Human nature thinks that some men are better than others naturally, and by self-improvement of their good traits and virtues they may at last become good enough to earn God's mercy and favor. Every man knows right and wrong, but he prefers the wrong; he is aware of the light, but he loves the darkness. He willingly turns from the truth, because his heart is alienated from God. Self thinks highly of the dignity of human nature, the excellency of carnal virtues, and the merits of moral reformation. By sinning you have destroyed yourself, and all your help is found in Jesus alone. You are condemned and have no means of self-justification, but there is Precious Blood that can save your soul.
Self-righteousness is diametrically opposed to the whole spirit of the Gospel. The Gospel is not for those who can help save themselves, but those that are entirely lost. If you can save yourself, go and do it, the Gospel is only for ungodly sinners who cannot help save themselves, who know they are guilty, and confess it plainly to God. Self-righteousness leads a man to think highly of himself. These thoughts are very deadly. Grace makes the creature nothing, and the Crucified Creator everything.
Grace is only bestowed upon guilty, worthless, helpless sinner, to save him from first to last, that Christ may wear the crown. The Gospel is hard, only if you are proud. It is hard to trust Christ, for you are so self-righteous, and you want to have a finger in your own salvation. The Holy Spirit cuts a man down to the ground, and takes away all of a man's power, strength, merit, boasting, and glorying. Men speak and boast of vanities, but not Christ Jesus. All you have to do is put the empty bottle down in the water of life and let the water go gurgling into it, till it fills up to the brim.
Repentance is the consciousness of sin, and then the loathing and forsaking of sin. Men are in bondage to self-righteousness and/or licentiousness. Men think lightly of their sins, the punishment due to sin, and deny the need of an Atonement. Loathe the very thought of self-righteousness, for you are guilty, undeserving and meriting only to be banished from the presence of God forever. Your self-efforts will only dig your own grave spiritually. The Holy Spirit must give us repentance and faith to believe on Jesus; He gently helps us out of our lostness and despair.
A man will cling to his own righteousness with a death-grip as long as he can. Have done with trying to help save yourself from sin and the judgment to come. That's like a man with Stage-IV cancer using a band-aid and Tylenol to cure himself. Only the Blood of Jesus can deliver you from the chains of sin, the tyranny of your carnal passions, and the evil domination of your lusts. Believe on the Lamb of God and be rescued from your evil-self. The blood and water flowed from Jesus' pierced side on Calvary - blood to take away your criminality, and water to take away your tendencies to sin.
Every sinner is utterly impotent apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. Think much of the Precious Blood and Finished Work of Jesus. No man can serve God acceptably in his own righteousness, for it is filthy rags. Lay hold on Christ now by Faith in His Blood. Never think of putting your own righteousness side by side with the divine Righteousness and Atoning Sacrifice of Christ. Human nature delights in human religion - confess your sins to a priest, pay him a buck, get absolved, and then go away and live as you always do till your next confessional. But the Gospel says, you must forsake your evil ways, ye must be born again.
Jesus saves men from their sins, but men do not want that. The evil in your heart makes it hard to believe the pure Gospel. The Gospel brings a man from drunkenness to soberness, thievery to honesty, slander to praise, self-righteosuness to humility, lasciviousness to purity, malicious to forgiveness, covetous to generous, resentment to lowliness. Human nature delights in self and forgets the Savior. The scriptural fact that Christ died for the ungodly renders self-righteousness a folly.
A man should not pretend that he is good when Christ died for the ungodly. Close in at once with the Gospel. You can't bargain or barter with the Savior, cast away your self-righteousness. O God, I must lie down and die now, I cannot live any longer, for I have seen the Righteousness of Christ, and there is no place for me. You must trust Christ alone, or be lost forever.
As long as you think your salvation can be effected by any of your efforts or merits, or anything else that comes from you, you are on the wrong track. It is my duty to discourage you from trusting in yourself at all. The way of life lies in the opposite direction. You cannot work eternal life into yourself, eternal life is the free gift of God. Sinner, you must come to God, and Jesus is the only safe way to approach God. You are bad throughout, for you are a sinner.
Give your self-righteousness up as a sinking ship that cannot be saved, it must be abandoned, and you must get into the Life-Boat of free grace and dying love. The Gospel is a very humbling thing. Are you too proud to receive the simple, free Gospel? The Gospel tells the sinner that he is no good, and that he has no power to obtain merit in the future. You must be saved by God's power, not your power. You must be saved by Another, and washed from your sins in the Blood of Jesus. You don't like the Gospel, because it doesn't leave your self-righteousness any room to work or glory.
If there were some great thing for you to do, you would do it, but because there is nothing for you to do but to accept what Another has done, you will not have Him. Your pride, self-righteousness, and love for sin is at the bottom of your rejection of Christ and His free grace. Man by nature is a superstitious idolater that will trust his feelings and believe anything but the Gospel of Christ. You must have faith in the unseen Creator, purely spiritual worship, and simple reliance upon the promises of God. Think, consider, come directly to Jesus. Human nature puts reliance upon itself, and kicks against Salvation by grace alone. Human nature will trust in man, religion, ceremonies, feelings, in anything but the unseen Creator God.
The general religion of the natural man is to carefully pursue saving yourself with the help of the Lord Jesus Christ, they tack Jesus on to their activity, of course, to make their self-righteousness seem a little more respectable. In the sight of God, this type of religion is not worth one solitary penny. The Salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ gives a sinful man a complete, full, free, instantaneous, irreversible pardon of all his sins at once, changing his nature, implanting the divine nature, and putting him into the family of God - this is a miracle done in the heart of a sinner by the Holy Spirit.
Reliance upon self-righteousness is the worst form of pride; it is the most deadly sin. You cannot earn favor with God. Human sin was punished upon Jesus at Calvary. The Gospel points the sinner to Christ Jesus and tells him to give up his righteousness, rotten vices, and idolatry. The self-righteous man depends upon his own doings in some way or fashion. What saith the Scriptures? There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. You must come into personal contact with the Precious Blood of Jesus by simple faith in Crucified Incarnate God. You must be reconciled to God by faith in the blood of Jesus. Lift up the cross and cause of Christ. Adoration of the virgin Mary is a satanic delusion. Mary was a sinner and has no merit, but Jesus does.
Believe in Jesus' ability to save your soul, and at once trust your soul in His hands. Christ is All. Human nature thinks it can help save itself, and that human goodness can satisfy God, but this thinking insults the Savior who came into the world to work out a perfect Righteousness for us. Cease from your fruitless toil, exertion, and boasting, and trust only in Christ's doings.
