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The Gospel is for sinners only.  Sinners are in an awful condition spiritually.  Every sinner needs saving from divine justice.  You may have a fine idea about yourself, but you're in a mess spiritually.  You may think you're pretty good and have not done anything that is really that bad. You have sinned against God, and can't unscramble those eggs you have broken.  You have broken the Law of God, that makes you a sinner, and as a sinner you are in a very dangerous and terrible condition, from which nothing can save you but Christ Jesus Himself.  It is a grave peril to be an unsaved sinner here on earth.  You have broken your Maker's commands all through your life.  You have neglected God's will and rejected His Son, this is a crying evil in the sight of God.

Your heart chooses the wrong and leans to evil.  Your mind does not love God; you care most about yourself, not your Maker.  Your soul is in a sin-diseased state.  The sins you have committed have defiled and polluted your soul, and left you in spiritual darkness and death.  The thrice-holy Creator hates sin in a way that cannot be conceived by man.  God abhors sin with all His holy nature.  Sin is obnoxious to God's sensitive pure nature.  The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord Jesus Christ.  God's divine nature delights in everything that is good, and abhors everything that is evil. Sin is in you and on you right now, and God cannot tolerate you in His presence.  Your impure thoughts, idle words, vile lustings, and evil deeds have condemned you in God's sight.

Every sinner not currently saved by Christ Jesus is in a deadly condition.  You are unable in your own way to escape from your sins or the wrath and punishment which is due to your sins.  You cannot put away your past sins or pay for your future sins against God.  Jesus did that on the Cross.  The secret sins of your youth, manhood, and old age will be judged in the last day. No man can escape the damnation of hell by religious accomplishments or human goodness.  The unregenerate sinner is in a terrible condition every day he lives here on earth.  Without Jesus Christ, you are in big trouble with God.  You are awfully and infinitely lost since it took an infinite Savior to offer a sinless Blood Atonement in order to save sinners from the wrath to come.

Christ's Great Salvation is meant for men who are sinners, and none else.  The real meaning of being a sinner is not known and truly realized until God the Holy Ghost reveals it to a man.  Fools make a mock at sin.  They make light of sin.  They jest at their sinful actions and the sins of others.  They make a mock when someone reproves them for their sins, and scoff at those who admonish them.  They laugh at Eternity and the awful judgment to come.  They make light of Jesus' Precious Blood.

Christ Jesus made His soul an offering for human sin, to make satisfaction and Atonement for my sins.  Unsaved men prefer their own efforts to the Sacrifice and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ's Blood.  Self-righteous folks have a notion that Jesus came into the world to save respectable people.  According to them, Jesus came to save people who do their best in attending worship, in giving, in paying their own way, and doing their best sincerely.  They believe they can get right and stay right in hopes of this helping them at the Judgment in some way.  They do not throw Jesus out, He is always in their counterfeit gospel in some way or another.  They partly save themselves, and partly Christ saves them; they think have two saviors, but they wind up with none. They don't think they can do it all, they suppose Jesus will come in at the end and make up the difference at the Judgment they could not accomplish, and that He will turn the scale in their favor since they did their best in their religiousness.  They try to mingle their own doings with Christ's perfect Righteousness, and damn their own soul to Hell.  Their trumpet gives an uncertain sound, and they leave lost men confounded and condemned.

You see this is the problem - the self-righteous religionist supposes that there must be something that comes from the sinner to recommend him to God.  They do not understand that God sent His only begotten Son to bleed and die in order to save men who God views in the base and horrible character of sinners.  You see, men are only evil; there is no good in any man on the face of this earth, and God will only have mercy on a sinner for Jesus' sake alone.  This scriptural truth is impossible for the carnal self-righteous mind to understand and accept.

Only sinners are the objects of Christ's free Salvation.  None but helpless sinners need saving.  Every man through his sinning has ruined and condemned himself.  None but the guilty need the glad tidings of free pardon and saving grace.  Guilt must be admitted in order for mercy and pardon to come to the sinner.  The innocent man does not need Christ's Mercy.  All sinners by nature are dead within spiritually, and they are the enemies of God.  Sinners are debtors to God, and when they acknowledge they have nothing to pay, only then will Jesus freely forgive all their debt.

Jesus only came to save guilty sinners.  Consider closely His sufferings for sinners like you - the bruisings and wounds of the scourge, the pricks of the thorns on His brow, the bleeding stripes on His back, the prints of the nails in His hands and feet, His pierced side, His Precious Blood.  Jesus suffered unspeakably on account of your sins against God.  The Cross is only a piece of jewelry or a religious relic to most folks today.

Look now to the dreadful tree where God Incarnate bled away His life for your guilty soul.  See there the Substitutionary Bloody Sacrifice of God manifest in the flesh who was punished for human sin which He bore in His own body on the tree.  The pardon of sins and peace with God come only through faith in the Savior's atoning blood.  The Christ of God was punished in the sinner's place at Calvary.  His shameful bloody death was for my sins.  Jesus loved me, and gave Himself for my sins.  The Lamb of God yielded Himself unto death for my soul.  Now always remember - The Gospel is only for the ungodly.