God Loves… Himself

Men talk bravely of believing whilst whole and sound; few know it. Christ is the mystery of the Scripture; grace the mystery of Christ. Believing is the most wonderful thing in the world. Put any thing of your own to it, and you spoil it. Christ will not so much as look at it for believing. When you believe and come to Christ, you must leave behind you your own righteousness, and bring nothing but your sin: (Oh, that is hard!) leave behind all your holiness, sanctification, duties, humblings, and so on; and bring nothing but your wants [lacks] and your miseries, or else Christ is not fit for you, nor you for Christ. Christ will be a pure Redeemer and Mediator, and you must be an undone sinner, or Christ and you will never agree. It is the hardest thing in the world to take Christ alone for righteousness; that is to acknowledge Him Christ. Join anything to Him of your own, and you un-Christ Him.    Thomas Willcox

It is easy enough to believe the basic historical facts about Christ, but it was also quite easy for people to believe in Christ when He performed miracles before them. When things are going well and men are healthy, they will speak easily of believing as long as there is no cost involved. When things are going well and no one is persecuting you or mocking you for your faith, it is easy enough to believe. But when your belief in Christ begins to cost you something, whether it is the esteem of others or of repenting of sin, things begin to change. When belief in Christ might make you look like a fool, whether in the eyes of the intellectuals or of those who you fear will laugh at you for what you will not do, it begins to take a toll on what you believe. When people find believing easy, they don’t know whether they really believe in truth.

A true faith in Christ is far different than a simple believing the historical things about Him. The devils and those in hell believe in the historical things about Him, but assuredly it makes no difference (for the good) in their situation. While Christ was on earth the demons believed who He was and what He could do, but instead of that being of comfort to them it made them tremble and cry out to Him. The same is true when it comes to the Gospel. It is easy to believe the facts of the Gospel, but it begins to be harder to believe when a person’s sin begins to be opened to his or her eyes. They being to wonder if they really believe because, they think, how can such a sinful person believe? Here is a very fine point (fine in the sense of the fine point of a needle). The Holy Spirit is the only One who can truly convict a person of sin deep in their person. When that happens, people will go one of two ways. They will struggle with the truth of their sinfulness of they will flee from a sight of their own sinfulness.

When a person flees from a sight of his or her own sinfulness, that person will be turned over to more and more sin because the person is hiding from the sight of sin and that is a blinding work and a fleeing from the Gospel of the righteousness of Christ. On the other side of things, however, some will struggle for faith and cry out for belief in Christ and His perfect righteousness in the midst of their struggles of whether they believe or not. They will be astonished at their own sin and their capacity and capability for sin, yet they will hang on to their small belief and pray for more. “I do believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). This is the heart of all who truly believe (most likely) when the Lord is pleased to open their hearts to see the depths of their sin. They see the sin and unbelief in their hearts and don’t see the little flame of life that is their souls. The Lord, in His great mercy and kindness, teaches sinners Himself in ways that they cannot do themselves and no other can do. He teaches them and shows them how absolutely and utterly they are undone in themselves.

Until Christ the Prophet of His people teaches the soul and brings it through the fire of trials and temptations, the soul will no truly know itself and as such will think that it has great faith when it has but little or none at all. Those who suppress His teaching about sin will slide into more actual sin while suppressing the knowledge of that as well, but those who seek the Lord for a greater knowledge of themselves will see more sin but they will also begin to see more of the glory of the Gospel of free-grace and a perfect righteousness that comes to sinners by that free-grace. For a soul to earnestly and truly believe in Christ, that soul must leave behind all of its own righteousness, duties, and even all of its sanctification. After all, Christ is the sanctification of all true believers. When a poor sinner who is distraught at the sight of his own sinful and evil heart comes to Christ, that sinner will not bring anything of his own righteousness to Christ because that sinner knows that s/he has none to bring. That sinner knows that it is free-grace alone that can save him or her from sin and that s/he has no sanctification. That sinner wants nothing but Christ alone and wants Him by grace alone because s/he knows there is no other way.

