When we come to God, we must bring nothing but Christ with us. Any ingredients, or any previous qualifications of our own, will poison and corrupt faith. He that builds upon duties, graces, etc., knows not the merits of Christ. This makes believing so hard, so far above nature. If you believe, you must every day renounce as dung and dross (Phil 3:7-8) your privileges, your obedience, your baptism, your sanctification, your duties, your graces, your tears, your meltings, your humblings, and nothing but Christ must be held up. Every day your workings, your self-sufficiency must be destroyed. You must take all out of God’s hand. Christ is the gift of God (John 4:10). Faith is the gift of God (Eph 2:8). Pardon, a free gift (Isa 45:22). Ah, how nature storms, frets, rages at this, that all is of gilt [superficial brilliance or gloss] and it can purchase nothing with its actings and tears and duties, that all workings are excluded, and of no value in heaven. Thomas Willcox
This is truly a glorious paragraph that gets at the heart of the Gospel and of sanctification. It gets at what it means to truly live by grace and to live before God by grace. It gets at the glorious nature of grace alone and how all good that a human being does is moved by grace and yet is tainted with self and adds nothing to the grace of Christ. This gets at how Christ alone is sufficient and how there is no room for the least amount of pride or self-sufficiency. The Gospel of grace alone is the Gospel of Christ alone and God saves to the glory of His grace alone. There is nothing we can bring to God but Christ other than our sin and imperfections.
This is a glorious truth that is attacked by various forms of legalism that is constantly trying to add something to the Gospel of grace alone. The Judaizers may have been the first to try to add something to Christ and His grace alone, but they are far from the last. The human heart is constantly trying to figure out something it can do or contribute to grace thought it might not admit that in those words. The human heart is constantly trying to search for something or find a reason that it may boast in itself or trust in itself to some degree. But the heart must be searched and ransacked over and over. The heart does not search itself in all cases looking for salvation, but it is looking for ways it dishonors Christ by not truly looking and resting in Christ alone.
It is such a powerful, frightening, and yet comforting statement that when we come to God we must bring nothing but Christ with us. If we understand the nature of true grace and what it means to come to God, this is a powerful and comforting statement because it tells us that we don’t need to be holy or good in our own strength. It frees us from having to look to ourselves with hope that we can find something good in order to have a basis to come to God on. This is so wonderful and glorious to know that Christ alone is the basis we can come to the Father. However, if we are looking to self for anything as a basis, this should frighten us. When I come to God clinging to something that the flesh has worked up, I am trying to drag my sin into His presence as if it could be righteous. So on the one hand this is a glorious truth that frees human beings from the need to look to anything but Christ and His grace, but on the other hand it tells us that nothing is acceptable but Christ and His grace.
But of course this is standard in the major Confessions of Faith, but that does not mean that a person that has an intellectual belief in a Confession of Faith is trusting in Christ alone or relies on Christ alone by grace alone. It may be possible for people to believe that salvation is indeed by Christ alone but that they must do something in order to be in Christ. Oh how the human heart is so deceived in this matter. True faith looks to Christ alone and is given by grace and upheld by grace alone, but the heart is so prone to look to self or attempt to look at its own faith. But the eye of true faith cannot see faith alone because faith cannot be separated from the object of true faith which is Christ. Take away Christ and there is no true faith and yet take the eyes of faith away from Christ and faith cannot be seen. The soul cannot come to God based on its faith because the job of faith is to receive grace and that grace alone. The soul cannot come to God with anything other than Christ alone who comes to the soul by grace and grace alone.
Coming to God, then, is not as simple as saying the name of Christ, but instead requires much examination of the heart. No, the heart does not need to be perfect to come to God, but it needs to be humbled and broken in order to do so. The heart cannot be trusting in what it has done or it is coming to God on the basis of something other than Christ. The heart cannot be trusting in its own faith or again it is coming to God based on something of self rather than Christ alone. This should not be viewed as a negative, but simply that people should come to God as empty and helpless beggars without any ability or power of their own to please Him. They come with Christ alone.
God Loves... Himself 
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