If you have seen Christ truly, you have seen pure grace, pure righteousness in Him every way infinite, far exceeding all sin and misery. If you have seen Christ, you can trample upon all the righteousness of men and angels, so as to bring you into acceptance with God. If you have seen Christ, you would not do a duty without Him for ten thousand worlds (I Cor. 2:2). Thomas Wilcox
It may be a rather puzzling comment to some to think of Wilcox’s horror of doing a duty without Christ. The glory of Christ is such that a thought of doing a work from the flesh and not from and to His glory is a terrible thought to those who have seen Christ to some degree. This is not a matter of justification as such, but it shows the love of the heart for Christ and for His glory. The Lord Jesus told His disciples that apart from Him they could do nothing, that is, they could do nothing spiritual and they could not do anything that would bring forth spiritual fruit. The only things that are done that are true spiritual fruit are the things done that come from Christ first. He is the vine and His true people are the branches, so any fruit that comes from the branch actually comes from Christ and through the branch. Any work done apart from Christ, then, is a work of the flesh and is a fleshly religion.
Romans 11:36 sets out a very basic truism for the whole of the Christian life: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” If the soul is going to do something for Him (for His glory), then the soul must receive it from Him first and it must be through Him as well. There is nothing that a soul can do for the glory of God if it comes from the flesh, but what the soul receives from God can be to the glory of God. If what the soul does is from the flesh, it is for the glory of the flesh and it is self-centered at its very core. What the soul does for the glory of God must (absolutely must) come from God who shines forth His glory in Christ and what is received from Him through Christ must also be sent back to Him with motives of love through Christ as well.
In John 17:1 the Son prayed for the Father to glorify Him that He (The Son) may glorify the Father. This is the pattern of the believer, though we must receive all from the Son and all that is returned must go through the Son too. But the only way a believer is able to glorify the Father is with the glory that the believer receives from the Father. There is no power and no glory in the human flesh that is able to manifest the glory of God and so a believer must receive from the Father the glory that the believer is to glorify the Father with. The soul has to come to the reality about itself that there is nothing that it can do to glorify God apart from God working this glory in the soul by His own hand and through Christ.
Another reason that the soul should be horrified to do a good work without Christ is because of the taint of sin in all we do. There is not a good work we do that does not need the blood of Christ to wash it and make it clean. There is not a good work we do that does not need the perfect righteousness of Christ as a basis for doing what we do as love for Him rather than a work for self-righteousness regardless of what we call it. If even our best works are as menstrual cloths before Him then surely it is obvious that we must have the blood and righteousness of Christ for even our very best. But if we need Christ for our very best, what of the things that are not our best and what of the things that are perhaps our worst?
The teaching of Holy Scripture as understand by those who have felt the weight of depravity, inability, and helplessness of sin are of great comfort. While they teach us that we must have Christ for our best and our worst and all things in between, they also teach us that Christ Jesus came to save sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ did not go to the cross and suffer and die for good men, but for the ungodly and the despised and the ignoble. The Lord Jesus Christ does not smile upon the nice, the civil, and the religious and send them on their way to do good works, but instead if He did not die for their good works those same “good works” would send them to a devil’s hell. Every sinner must have Christ Himself or s/he will perish. Every sinner must have Christ each moment of the day. Every unsaved sinner must have Christ or s/he will never have nothing but the wrath of God upon him or her forever. Every saved sinner must have Christ as His life or s/he will not truly live. Every saved sinner must have Christ or the hunger and thirst of their souls will not be satisfied. Every saved sinner must have Christ and to have Christ it must come by grace alone and not by Christ and one work or many works. Grace will stand in the soul alone or it will not stand at all. Poor sinner, do you live each moment by grace? Do you think that your morality, goodness, and perhaps works will please Him? Oh no, only Christ will please Him and only grace.
God Loves... Himself 
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