Your main problem is that you love what is bad - bad habits, bad people, bad music, bad language, bad thinking. By nature, you hate what is good, and love what is bad. You have become reprobate, unable to distinguish what is good and bad. You rejoice to do evil, and delight in wickedness and perversity of evil. You have no concern or charity toward others that can never pay you back. The Gospel irritates you because it wants to get rid of your sin. Your attitudes are rebellious, and your natural appetites are filthy. You have rejected Christ and spiraled downward into darkness. Ask yourself - What do I like to watch, linger around, talk about, read, listen to, and look forward to? You relish in your sin as if it were a sport that excites you. You give approval and applause to those that practice sin. You're a full-blown sin-ner - you long to participate in, listen to, and watch those things which are offensive to God.
One of the main things that keeps many a man from believing on Jesus Christ, is that he has a self-righteous idea of himself. This is exceedingly common with human nature. The man thinks that he is not as other men are, and even though he doesn't tell you, he is very proud of himself. He doesn't say it, but at the bottom of his heart, he is convinced that nobody is worthy of greater respect than he is. He has been scrupulously honest, he works hard, he brought up his family the best he could, paid his bills, obeyed the authorities, and set a good example in his own way. He is a good fellow in his own eyes, for he is generous to the poor, and gives time and money to his church.
This kind of self-made man will not believe the Gospel, for the Gospel tells him that he is fallen, that his Christ rejection is wicked, and that his past sins are so many that God has already condemned him forever (John 3:18); and that he must escape from that condemnation, or he must go to Hell. The Gospel tells him there is no salvation except by pure grace through faith in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, apart from human merit. The Gospel denies that he has any merit. The Gospel pulls off all of his self-made garments in which he boasts, and makes him stand naked before the divine justice of God, and the self-righteous man does not like that at all. The man says, "No! I will not be treated this way, the Gospel destroys my character. I'm the boss of me. I will take my chances and not believe the Gospel, but hope still to be saved by my own natural goodness." The man doesn't understand that the spiritual Law judges his thoughts, desires, and imaginations as sinful. His self-righteousness holds him back from Christ.
If you died today and went to Hell, God would be perfectly within His rights to condemn you. You've earned death and Hell. You've worked at it all your life; the wages of your sins against God is Death. You have it coming. You are a terrible rascal in the sight of God. It is so difficult to find a guilty sinner in America today; self-righteousness is a damnable thing. The reason why any man ever gets saved, is because he finally realizes that he's not good enough to get to heaven by his own righteousness. You justly deserve to go to Hell, because you think you don't need God's Son, Jesus Christ. Now understand - An innocent Sufferer died in your place.
A bad man knows a clean woman, when he sees one. You know an innocent man when you see one. Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God, was Innocent, and He died in your stead. Homicide is when you kill a man, Infanticide is when you kill an innocent baby, Regicide is when you murder a king, and Deicide is when you kill your God. Your sins killed God manifest in the flesh on Calvary's Cross (Isaiah 53:5-6). What can wash away your sins? Nothing but the Blood of Jesus (Romans 5:9; Colossians 1:20). Blood is pumping through your body right now, and it is giving you physical life; and God's Blood (Acts 20:28) is the only thing that can give your immortal soul eternal life after your body dies. Jesus was the innocent Substitute who bore your sins in His own body and paid the price due to divine justice for your sins. Jesus was hurt for you; your sins caused His pain, suffering, and death.
Self-righteous religious ego-maniacs wind up in Hell where they belong. Human nature wants to be somebody and feel significant. Only the Substitute satisfied the demands of the Law and Divine Justice. The Law says someone has to die for your sin. It can either be you, or it can be Christ, you choose. Jesus' Blood paid all that the Law demanded and fully satisfied all the claims of God's divine justice. Please don't die and go to Hell when you don't have to. A guilty conscience makes cowards of us all. Skepticism, indifference, carelessness, infidelity, thoughtlessness cannot quieten a troubled conscience. God gave you a conscience, a built-in alarm system, that alerts you to your dangerous state, similar to a smoke alarm in your home. Men reject Christ because of the fear of man, loving and holding to sin, and procrastination.
You've never done anything to merit Christ's Substitution for you. God must give you a break you don't deserve, or you will perish. Human nature thinks it can get to heaven by doing something to earn it. None can keep alive his own soul. If you try to help Christ out, you will die in your sins. Look only to the bloody Sacrifice of Christ - the Great Sin-Bearer. Give yourself up to Jesus now, on the spot. Your sin and guilt will remain on your soul until you repent, forsake your own righteousness, and trust completely to the *Blood* of Jesus Christ. Whatever you may be trusting besides Jesus Christ, drop it. Jesus died in your place, trust Him without delay.
O God, I know I am a lost and guilty sinner, I know I can't help save myself, I want to be saved from sinning against You, and here and now, You helping me, the best way I know how, from my heart, I trust and receive Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, as my personal Savior from divine justice and the love of sin, I trust only to His atoning blood for the free forgiveness of all my sins, and from now on, I want to be counted on His side.