If ever you saw Christ, you saw Him a Rock, higher than self-righteousness, Satan, and sin (Psa 61:2) and this Rock follows you (I Cor 10:4); and there will be continual dropping of honey and grace out of that Rock to satisfy you (Psa 81:16). Examine if ever you have ever beheld Christ as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Be sure you have come to Christ, that you stand upon the Rock of Ages, and have answered to His call to your soul, and have closed with Him for justification.     Thomas Willcox

The great problem with the Pharisees and seemingly for all of history has been the issue of self-righteousness and pride in the works of self. The little paragraph above by Thomas Willcox is against self-righteousness in all aspects. The proud Pharisee wanted to trust in self, the will of self, and the works of self for a right standing before God, and so the proud heart of people today will look to their civility or their religion for a right standing before God. One interesting thing to note is that almost no one believes this to be true about him or herself. It is always the other person that does this, or perhaps people think that this passed away during the time of the Pharisees.

The human heart is proud, self-centered and full of evil as well as being very deceptive, which makes it easy for the deceiver to work a real deception under the cloak of darkness on human hearts. The deceiver will not work to get all people to believe that they can work their way to heaven by being good enough, but he will attack the heart on the nature of God and then on the nature of depravity and of the Gospel. He will tell people that a loving God will not require perfection from people and so they can relax as long as they are sincere and nice to others. This is nothing more than an attack on God and on the Gospel and it is teaching men that their righteousness is enough. It is a dastardly attack on the Gospel of grace alone and Christ alone. It teaches men that they can be saved by what they do or something in them rather than Christ and grace alone.

Well, some say, that is obvious and I certainly don’t do that. But how many today seem to trust in a creed, being conservative, or standing for moral issues of the day? How many people trust in themselves enough to trust in Christ and how many think that their faith has to be worked up by themselves in order that they may trust in Christ? How many think that “making” Christ Lord and being moral shows that they have faith? How many trust in the fact that they are orthodox and are stringently moral? How many trust in the fact that they believe justification by Christ alone rather than actually trust in Christ alone? How many believe they are converted because they believe that salvation is by grace alone but they don’t really rest in grace alone for salvation?

The heart must be shredded of faith in itself and believing that it can do anything before it can rest in Christ alone. It is a far different thing to trust in Christ alone by grace alone than it is to believe that one does so. It is easy to go to church and hear sermons that are orthodox as we live moral lives and conclude that we must be believers in Christ. But we must reach an end of self and that comes by the work of God in the soul rather than human strength. We must come to the end of the sufficiency of self that we may see all the sufficiency is found in Christ. We must come to an end of all hope in our sincerity, our orthodoxy, and our morality as a hope on which we stand. If we have hoped in those things we are standing on menstrual cloths at best. The Law was never given as a way of salvation in the slightest, and we must say that orthodoxy and morality were never given as a way to have hope in either. Those things should drive us to Christ that we may rest in Him and His righteousness and grace alone.

A justified soul is one that stands holy and blameless before God because of Christ alone and not because of anything that the soul has done or will ever do. Souls that are weak and wavering should know that they are justified by the cross and righteousness of Christ alone and not because they believe it, but they believe because of grace alone. We must not look to our own faith, but instead we are to look to Christ. We must not look to our own faith, our own sincerity, our orthodoxy, or our own morality because we must have Christ and His righteousness alone. Christ gives those things to His people because of grace, which is to say that He was sent by the Father to save a particular people and not because of anything they have done, can do, or ever will do. God saves sinners because of God and His own glory. That is the heart of grace.

 We must not look to self for anything nor expect anything of ourselves but sin, though we are to grow in holiness. All good comes to the soul as a spiritual blessing and all spiritual blessings are found in Christ. Unsaved sinners must learn to look to Christ alone by grace alone and saved sinners must learn to look to Christ alone by grace alone. All need to learn to live by grace each moment of the day and not just look to a time when we “were saved.” This is to say that Christ must teach us to live by Himself and the grace and honey He gives us each moment. To be justified by Christ is not just something to believe in the head, it is to actually see that Christ saves sinners by Himself and by grace alone. Sinners must actually look to Him with nothing in themselves and see Him by grace alone. They do this by grace alone as well.

