You may be brought low, even to the brink of hell, ready to tumble in; you cannot be brought lower than the belly of hell. Many saints have been there, even dowsed in hell; yet even then you may cry, even there you may look toward the holy temple (Jonah 2:4). Into that temple none might enter but purified ones, and with an offering too (Acts 21:26). But now Christ is our temple, sacrifice, altar, high priest, to whom none must come but sinners, and that without any offering, but His own blood once offered (Heb 7:27). Thomas Willcox
This describes the experience of many of the saints of God, both before they were converted but also after. With the terrors of a tender conscience and the devil’s fiery darts, true believers are brought low and think that they are ready to fall into hell. Their fears are great because they have been wrestling with a heart that has so much darkness and evil in, but the fiery darts of the evil one makes it far worse. They feel that they have been given over to a final hardness of heart and they know that they cannot soften their own hearts. They have this sense of utter terror of hell and the sense of a complete inability to do anything about it. They will walk through a town or the country bemoaning the day that they were born because they were born into sin.
The hand of the living God is merciful toward His people that He leads in this way. He is burning off the dross and teaching them by experience the hatefulness of sin and of their own inability. Those He chooses to lead in this path will not doubt their own inability or of the grace of God. In the perfect timing, providence, and wisdom of God brings the person to the perfect breaking of heart, the brass of heaven will be removed and that person will be able to cry out to God. But even more the brass (in appearance) of heaven is removed and while that person is in a great trial of body or perhaps of faith, even from there the soul should cry out to the living God. It is when the soul has been delivered from self and pride and all trust and confidence in self that the soul knows that there is only One that can help it. It knows that the only One who can help it is not One who helps based on the worth of the soul needing help, but of His own worth. The soul must learn to look to Christ regardless of its condition and regardless of how close to hell it thinks it is. The soul should look to Christ and Christ alone and it needs to learn that by practice, though the Lord makes that practice a hard thing. But we learn obedience through suffering.
There are other things that the soul looks to and must be broken from that. When the soul is brought low by trials, it can look to the law and the keeping of the law, but this will lead the soul to despair or legalism. The soul can look to itself and complain to God that if God loved the soul it should not be treated like it is being treated, but this usually leads to either despair or anger and pouting. Both of the methods of treating the soul and all others is based on the soul looking to self in some way. The soul, though it tells itself that God blesses the obedient and so it strives for obedience according to rules and laws, will be looking to self and the strength of the flesh. It is only the soul that looks to Christ alone that will overcome its great trials by grace. It must be grace that strengthens us and not the flesh. As long as the soul is looking to the law and/or to self in some way, it has not learned to lean on Christ alone and rest in Him alone.
The picture that Willcox gives us is that of the soul entering into the temple. In the temple of the Old Testament one had to bring the blood of a sacrifice and it had to be brought by a high priest. The soul that has been stripped of self-righteousness and stands naked of any help but Christ alone has a High Priest to offer a perfect sacrifice in its place. This soul stands in the blood of Christ and that is its plea. This soul will stand in the righteousness of Christ without one look to its own righteousness. The law was never given so that sinners could have a method of coming to God on the basis of, but instead in the hands of the devil who uses it to point to our sin is accuses and points out the damnation we so richly deserve. The law was never given so that sinners could have righteousness from that law to come to God on. The law was never given as a way for sinners to make up for their sins. No, the law was given in order to show sinners just how sinful they are. When sinners see just how sinful they are, they desire nothing of themselves and will only be satisfied with Christ. Therefore, from the depths they will cry out to Christ and Christ alone and they will look to grace alone rather than anything from themselves. But oh what a hope poor, stripped and naked sinners have in Christ. “Nothing of my own do I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”
God Loves... Himself 
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