If ever you saw Christ, you saw Him a Rock, higher than self-righteousness, Satan, and sin (Psa 61:2) and this Rock follows you (I Cor 10:4); and there will be continual dropping of honey and grace out of that Rock to satisfy you (Psa 81:16). Examine if ever you have ever beheld Christ as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Be sure you have come to Christ, that you stand upon the Rock of Ages, and have answered to His call to your soul, and have closed with Him for justification. Thomas Willcox
The great problem with the Pharisees and seemingly for all of history has been the issue of self-righteousness and pride in the works of self. The little paragraph above by Thomas Willcox is against self-righteousness in all aspects. The proud Pharisee wanted to trust in self, the will of self, and the works of self for a right standing before God, and so the proud heart of people today will look to their civility or their religion for a right standing before God. One interesting thing to note is that almost no one believes this to be true about him or herself. It is always the other person that does this, or perhaps people think that this passed away during the time of the Pharisees.
The human heart is proud, self-centered and full of evil as well as being very deceptive, which makes it easy for the deceiver to work a real deception under the cloak of darkness on human hearts. The deceiver will not work to get all people to believe that they can work their way to heaven by being good enough, but he will attack the heart on the nature of God and then on the nature of depravity and of the Gospel. He will tell people that a loving God will not require perfection from people and so they can relax as long as they are sincere and nice to others. This is nothing more than an attack on God and on the Gospel and it is teaching men that their righteousness is enough. It is a dastardly attack on the Gospel of grace alone and Christ alone. It teaches men that they can be saved by what they do or something in them rather than Christ and grace alone.
Well, some say, that is obvious and I certainly don’t do that. But how many today seem to trust in a creed, being conservative, or standing for moral issues of the day? How many people trust in themselves enough to trust in Christ and how many think that their faith has to be worked up by themselves in order that they may trust in Christ? How many think that “making” Christ Lord and being moral shows that they have faith? How many trust in the fact that they are orthodox and are stringently moral? How many trust in the fact that they believe justification by Christ alone rather than actually trust in Christ alone? How many believe they are converted because they believe that salvation is by grace alone but they don’t really rest in grace alone for salvation?
The heart must be shredded of faith in itself and believing that it can do anything before it can rest in Christ alone. It is a far different thing to trust in Christ alone by grace alone than it is to believe that one does so. It is easy to go to church and hear sermons that are orthodox as we live moral lives and conclude that we must be believers in Christ. But we must reach an end of self and that comes by the work of God in the soul rather than human strength. We must come to the end of the sufficiency of self that we may see all the sufficiency is found in Christ. We must come to an end of all hope in our sincerity, our orthodoxy, and our morality as a hope on which we stand. If we have hoped in those things we are standing on menstrual cloths at best. The Law was never given as a way of salvation in the slightest, and we must say that orthodoxy and morality were never given as a way to have hope in either. Those things should drive us to Christ that we may rest in Him and His righteousness and grace alone.
A justified soul is one that stands holy and blameless before God because of Christ alone and not because of anything that the soul has done or will ever do. Souls that are weak and wavering should know that they are justified by the cross and righteousness of Christ alone and not because they believe it, but they believe because of grace alone. We must not look to our own faith, but instead we are to look to Christ. We must not look to our own faith, our own sincerity, our orthodoxy, or our own morality because we must have Christ and His righteousness alone. Christ gives those things to His people because of grace, which is to say that He was sent by the Father to save a particular people and not because of anything they have done, can do, or ever will do. God saves sinners because of God and His own glory. That is the heart of grace.
We must not look to self for anything nor expect anything of ourselves but sin, though we are to grow in holiness. All good comes to the soul as a spiritual blessing and all spiritual blessings are found in Christ. Unsaved sinners must learn to look to Christ alone by grace alone and saved sinners must learn to look to Christ alone by grace alone. All need to learn to live by grace each moment of the day and not just look to a time when we “were saved.” This is to say that Christ must teach us to live by Himself and the grace and honey He gives us each moment. To be justified by Christ is not just something to believe in the head, it is to actually see that Christ saves sinners by Himself and by grace alone. Sinners must actually look to Him with nothing in themselves and see Him by grace alone. They do this by grace alone as well.
God Loves... Himself 
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