If ever you saw Christ, you saw Him a Rock, higher than self-righteousness, Satan, and sin (Psa 61:2) and this Rock follows you (I Cor 10:4); and there will be continual dropping of honey and grace out of that Rock to satisfy you (Psa 81:16). Examine if ever you have ever beheld Christ as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Be sure you have come to Christ, that you stand upon the Rock of Ages, and have answered to His call to your soul, and have closed with Him for justification.       Thomas Willcox

The true sight of Christ and something of His glory will drive the soul from self-righteousness. After all, if one sees Christ and the glory of His full and complete righteousness that comes to the soul on the basis of grace alone, who would try to work for righteousness which can be nothing better than menstrual cloths? Oh how people fight to maintain how righteous they are and how holy they, whether in their own minds or in the sight of others. But the more people fight for their own righteousness the more they reject the righteousness of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is perfect in righteousness and is infinite in terms of the glory of His righteousness and so there is no need for a person to work for any degree of self-righteousness. In fact, there is every reason not to work for any degree of self-righteousness because in working for it one is not resting in the righteousness of Christ alone.

The Holy Scriptures tell us that “to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. 5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness” (Rom 4:4-5). It is utterly vital to stop working for righteousness and not defend self in terms of righteousness. When one has Christ and dwells in Christ and Christ dwells in that soul, any righteousness that comes from that soul comes from Christ and not the self. Christ is far greater in His righteousness and He is far greater than all sin. Sinners must give up all hope in self and look to grace alone to deliver them from trusting in self and self-righteousness. It is the empty and the humble and those who have been turned from their self-sufficiency who are enabled by grace to look to Christ alone by grace alone.

The soul that has Christ and follows Christ will taste of the sweetness of Christ as of honey to the tongue. We are told to “taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psa 34:8) and as such we are to know that Christ is better to the soul than anything. Christ is food indeed and Christ is drink to the soul. Christ is the milk to the weak and meat to the strong. Christ is dessert to those who want something sweet. Christ and Christ alone is fit for the soul that the sovereign grace of God has fitted for Him. The soul that has Christ sees His grace in all things. In the afflictions of life we can see that the grace of God is working in the afflictions and in our souls to make us more like Christ. In our sufferings and trials we can know that God has a greater purpose in them as He is working to humble us, but humility for the purpose of filling us with the grace of Himself and His own glory. As the soul is humbled and begins to taste of the sweetness of Christ and of grace, so the soul begins to bow in deeper humility before Him. It is in that humble soul that the sweetness of Christ and of His grace is tasted and is digested so that the soul becomes stronger and stronger.

The question, then, is raised by Willcox above. Have we ever beheld this Christ? Notice that the question is not have you worked hard to see Christ and it is not have you beheld Christ in the fullness of His glory. But have you beheld Christ even a little? Do you see that despite your weakness and your many sins that you are enabled by grace to behold Christ just a little? Do you grieve that you don’t see Him more? Do you see something of His glory and know that you have some delight in Him and some love for Him that does not come from your flesh but from the Spirit of the living God? Behold how Christ treats weak and doubting sinners: “A BATTERED REED HE WILL NOT BREAK OFF, AND A SMOLDERING WICK HE WILL NOT PUT OUT, UNTIL HE LEADS JUSTICE TO VICTORY” (Mat 12:20).

For those who are battered and think they are barely hanging on (if at all), know that in Christ there is a complete justification for sinners based simply and only who Christ is and what He has done. Know that He has not promised to save the strong in faith and the self-confident, but those who are weak and have no strength in themselves. Christ did not promise to save the moral, but sinners and even the most vile of sinners. You have no need to punish yourself for sin, Christ has suffered fully for sin and made a complete satisfaction to the Father. There is no need to look at your sin as if it is greater than the righteousness of Christ, because it is nothing compared to His righteousness. There is no need to look to yourself for faith because He gives faith by grace alone as well. So to the weak believer who may think that s/he does not have faith enough, how much faith does it take? Isn’t something like faith as a mustard seed? But where does that faith come from? Look to Christ for faith by grace as well. Sinners are saved by grace alone and not much grace and a little of your faith. Bow and cry out for God to give you Christ by grace. Faith is the empty hand that simply asks and then receives.

