merely reading them. There is a depth of meaning in those Commandments, of which self-righteous persons are ignorant. For instance, when they read, “Thou shall not commit adultery,” does it strike most men’s minds that even a lustful look breaks that Commandment? Do they reflect that not only acts of fornication and uncleanness, but indecent words, thoughts and looks are forbidden by that Command?
A man reads, “Thou shall not kill,” and he thinks to himself, “I never committed a murder." But Christ says, “He that is angry with his brother, without a cause, is a murderer”—and hatred is the conception of murder. Murder is but hate ripened into a deed and, therefore, the least degree of hate is a violation of the Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Let me stretch out the line before you for a moment. “Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Who among us has ever done that? The man who says, “I have kept the Law” is simply ignorant of God's Righteousness, which the Law of God sets before us as the Divine requirement! You could never fulfill the Law in all its length, breadth, heighth, and depth, because you a sinner through and through.
A person that is self-righteous and hopes to get to Heaven by his works and his religion is ignorant of God’s righteous requirements with regard to his own heart. God requires not only that you should do that which is right, but that you should think that which is right, that you should desire and love that which is right, yes, and that you should Be that which is right! He desires His Truth in the inward parts and in the hidden part, He would have us to know His wisdom which is first pure.
If you could entirely control your tongue, yet you would still be guilty before God, even with that tongue, for there is such a thing as idle silence as well as idle speech! And God also hears all the words spoken in your mind, that you don't speak with your physical tongue. If it were possible to keep the hands right in all things, yet the heart might, all the while, be willing and anxious to move the hands wrong, and after all, it is the way of the heart which is the true test of the man’s life. Unless you are clean through and through inwardly, in the core and center of your being, you have not reached to the righteous requirements of God. What do you say to this?
I know this may be upsetting you, but have patience with me a few minutes longer. Suppose that you were to get to Heaven in your way, what would happen? I am afraid that holy place would become more than a little mixed up. You will throw up your hands and say, “I have managed it, after all!” This will lead to a very speedy contest and quarrel. You will begin to boast and glorify yourself, and depend upon it, the souls up in Glory are only saved by Grace, and they only glorify the Lamb of God!
Our jealousy for Christ's Glory will not allow us to tolerate you in the courts of God! Our Lord is not going to have any discord in Heaven—we shall all sing the Lamb of God's praises there, or never sing at all! There will be no divided praise around the throne of God, and the praise shall be set to the tune of Salvation all of Grace. “Salvation to our God that sits upon the Throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever.” Salvation is freely offered to you today, without money and without price, but men would like to pay for it at least with something from themselves. The sinful nature of man (the flesh) is at enmity with God and will not have salvation as free gift. You have a zeal but not according to knowledge. Please don't go about to establish your own righteousness, but submit yourself to the righteousness of God. Come to the feet of Jesus at once, and simply yield to the Grace and Blood of God.
