Human Merit vs Christ's Merit 5

All sinners by nature are in an awful condition; they need saving and are in a very undesirable and wretched state. The self-righteous sinner has fine ideas about himself from his earliest recollection. Despite all that he says in his own favor, he has broken the law of God, and he is a sinner, and as a sinner he is in a terrible position, from which nothing can save you but the hand of Jesus Christ.

It is a grave calamity to be a sinner. You have broken your Maker’s commands. You have neglected God's will, which is holy and just and good. This is a crying evil and shame. You have a heart which does not choose the right, but leans to evil, and is ruining you. You have a mind which does not love God, but cares for itself more than for its Maker. You are in a diseased state of soul. The polluting influence of sin upon the soul is the direst of all mischiefs, the worst of all destructions: Sin is spiritual death. From the defiling and damning presence of sin every sinner needs to be saved. Human nature is evil, and only evil. Christ didn't come into the world to save anybody but sinners.

God hates your sins with a hatred scarcely to be conceived. You have lost the sensitiveness of perfect purity. Whatsoever things are impure, unchaste, untrue, unloving, unrighteous, God loathes with all the infinity of His perfect nature. Sin is obnoxious to the Creator God. “The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination unto the Lord.” The very necessity of God's divine nature must delight in everything that is good and pure, and He must abhor everything that is evil. O sinner, what a plight you are in since there is in you and upon you the sins which God cannot endure.

Christ Jesus came to this Earth to save sinners. Christ died for the ungodly - that's you Sir.  This is a plain matter of fact. But it is a fact scarcely ever realized: for only the Holy Ghost can reveal this truth to a sinner.  Do you want to save yourself?  Then you will drown, you will surely drown.  Why won't you just give and let Christ save your soul?  Believe that He can save you alone.  Fall back into His arms of love.  You will float then.  There is no drowning for the soul that gives itself up to Christ the Lifeguard, and trusts to Him entirely.

Most people think that Christ Jesus came into the world to save respectable people, who if they have done any wrong, it is not very wrong, and they have done their best to make amends and get things square with God.  The Lord Jesus Christ came to earth, according to them, to save people who do their very best and pay their own way. They do all they can to get right, and keep right, and surely they will be saved - this is how self-righteous men think and talk.

Their deluded theory of self-salvation is very mixed, but it comes down to this: that the Gospel is for good folks. They don't omit Jesus Christ completely from their empty religion - in this worldly gospel, Jesus comes in somewhere or another; but their religion is a kind of mingle-mangle, they partly save themselves and Christ partly saves them, and between the two they end up not being saved at all. Their vain notion is that, though they cannot do quite as much as they ought, so they mention Jesus' name to make their self-righteousness sound better.  This is the thought of the bulk of mankind. They do not know after all if they are going to be saved by human merit or divine mercy, whether Christ came to save sinners or the righteous. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners through His atoning blood and divine mercy. Human merit can never save a sinner. It must be either merit or Mercy, it cannot be both. Forsake yourself and look only to the Crucified One for all your Salvation.