If you have seen Christ truly, you have seen pure grace, pure righteousness in Him every way infinite, far exceeding all sin and misery. If you have seen Christ, you can trample upon all the righteousness of men and angels, so as to bring you into acceptance with God. If you have seen Christ, you would not do a duty without Him for ten thousand worlds (I Cor. 2:2).      Thomas Wilcox

It may be a rather puzzling comment to some to think of Wilcox’s horror of doing a duty without Christ. The glory of Christ is such that a thought of doing a work from the flesh and not from and to His glory is a terrible thought to those who have seen Christ to some degree. This is not a matter of justification as such, but it shows the love of the heart for Christ and for His glory. The Lord Jesus told His disciples that apart from Him they could do nothing, that is, they could do nothing spiritual and they could not do anything that would bring forth spiritual fruit. The only things that are done that are true spiritual fruit are the things done that come from Christ first. He is the vine and His true people are the branches, so any fruit that comes from the branch actually comes from Christ and through the branch. Any work done apart from Christ, then, is a work of the flesh and is a fleshly religion.

Romans 11:36 sets out a very basic truism for the whole of the Christian life: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” If the soul is going to do something for Him (for His glory), then the soul must receive it from Him first and it must be through Him as well. There is nothing that a soul can do for the glory of God if it comes from the flesh, but what the soul receives from God can be to the glory of God. If what the soul does is from the flesh, it is for the glory of the flesh and it is self-centered at its very core. What the soul does for the glory of God must (absolutely must) come from God who shines forth His glory in Christ and what is received from Him through Christ must also be sent back to Him with motives of love through Christ as well.

In John 17:1 the Son prayed for the Father to glorify Him that He (The Son) may glorify the Father. This is the pattern of the believer, though we must receive all from the Son and all that is returned must go through the Son too. But the only way a believer is able to glorify the Father is with the glory that the believer receives from the Father. There is no power and no glory in the human flesh that is able to manifest the glory of God and so a believer must receive from the Father the glory that the believer is to glorify the Father with. The soul has to come to the reality about itself that there is nothing that it can do to glorify God apart from God working this glory in the soul by His own hand and through Christ.

Another reason that the soul should be horrified to do a good work without Christ is because of the taint of sin in all we do. There is not a good work we do that does not need the blood of Christ to wash it and make it clean. There is not a good work we do that does not need the perfect righteousness of Christ as a basis for doing what we do as love for Him rather than a work for self-righteousness regardless of what we call it. If even our best works are as menstrual cloths before Him then surely it is obvious that we must have the blood and righteousness of Christ for even our very best. But if we need Christ for our very best, what of the things that are not our best and what of the things that are perhaps our worst?

The teaching of Holy Scripture as understand by those who have felt the weight of depravity, inability, and helplessness of sin are of great comfort. While they teach us that we must have Christ for our best and our worst and all things in between, they also teach us that Christ Jesus came to save sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ did not go to the cross and suffer and die for good men, but for the ungodly and the despised and the ignoble. The Lord Jesus Christ does not smile upon the nice, the civil, and the religious and send them on their way to do good works, but instead if He did not die for their good works those same “good works” would send them to a devil’s hell. Every sinner must have Christ Himself or s/he will perish. Every sinner must have Christ each moment of the day. Every unsaved sinner must have Christ or s/he will never have nothing but the wrath of God upon him or her forever. Every saved sinner must have Christ as His life or s/he will not truly live. Every saved sinner must have Christ or the hunger and thirst of their souls will not be satisfied. Every saved sinner must have Christ and to have Christ it must come by grace alone and not by Christ and one work or many works. Grace will stand in the soul alone or it will not stand at all. Poor sinner, do you live each moment by grace? Do you think that your morality, goodness, and perhaps works will please Him? Oh no, only Christ will please Him and only grace.

