When you go to God, ask for mercy, not for justice. You don't want to get what's coming to you, you want Mercy. You can never deserve divine Mercy. This is the way to plead - God be merciful to me a sinner, for Jesus' sake. The moral and the dissolute sinner, both must be saved the same way - by free mercy through Jesus' blood, not human merit. Out of the way sinners, outrageous, scarlet sinner are welcome at the Cross. Faith is trusting - trusting wholly upon the person, work, blood, merits, and power of the Son of God. The ground of real salvation is the merits of Christ - what Christ is, and what Christ has suffered. Give up laboring to save yourself, fall back upon the Finished Work of Jesus Christ and find real rest for your soul. God's grace or man's merit, faith in Christ, or faith in Self.
This is the way - Repent and be converted, leave sin, quit Self, trust in Christ alone. Lay your poor sinful heart at the feet of the Savior. Come to God on the free terms of Jesus' free love. Come on to the Cross if you wish to have your sins forgiven freely. Plead not merit, but mercy. Say, "Lord Jesus, I am sin, but you are Righteousness; I am hell, but you are Heaven." Repentance is to be sorry for your sins, changing your mind about your sins, and hating your sins, mourn over your transgressions before the offended God, and sincerely forsaking them with deep and hearty regret. He that confesseth and forsaketh his sins, shall find mercy. There is no merit wanted of you, there is no previous goodness required to qualify you, for Christ died for the ungodly. Then, why not you? The Blessed God came from Heaven and became a Jewish man, and as a man He took man's grief and sins upon Him, and went up to the Cross loaded with all human sin, and there suffered in our place, to make Atonement for our guilt. Don't trample the bleeding love of Jesus.
God is holy and a consuming fire. He dwells in unapproachable light, He is so holy that He cannot stand to look upon Sin. God is a thrice-Holy being - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Man on the other hand is sinful, wicked, and everything but holy. Man is estranged from his Maker. We cannot approach or satisfy God in our own righteousness. For this reason we must have a Sinless Mediator who is as perfect and holy as God who can go between a sinner and God. We need Someone who can fulfill the divine Law's holy demands on our behalf, and appease the wrath of God in our place. Jesus has done all this for us on the Cross. He accomplished holiness and satisfied divine justice in our stead and leads us into the presence of God, that we may enjoy Him without fear and condemnation.
Now understand - Only take Christ with you when you approach God. First, you must admit that you're inadequate and a sinner, but human nature doesn't like this, so it will concoct excuse after excuse to duck and dodge the truth of the Gospel, because human nature loves sin and wants to do its own thing. Not merit, but demerit is all that you can boast of; not reward, but wrath. Men who have no merits can easily receive the free gift of God. Jesus Himself is the Gift of God to the guilty sinner. You cannot procure eternal life by any merit of your own. You can't do anything to merit the Son of God's salvation.
Now understand - Only take Christ with you when you approach God. First, you must admit that you're inadequate and a sinner, but human nature doesn't like this, so it will concoct excuse after excuse to duck and dodge the truth of the Gospel, because human nature loves sin and wants to do its own thing. Not merit, but demerit is all that you can boast of; not reward, but wrath. Men who have no merits can easily receive the free gift of God. Jesus Himself is the Gift of God to the guilty sinner. You cannot procure eternal life by any merit of your own. You can't do anything to merit the Son of God's salvation.
Away with your works, Salvation must be a gift, for Jesus is The Gift. You cannot earn inestimable things such as pardon, sonship, eternal life, and heaven. Christ is All. What can a sinner bring to Christ? Everything is in Christ. Come to the Cross for a broken heart. A true sense of need, guilt, and inability is the Holy Spirit's work. True repentance and faith comes from God's grace. Human nature says, "Oh, but I must be something." But you must be nothing. You cannot drill this fact into men's brains or fix it into their proud hearts. Human nature clings to human merit and self-righteousness; human nature must be something, feel something, or do something. Away with self altogether, subside into nothingness. When the human mind is all chaos and darkness, only then the Spirit of God moves and is sure to work.
Go directly to Jesus through faith in His blood, just as you are; for you will never make yourself better. by self-help you will only be worse in the future, but never better. Go to Jesus now, just as you are, go to to the Cross and buy eternal life and the forgiveness of sins without money or merit. We can only approach God by the perfect merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot approach the Holy God in our merit. We come to God only by the virtue of Jesus' Infinite Merit. Human nature is sure to boast, but salvation is all of faith in Jesus' atoning blood, so we cannot glory in self. True faith is humble, and ascribes all praise to God. Jesus is most precious to the sinner with no works, no goodness, no merits, nothing to recommend them. A man will never need Christ as long as he has enough in himself.
