Nature can afford no balsam fit for soul cure. Healing from duty, and not from Christ, is the most desperate disease. Poor, ragged nature, with all its highest improvements, can never spin a garment fine enough (without spot) to cover the soul’s nakedness. Nothing can fit the soul for that use but Christ’s perfect righteousness. Thomas Wilcox
There is nothing in all of creation that can heal the soul. That statement is so powerful and hits at some real issues with the Gospel of Christ alone, yet it is so ignored in how souls are dealt with. It is possible for the body to be healed and for the body to obtain help from things of nature, but it is heresy to assert that anything of nature can help the soul. The deceptive hearts of men and women who are born according to the flesh and by nature are children of wrath can do nothing to heal their own souls. A soul that is born from above is born of the Spirit and so it requires the Spirit and His work to heal the soul, but of course He works as the Spirit of the Great Physician. As the soul that is born of God as a supernatural work of God so the only cure that can cure the soul of sin is a supernatural work of God. As all of creation could not create itself or change its own nature, so the soul that is dead in sin can only be made alive by the giver of life. The use of analogies could be multiplied, but the real point and issue is that nature has nothing to help the soul.
Men and women try to heal their desperate disease of the soul (even death) by pasting a few dead works on the wound in order to cover it up, but that is no better than Adam’s leaves. We are given all sorts of duties in our day to help the soul, but what we don’t hear is that nothing found in nature and nothing that is produced by nature can possible touch the inmost aspect of the human being. People constantly try to make up for their past sins by present duties, which is nothing but trying to make up for our sins by our works. There is nothing a human being can do to make up for one sin much less the many multitudes of sins that humans commit daily, yet it is rare to find a person that does not try to make up for sin by working or doing good or being religious in some way.
The law was never given in order to help people save themselves and works were never given as a way of salvation. This is so very hard for the mind to grasp and deal with, but it is even harder to deal with it from the heart. A heart can still be in the bondage of works while professing justification by faith alone. A heart can still be the slave of sin and in bondage to works while professing Christ alone and grace alone. The heart has so many winding trails and deceptions that it will use orthodox language to support its heresies and its frail and futile attempts to work for salvation. The heart will take the orthodox language of justification and sanctification and yet use the orthodox language and theology to justify the hidden desire to be in control of salvation and so do it by works. We can say the words that our sanctification in some way is evidence of a changed heart, but our hearts can still be trusting in its works rather than Christ alone even as the mouth pours forth orthodoxy.
The human nature is so diseased with sin that it is sinful in all of its parts and nothing is left that is untainted by sin in human nature and in all the works that any human being can do. How can sinful works, though with some outward good in appearance, make up for sin when it is in itself sinful? How can sinful works, which the soul is trusting in, help the soul when it is adding to the sins of the person? How can good works, which Christ has created His people for, plans out the good works and gives them grace to do them make up for sin or add to righteousness? The human soul was not made to help itself, but instead it is to look to grace alone rather than works for its healing. The proud and very stout human heart will allow God to help it some and perhaps help it a lot, but the proud heart will not be saved by grace alone. The proud heart may be deceived enough that it will come to an intellectual understanding of grace alone and so bow to that, but in its heart it things it is distinguishing itself by believing the doctrine. This will not cure the soul that grace alone can do.
Orthodox doctrine and a grand system of doctrine can become a system of thought and/or works for some to think that they have arrived, but those doctrines and systems of doctrines can be held and believed to some degree without having the grace of Christ applied to the healing of the soul. A belief in correct doctrine can be that which comes from nature as well and a belief in a doctrine concerning Christ is different than a believing in Christ. A belief about grace is different than the application of grace by the Spirit on a believing soul. The soul cannot be healed by works of any kind and that includes the religious kind as well. We are lost apart from grace alone.
God Loves... Himself 
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