If you have seen Christ truly, you have seen pure grace, pure righteousness in Him every way infinite, far exceeding all sin and misery. If you have seen Christ, you can trample upon all the righteousness of men and angels, so as to bring you into acceptance with God. If you have seen Christ, you would not do a duty without Him for ten thousand worlds (I Cor. 2:2).          Thomas Wilcox

It is a very important to ask ourselves and our own hearts if we have seen Christ truly. It is one thing to talk about it as a theory or a doctrine, but it is quite another to see Christ truly. It is one thing to discuss Christ as a doctrine, but it is quite another to examine our hearts to see if we take pleasure in talking about a doctrine or if our joy is in Christ Himself. It is also true that there are many sensitive or tender hearts that feel the weight of their depravity and inability and so think they have not seen Christ truly, but one can see Christ truly and not have the experience of the writer of the quote (just above) in its fullness.

The heart that has seen or beheld Christ is not satisfied with anything but grace and grace alone. Indeed the souls of men are not made perfect and there will be desires for sin, but the point is that a person who understands and feels the weight of his or her sin (to any degree) will know that there is no work that can make up for the least sin and therefore can heal a wounded conscience. Beholding Christ in His glory is in some way also to see the heart of self in its sin. The light of Christ reveals sin which shows us that those who are given light and so see Christ see themselves as sinful and even disgusting in the filth of sin. The soul that has seen the greatness of Christ and the greatness of sin will have nothing to do with works to do away with sin, but instead that soul wants nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can wash away my sin? The only answer is nothing but the blood of Jesus.

The soul must examine itself and ask itself if it sees its sin but if it sees and knows that the grace of Christ far exceeds all of its own sin. This soul must learn by experience to rest in the finished work of Christ rather than its own sanctification. In one sense it is growth in sanctification to rest in the work of Christ rather than the sanctification of the soul. The soul will be trained by God in going through afflictions, sorrows, and dry periods where it doubts if it has grace or not. However, as the soul grows in dying to self and resting in and trusting in the grace of Christ and His blood and righteousness alone that soul will begin to have hope in Christ more and more during those afflictions, sorrows, and dry periods. The soul begins to look more and more from self and its sin, filth, and misery to see more of Christ, His righteousness, and His purity.

When a soul is in the midst of a sore trial, it may want to flee to the worth or merit of its sufferings, but it cannot. It will realize that all the suffering it can do has no merit or value to God for the least sin and cannot obtain one ounce of righteousness. The soul will learn that all of those hard things are not intended to torment it, though indeed there will be torment, but the greatest goal is to make the soul like Christ. Jesus Himself learned obedience by suffering and so His people will only learn obedience to the degree that they suffer. This does not mean the utter agony (necessarily) that Christ suffered on the cross, but also the suffering that He endured throughout His life on this planet. The soul will suffer because of its own sin and the sin of others. The soul will suffer pain in this life both inwardly and outwardly. The soul will suffer the abuse of others. In all of this, however, the soul must not look to any value or merit it can obtain by those sufferings, but to the value of the righteousness of Christ alone and know that it can receive no good but by grace.

The soul must learn to despise anything it can do or the honors of men in order that it may trample upon the temptation to trust in a self-righteousness that those things can bring. The soul must not just be made acceptable to God once, but must be acceptable to God in fellowship at all times. This is not to say that there should not be a supreme place given to justification, but simply to say that the soul must trample on all things for righteousness during its life in order to walk by grace alone and Christ alone. As justified sinners live, they sin. But justified sinners must look and rest in Christ and His righteousness alone as they live. It is, in a very imprecise way of putting it, living in light of justification and the righteousness of Christ alone that justifies. In the same way the justified sinner walks in light of the blood of Christ knowing that there is no satisfaction before God but by the blood of Christ alone and that comes to the sinner by grace alone. This is to say that God is only pleased with Christ and so sinners should live in Christ and by His cross and righteousness alone, which is by grace alone.

