We would continually insist on the sinner’s helplessness to remedy his state by his own efforts: that he is bound hand and foot by the chains of disobedience: that he has no power to rectify his condition no prayer or penance will avail to atone for his past sins, or blot out one transgression: that all his works are nothing worth. The best obedience of his hands will not be accepted, because it is all tarnished with sin and pride: and, moreover, it comes short of God’s demands. He is a bankrupt debtor owing 10,000 talents, with nothing to pay with; therefore he is hopelessly involved, and can by no means extricate himself. This is discouraging to the guilty sinner, but it is the teaching he needs, for he wraps the flimsy rags of his own righteousness about him, and thinks they will prove a covering: he promises himself to repent and turn to God at a future time; he thinks he has the power to do so. We must show his error, strip him of his self-sufficiency, and cut the ground of his doings and willings from beneath his feet, and leave him without one refuge of his own to hide himself in; but stripped, helpless, bound, condemned, all exposed, with only one way of escape, and that not in himself at all.
Why is it so hard to come to the point of utter helplessness before God that we may receive all by grace? The power of sin in the heart and that continually is underestimated (greatly) if thought of at all. Man constantly thinks that he can remedy his state by various works and efforts, but in doing so he does not realize that he is bound in chains of darkness and is being led around in those chains by the evil one. How insidious it is of the evil one to put people in chains and then deceive them into thinking that those chains of sin are in fact true freedom and that a person in that freedom can cast them off as s/he pleases. The reason it is so hard for sinners to come to the point of utter helplessness before God is that they are in bondage to the pride of self and self-love. This means that sinners constantly think that they have the ability to overcome their sin by their own strength. But again, that is part of what it means to be in the bondage and chains of darkness.
It is part of the sinner’s pride that thinks that God will let him go as long as he starts doing morally good things, which the sinner will think of as true repentance. But true repentance never saved a soul and never contributed to the salvation of a soul. Doing good things never saved or contributed to the salvation of one soul. Sin is such that God must forgive each sin and Christ alone can suffer the penalty of the sin. The sinner has no power to make his situation any better in terms of salvation. The sinner cannot pray or repent for past sins as Christ alone can pay for those sins and true prayer and true repentance are gifts of God by grace and they cannot atone for one sin at all. The sinner is completely helpless in his own power to do anything about his past sin and he can do nothing to make up for sin or suffer for it. One transgression will sink the sinner and forever and put salvation totally out of the power and ability of the sinner, so who can know the guilt of a lifetime of sin? Christ alone can do this work.
Not only is a sinner completely unable to deal with his own sin, the sinner is completely unable to do one work that is worthy of any good in the presence of a holy God. All that the sinner does has no worth or value to God because it is not done while in Christ and as such is not done by grace and for the glory of God. These things cannot be stressed too strongly. No human being or all human beings together can make up for one sin against God. It is utterly impossible. No human being that has sinned (which means all but Christ) can do one good thing that is acceptable to God. This leaves all sinners in utter need of grace rather than in need of doing something for themselves. We can imagine that a sinner sins and so falls short of the glory of God, but how is that sinner going to pay for the shortcoming since the sinner owes God perfect obedience in all s/he does each moment? There is no way to make up for a past shortcoming, not to mention that nothing a sinner does is acceptable to God.
How these great doctrines of man’s sinfulness before God and his complete inability to make up for any past sins and in fact all the supposed good he does is just more sin because they are from pride and self. One cannot make up for sin with more sin. Even more, the very nature of man is sinful and all that comes from that sinful nature is sin. Oh how sinners need grace and nothing but grace to give them Christ and Christ alone. Oh how sinners need to quit trying to work for salvation and making up for past sins and look to Christ alone. Christ came to save sinners and God justifies the ungodly. How our hearts must give up our pretence of good from self and look to grace alone.
God Loves... Himself 
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