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 very hard to believe the paragraph above if one is an Arminian or a Pelagian. But Scripture is clear that faith is the gift of God and as such it is not possible to believe the things of Christ in a biblical manner unless one is given that faith by grace. This is to say that self and pride will not and cannot die to self and look to Christ alone for all of its righteousness and merits. It is impossible for pride and self to look beyond pride and self to Christ alone in order to come to God, though indeed that is precisely what Scripture teaches. Pride and self will always trust in self for at least one thing, though indeed it is usually a lot more than the one thing. Believing in Christ, therefore, is far above the ability of human nature.
The natural man finds believing things easy and so when he hears that all that the Gospel requires is to believe it, he thinks he has it made. So he makes a profession of faith or a choice and amends his life to some degree. But believing the Gospel of Christ alone and grace alone is far above the ability and power of the natural man. The proud heart of man is devoted to self and is fast in the bonds of self. This means that man does all for self and his pride is always at work in some way and so man is devoted to his own ability in one form or another. Self can trust and believe in self and deceive itself into thinking that it is believing in Christ, but that is a terrible deception of the evil one. This is so common in the modern day when people are not taught what it really means to believe in Christ. The whole soul must be broken from believing in self and pride in order to believe in Christ, but instead men are taught that they have the power and ability to believe in Christ without a change in nature. This is nothing more than the devil’s lie to Eve that she could be as God.
The soul that has not been delivered from self and pride cannot build on anything but self and pride, which is to believe in self. But again, the soul that is building on the foundation of religion and using the name of Christ to do so is still building on the foundation of self. Perhaps it cannot be stressed too much that the eyes of the soul must be opened to what the true nature of sin is so that it can see that it does all for self and trusts in self. When the soul that is in open sin begins to be religious and yet trusts in self and believes in self, that soul has not truly repented of sin and is still in the service of self regardless of how religious the person is. A true faith in Christ is not something that the nature of man in sin (pride and self) can possibly do because the natural soul is always building on the merits and righteousness of self in reality (even if one has a creed that says differently). It can also be in accordance with the pride of man to disavow any hope in self while the proud heart is doing precisely what the mouth is denying.
It is also true that there is a lot of common ground between graces and the religious man, which teaches us to be so careful with our own hearts. The proud man can say all of the right things and build his righteousness on his words of how unrighteous he is. The proud heart can say all the right things of theology and yet build his righteousness on his theology rather than Christ. The proud heart can do everything that a believer can do in an external sense and yet the inward man and the deepest belief of each person is different. The proud and self-centered heart, regardless of the orthodox words, creeds, and life, is a heart that truly believes in self or believes in self to believe in Christ. That is nothing more than idolatry and is clearly not a heart that builds only on Christ alone. The heart is so deceitful that man must constantly look to the Spirit to open his eyes to see what he is in fact building on.
God Loves... Himself 
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