If you have seen Christ truly, you have seen pure grace, pure righteousness in Him every way infinite, far exceeding all sin and misery. If you have seen Christ, you can trample upon all the righteousness of men and angels, so as to bring you into acceptance with God. If you have seen Christ, you would not do a duty without Him for ten thousand worlds (I Cor. 2:2).      Thomas Wilcox

The righteousness of Christ can be thought of as a proposition within a doctrinal statement, or it can be something of the depths of the soul that a person lives by and is at the core of the life. We are told that we must believe in Christ, though rarely that part of what it means to believe in Christ is to trust in His imputed righteousness alone. The righteousness of Christ is infinite in all directions and as such it far exceeds all sin and misery that the elect can do. This righteousness of Christ is a pure righteousness and is without the slightest taint of any impurity at all. This is the righteousness that a sinner needs and must have if the sinner will enter the gates of heaven.

For a man or woman to be declared just or righteous in the sight of God, that person must have no sin to his or her account and a perfect righteousness in that account. It is not good enough for a person to have no sin to his or her account as that would leave a person without a negative on the account but also without anything positive. A sinner must have a perfect record in terms of sin, that is, either not have sinned at all or have his or her sins washed away by a perfect sacrifice in his or her place. The sinner must also have a perfect record in terms of righteousness toward God and His perfect law. That perfect record must either come from the sinner living a perfect life in terms of loving God and doing all for His glory or having a perfect substitute who imputes to the account of the sinner a perfect life of loving God and doing all for His glory. To have seen Christ is to see the glory and beauty of a perfect righteousness and it is to see that righteousness credited to “my” account.

The Lord Jesus Christ has from all eternity lived in the bosom of the Father and has lived in perfect love and righteousness. When the Lord Jesus (second Person of the Trinity) took human flesh to Himself, He did nothing but what was perfectly righteous and nothing but what was out of love for the Father and what glorified the Father. All that the Lord Jesus did was from the perfect righteousness of God, according to the perfect standard of righteousness of God, and as such out the perfect righteousness of God on display.

Romans 3:24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; 26 for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Christ Jesus was displayed as a propitiation (removal of the wrath of God by His suffering on the cross)? Why was that the case? It was in order to demonstrate the righteousness of God. All the sinners in the Old Testament that God did not pour out His wrath on and send to hell stood against the account of God until the cross of Christ, but then it could be seen that He was perfectly righteous and just. The same thing has been true since that time as well. In Christ God can be perfectly righteous in declaring sinners righteous in Christ. In Christ sinners are declared just and God is both the one who justifies and is perfectly just in declaring them just as well. In this the righteousness of God is displayed and manifested by and in Christ.

If the righteousness of every man could be gathered together and added to all the righteousness of the angels none of that would be worth anything but something to trample on in order to have Christ and His righteousness. No man has a shred of righteousness, though some might argue that angels have some. I would rather argue that the angels are upheld by Christ and do all they do by the power and righteousness He works in them. It is also true that no angel could take the nature of man in such a way to be a substitute for man. This shows us that all the righteousness of men and angels of all time when put together amount to nothing but what we should trample on in order to seek the perfect righteousness of Christ. If that is true, then we should flee from all self-righteousness as from a viper. There is nothing but the righteousness of Christ that should be acceptable to a soul that longs to stand before God in a perfect righteousness. Oh that we would long to repent of self and pride and humbly look to Christ

If you have seen Christ truly, you have seen pure grace, pure righteousness in Him every way infinite, far exceeding all sin and misery. If you have seen Christ, you can trample upon all the righteousness of men and angels, so as to bring you into acceptance with God. If you have seen Christ, you would not do a duty without Him for ten thousand worlds (I Cor. 2:2).     Thomas Wilcox

The wonder and the glory of Christ is not something that many people actually behold. They see Christ as subservient to them and all the glory they see is a Christ who serves them and is focused on them. In other words, the glory that they think they see of Christ is really their own glory in one sense. But to see Christ as He is and in His pure glory, it is to see pure grace. Christ did not take human flesh to Himself because human beings had a shred of goodness in them, but He did so to save sinners for the glory of God. Christ did not go to the cross in that human flesh because there was any merit or value in human beings, but because He loved the Father and His glory. It was because God loved Himself within the Trinity that sinners are saved and it is in that love within the Trinity that we behold sheer and utter grace.

