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
It is such a foreign thought to modern “Christian” thought that nothing can be brought to God that pleases Him but Christ. While it is true that other things are spoken of as pleasing God, those are things that must be worked in and through the soul by Christ so it is Christ being presented to the Father. How hard it is (impossible by human strength) to be broken from bringing the fruits of our own labors and efforts to God. How hard it is for the human heart to be broken from self enough that all it wants is Christ and the only righteousness it will claim is Christ. After all, Scripture is so clear that Christ is the believer’s righteousness. It is not that hard to intellectually understand that Christ is the righteousness of the believer. It is not that hard to accept or assent to the fact that Christ is the righteousness of the believer. But it is impossible to rid the heart of its inclination and desire to carry some of its own righteousness into the presence of God. The proud human heart is greatly averse to being utterly stripped of all its own righteousness and naked in the presence of God.
Willcox hits the nail on the head when he says that a person that “builds upon duties, graces, etc., knows not the merits of Christ.” What is meant here is not that the person is not aware of the biblical teaching on the matter or that the person does not assent to the biblical teaching or the teaching of the Confession on the matter, but the person is not experimentally acquainted with the reality of the situation. The righteousness and merits of Christ are perfect in all ways and there is nothing else needed to enter into the presence of God. In fact, there is no other righteousness and no other merits other than the righteousness and merits of Christ that are perfect. In trying to come to God based on anything else but Christ is an effort to get God to accept less than Christ and less than perfection.
Why would the human heart desire to build upon duties, graces, and so on in order to have a way to God? Why would the human heart long to find something in self to be righteous? Why would the human heart long to do something that it could trust in as righteous? It is because the human heart does not know or experimentally know the perfection of the merits of Christ. Those who have seen and know through trials and afflictions the perfect merits and righteousness of Christ have no desire or need to think of themselves as righteous because the perfect righteousness and merits of Christ is all that can be needed. The righteousness and merits of Christ render all the righteousness and merits of human beings toward salvation as utterly useless, though it should also be said that no human being can earn merit before God because all that a human does is tainted with imperfection and sin.
A vital part of coming to God is coming to Him with Christ alone and by grace alone. Any attempt to bring in any qualifications for self is an attempt to add to Christ. Any attempt to add to Christ is really an attempt (even if not intended in that way) to detract from Him. Christ alone is the way to the Father. Christ alone can show us the Father. Christ alone can give a perfect righteousness so that we can be holy and blameless before Him. Christ alone can provide a perfect propitiation so that our sins may be wiped away. Oh how our hearts must learn to search out and detect all the hidden deceptions and confidences of the heart that we have in terms of merit and righteousness that we may come to the Father with Christ and Christ alone. While the flesh, pride, and self will fight this in many ways, the Spirit of the living God will bring His people to the realization of their emptiness and helplessness and so they will see the depths of their inability to do this without Christ.
God Loves... Himself 
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