Whatsoever is of nature’s spinning must be all unraveled before the righteousness of Christ can be put on. Whatever is of nature’s putting on, Satan will come and plunder every rag away, and leave the soul naked and open to the wrath of God. All that nature can do will never make up the least gram of grace that can mortify sin, or look Christ in the face one day. Thomas Wilcox
The Scriptures are quite clear about the need for souls to be humbled and broken before the soul is ready to look to Christ alone and His grace alone. Wilcox puts it in an analogy of clothing and the picture is that of spinning which is how they made clothes in his day. The idea, then, is that men and women make their own clothes of righteousness (obtained by morality and works) by spinning rather than look to the righteousness of Christ alone to cover their nakedness. When a person comes to see that his own works in obtaining righteousness is nothing but filthy rags, that person should see that all of his own covering must be unraveled that s/he might not trust in the slightest or smallest thread of his own working. Grace alone must work in the heart of this person and show the person where the rags are and where the small threads are.
For a person to reach the point of recognizing his or her own utter lack of righteousness that person must seek the Lord for this, though once again the seeking of the Lord does not earn it in any way. As David cried out in Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way” (vv. 23-24). The soul is spiritually dead and cannot see these things, and even when the soul is alive there is remaining darkness and it must have light to see. The soul must cry out to God for grace to open its eyes to see and then for grace to give it the desire to flee from sin and especially the sin of self-righteousness. Only grace can reveal the depths of sin and the depths of self-righteousness that every human being has. Only grace can give a person the real desire to be holy and only grace can give a person the broken heart that is needed to quit defending self and seek to be broken from self-righteousness and pride. How powerful is pride in the heart when part of its work is blinding sinners to their sin and self-righteousness. How terrible it is when the disease itself tries to blind us to the disease in the guise of health.
Matthew 18:3 and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.
The two passages of Scripture (one from each Testament) just above show us the necessity of this unraveling work of coming to and end of self and of self-righteousness. Can a person trust in the righteousness of Christ alone while trusting in self-righteousness to any point and degree? Can a person trust in grace alone to do the work while trusting in self-righteousness to any degree? The main point of Matthew 18:3 is that humility is the opposite of greatness and how very small children (even infants) are utterly dependant upon their parents. True conversion is when proud, self-righteous, and self-reliant sinners become like infants and receive all from Christ.
The passage in Isaiah shows the type of people that God dwells with. He does not dwell with the proud and the self-righteous, but He dwells with the contrite and lowly of spirit. This was the “spirit” that Christ had when He dealt with the Pharisees with strong words and yet had mercy upon the weak, helpless, and sinners. Self-righteousness is odious to God, yet those who have no righteousness of their own but know that they have nothing but their own sin and yet hold to the righteousness of Christ are the ones that Christ dwells with. God can behold the worst of sinners if they are in Christ and behold them in His love because of the perfect righteousness of Christ. On the other hand, God can look at the highest standard of human morality and religion and it will be an abomination to Him apart from Christ. We must seek for our own threads of self-righteousness to be unraveled and cast away from us as the worst of things. We should cry out in humility and brokenness for God to have mercy on our souls and grant Christ and His righteousness to us. Nothing else will save the soul and grant the soul the presence of the living God.
God Loves... Himself 
Leave a comment