God the Father sent the Son to actually save sinners, but not because sinners had anything they could offer the Father and not because of anything within them. But the Father sent the Beloved Son and in that we see the glory of grace shining forth. We behold how God can save sinners because of Himself rather than because of anything that sinners have done and apart from any merit they have come up with or can come up with. Sinners are saved by Christ alone and grace alone. The glory of this grace shines forth from the Father, though the Son, and by the Spirit to those who have eyes to see. In this glorious Gospel we see Christ and yet when we behold Christ in truth we see the shining forth of pure grace.

There is not the slightest bit of grace in the world that has not come to human beings apart from Christ. As the Scripture teaches us that all spiritual blessings are in Christ, so all grace is in Christ and all of Christ is grace to His people. For poor sinners who have reached an end to all their works for merit and all their attempts to work up some value in themselves, Christ is set forth to them as grace Himself. For those poor sinners who have no hope in religion or in their own free-will or anything else, Christ tells them to come to Him. It is in Christ that sinners see and will find grace. It is in Christ that sinners find a real grace rather than the watered down type that is preached today. Broken and contrite sinners will want nothing but Christ and nothing but grace. Broken sinners don’t want anything to do with their own will because it is polluted, has no power, and can do nothing to earn or bring grace. Broken sinners want nothing but grace and that alone will satisfy their souls.

Those sinners who are poor, naked, and wretched in their own sight will not look to anything they are or anything they can do. Those type of sinners have reached an end to themselves and they want a pure grace and not the diluted stuff that modern preachers try to dispense out. In reality the type of grace that modern preachers (for the most part) try to sell is in reality adding a work here or a work there to grace, and the Scriptures (Rom 11:6) say quite clearly that to add a work to grace is to make grace no longer grace. The poor and wretched sinner sees that and knows that the proffered grace that is not pure grace will not suit his or her need, but in fact will do nothing but delude the soul. Only a pure grace will suit the taste of the soul that has finished with self and finds all works for salvation as bitter to the taste. This soul wants Christ and Christ alone. This soul wants grace and grace alone. Away with all of the modern thoughts of grace that is not grace. Away with the thoughts of a will that is free enough to do what only a sovereign God can do. Away with the teaching that grace is something less than completely and utterly sovereign because there is no other kind of grace and the broken heart wants nothing but a pure grace. For all eternity the soul that has acquired a taste for pure grace will want nothing else.

You are known as a Christian person, and go on hearing, praying, and receiving, yet miserable you may be. Look about you; did you ever yet see Christ to this day, in distinction from all other excellencies and righteousness in the world, and all of them falling before the majesty of His love and grace? Isaiah 2:17         Thomas Wilcox

Each person must examine his or her own heart as Paul said in II Corinthians 13:5. It is not enough to hear, pray, and receive, but it is vital to search the heart to know if we see Christ in what we are doing. Our hearts are deceptive, the devil is the deceiver, and sin is deceptive. On top of that, God judges the wicked and hardens their hearts and blinds them. While that may seem like insurmountable obstacles, grace can overcome any and all obstacles. But all should examine their hearts.

We must ask ourselves questions in helping to examine our hearts. One, you must ask yourself what is your deepest motive in what you am doing. While you may know the right answers to the questions, that is a different thing than actually having that as your deepest motive. Two, you must ask yourself what is your deepest motive and desire in what you am doing. These questions must be put to the heart in terms of all religious activities, including prayer, Bible study, the sacraments, and hearing Scripture. Three, you must ask yourself why you refrain from sin. The soul can refrain from sin not because it desires Christ more than the world, but because it is the religious thing to do in which the soul takes pride in. It is also a sneaky way for self-righteousness to enter in. Four, we must ask ourselves why we do good works. We can do good works in order to see ourselves as righteous or perhaps for others to think of us as righteous rather than out of love for the Christ of glory.

