Despairing sinner! You look on your right hand and on your left, saying, “Who will show us any good?” You are tumbling over all your duties and professions to patch up a righteousness to save you. Look at Christ now; look to Him and be saved all the ends of the earth (Isa 45:22). There is no one else. He is a Savior, and there is none beside Him (Isa 45:21). Look anywhere else and you are undone. God will look at nothing but Christ and you must look at nothing else. Christ is lifted up on high, as the brazen serpent in the wilderness, that sinners at the ends of the earth, at the greatest distance, may see Him and look towards Him. The least sight of Him will be saving, the least touch healing to you. (Thomas Willcox)
As long as sinners trust in themselves and think that they have the slightest power in themselves to do something, they will not despair. The present paragraph by Willcox, therefore, is not to those who believe that they have any power in themselves. The Lord Jesus called those who were weary and heavy-laden to Himself, but He did not call the unbroken sinner who was still working for his own righteousness. In fact, He had the hardest words for those who were still trying to earn their own righteousness, but He was kind and tender to the broken hearts of those who were despairing of their sin. As one ancient writer put it, the Lord Jesus never had a harsh word for broken sinners. It is so hard for the proud human heart to utterly despair of all hope from itself. The human heart wants so desperately to rest in something it is or something it has done. It wants to do something, even if it is so small. It will not give up all hope in itself and look to grace to take it by the hand to work despair in self.
The human heart is so bound to self and the efforts of self that it thinks it has given up trying to help self at many points, but it does not. Through modern day preaching and teaching people are told to repent and believe, so they repent and believe (something, or in some way) as a work of self and the flesh and think that they have truly repented and believed. But only those who despair of self and give up all hope in self are called to Christ because only those who leave self will come to Christ in truth. People are told to look to Christ, so they look to Christ in their own way and under their own strength and power. But that is in reality nothing more than one way of looking to self and the strength of self. Christ calls those who despair of self, though not all despair is the despair of self. There is also the despair that is nothing but pride. It is a despair of trying to get God to do what self wants and it is frustrated that God will not do what self wants and when self wants it. True despair is that which is a despair of self, but not toward God. It is the point of true brokenness which self arrives at when it sees that it can do nothing to please God or move God to save it.
Those who are converted can also fall into a trap or pattern of doing duties or making a profession in an effort to find something in self that will please God or give self a form of righteousness. The human heart is so deceptive and so wicked that it will fight and fight in order to keep from a total despair of self because it is at that point that self must bow in humility to the sovereignty of God and the fallen human heart loves self-reliance. Even after the soul has come to Christ, there is a battle with self to look to Christ alone, but the self wants some of the credit and the self still does not want to give up all hope in self at all times. One of the great battles of the believer and the unbeliever is to arrive at a point of despair of self that one may truly look to Christ alone. In this one cannot look to self to look to Christ, but one must utterly forsake self and do that by grace alone or it will still be an act of self in the strength of self.
The heart is a factory of idols (Calvin), but in doing that it is also a factory of ways to look to self rather than despair of self. It is a far different thing to have a theology of grace alone than it is to despair of self and die to self in order that the soul can look to Christ alone. The soul is not saved but its own looking to Christ, but it must be saved by Christ Himself. So the soul looks to Christ to do all the work of salvation rather than thinking that it is saved because it looks. How the heart is so deceptive and fights to obtain some sufficiency for self so that it will not have to look to Christ to receive all. The soul is happy to look to Christ in its own power in order to get something, but it fights to look to Christ alone to receive at His good pleasure. How we must be so careful in examining our hearts, but even then we must pray for the Lord to open our hearts to us. We cannot even do that apart from grace. We are utterly dependent on Him in all spiritual things.
God Loves... Himself 
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