To believing, there must be a clear conviction of sin, and the merits of the blood of Christ, and of Christ’s willingness to save upon this consideration, namely, that you are a sinner; things all harder than to make a world. All the power in nature cannot get up so high in a storm of sin and guilt as really to believe there is any grace, any willingness in Christ to save. When Satan charges sin upon the conscience, then for the soul to charge it upon Christ, that is gospel-like; that is to make Him Christ. He serves for that use, to accept Christ’s righteousness alone, His blood alone for salvation, that is the sum of the gospel. When the soul, in all duties and distress, can say, “Nothing but Christ, Christ alone, for righteousness, justification, sanctification, redemption,” (I Cor 1:30); not humblings, not duties, not graces; that soul has got above the reach of the billows. Thomas Willcox
If all the power in nature cannot get up so high in a storm of sin and guilt as really to believe there is any grace, any willingness in Christ to save, then this shows both the inability of man and yet the power of God in His grace in giving faith. A true belief, then, as Willcox says, includes or at least is in a chain of actions, a clear conviction of sin, a clear conviction of the merits of the blood of Christ, and also a clear conviction that Christ is willing to save simply and only that men are sinners. This is to say, once again, that there is nothing in the human being that makes them worth saving and there is no merit in the human being that even makes it more likely for God to save them. True faith looks away from self and anything in or about self that assists in salvation in any way and yet believes that Christ saves sinners because of nothing else by His grace and glory alone.
The natural inclination of the heart is to look to self for some reason or something that self is or that self has done when it sees something of its sinfulness, but the soul that has been convicted of sin by the Spirit knows that there is nothing in it and there is nothing that it has done that can possibly move Christ or make it more likely to be saved. The soul that the Spirit has opened the eyes to in order to see the merits of the blood of Christ sees that it needs nothing but Christ in order to be saved. The soul that has its eyes opened to see that Christ is willing to save sinners based on nothing in them but their sinfulness and their helplessness and inability. Once the soul sees those things, it can leap for joy and look to Christ alone and to grace alone. There is nothing needed and nothing it must do (in one sense) for salvation, it must have Christ and Christ alone.
One of Satan’s many works is to try to make sinners (believer and unbeliever alike) think that their sin is too great for Christ to save them. But the work of the Spirit is to point sinners to the work of Christ and convince them that it is all that is needed. The sinner does not need any merit of his or her own working and that sinner does not need to work up guilt in an effort to pay for the sin, but all that sinner needs is Christ. Indeed there may be guilt in the soul over the sin, but that guilt does not pay the slightest amount for the sin. For the unbeliever s/he is buffeted by Satan in attacks in order to convince them that their sin is too great and that they cannot be saved, but that in itself is sin. For the believer Satan attacks and tries to get them to look to the Law or to try to feel guilty as a payment for their sin, but there is no payment acceptable to God but Christ alone. That is why when Satan charges the soul with sin, the soul that needs to charge (so to speak) Christ with that sin and tell Satan that the debt has been paid.
The soul that is able to know and feel the weight of sin upon it and yet look to the blood and righteousness of Christ alone is a blessed soul. When the soul is under the weight of sin and it does not look to the value of its own works, duties, and even graces but instead looks to Christ and His grace alone, that is a blessed soul. When the soul feels the weight of its own sin and begins to wonder why there is no more sanctification in it than there is, the soul that looks to Christ as its justification and its sanctification is a blessed soul. Indeed faith without works is dead, but there are also plenty of people with works who have a dead faith. The opposite of faith without works is dead is not that one has works and therefore has faith. A true faith and a false faith may have works, but the true faith does not look to the works with hope but instead looks to Christ alone. When the soul is sinking under the weight of its despair and its sin, it will do that soul no good to look to works and sanctification. That soul must look to Christ alone and grace alone. There is no merit in our works and there is nothing saving about them, the Christ is abundant in righteousness and merit in His blood. The soul must look to Christ alone. The heart should be examined on a regular basis to see just what it is looking toward.
God Loves... Himself 
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