Another way to ask the questions or perhaps another angle from which to view these questions is from the angle of righteousness. In our religious actions and in fleeing from sin we can simply examine our hearts to see if we are looking to our own righteousness when we do what we do and when we don’t do what we don’t do or if we are looking to the majesty, glory, grace, and righteousness of Christ. Is it from an attraction to His beauty and a love for His grace that we pursue Him in prayer or is it from a desire for self-righteousness that we do so? Is it from the fact that free-grace has provided a perfect righteousness that we may approach Him and from that free-grace we may do all out of love for Him and His glory or is it self-righteousness that we do what we do?

The heart that loves Christ and does all through Him and by the strength of His grace and love is the one that is doing all for Him and fleeing sin for His sake. But again, our hearts will tell us that we are doing those things out of love for Him simply because we know that we should love Him and so we tell ourselves that we do. However, we can know that we are to do all through Him and by the strength of His grace and still do things by the power and love of self. Knowing about something is far different than being moved by the power of the reality of it in the depths of our souls.

We can pray because we are supposed to and we can pray out of love for self. We can pray because we want others to be healed and we can pray because we want things for self. We can pray with words for the glory of God while our hearts are satisfied with our self-righteousness because we are praying for the glory of God. But the truth of the matter is that we are to pray for the glory and honor of God out of a true love for the glory and honor of God, but that true love for God will never come from the power of the flesh, human nature, and self-love. The work of Christ on the cross has freed us from the wrath of God so that we may love Him and serve Him without fear of wrath. The righteousness of Christ has freed us from the need to obtain righteousness so that we may be instruments of His glory without the need to do what we do and not do what we don’t do for self-righteousness. The grace of God in Christ has given us all the strength that is needed in Christ that we may bear the fruit of grace and holiness for His glory rather than seeking our own glory. All spiritual blessings are in Christ and come from Christ while there are no spiritual blessings in the flesh and that can come from the flesh. Let us behold the Lord Jesus in His glory and fall before Him and His majesty and grace in awe. He is worthy to have all done from His grace and for His glory.

You are known as a Christian person, and go on hearing, praying, and receiving, yet miserable you may be. Look about you; did you ever yet see Christ to this day, in distinction from all other excellencies and righteousness in the world, and all of them falling before the majesty of His love and grace? Isaiah 2:17            Thomas Wilcox

In reading the writings of men in the past there appear to have been many who professed Christianity and yet did not have Christ in truth. Not only were there those who professed Christ but did not do even the externals of Christianity, there were many who professed Christ and went to hear preaching, prayed a lot, and did the external things that Christians do. The same thing is true today, though it would appear that there are far more today that do those things. It is (once again) possible to do all the external things that Christians are supposed to do and yet not have life in the soul. Not only is it possible to do those things, it is possible that those things will be used by the evil one and our own wicked hearts to build self-righteousness and so deception.

The goal of God in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is His own glory and not so that men may boast in their own righteousness and efforts. The goal of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is to manifest the glory of God in and through Christ and to debase the proud hearts of men. This should make it self-evident that men who preach and those who go to hear preaching should seek Christ by the preaching and the hearing of the preaching rather than use that as an opportunity to exalt self. In prayer the goal must not be for the things of self and for the benefits of self (at least primarily), but the primary goal of prayer should be to seek God and His glory. The primary reason God gives things to people is for His own glory which shows us that we should receive all things for that goal. The goal must not be the self-righteousness, pride, and seeking of honor for self; but the glory of God.

It is a terrible deception when people are told and taught to hear, pray, study the Bible and so on and yet not taught the real goal of doing those things. When those things (means of grace) are not taught to people as ways to seek Christ and to behold Him in His glory, they will become means of self-righteousness and means for pride and self-deception. Again, this is a terrible deception and it is carried out across the world in so many places. Yes, Christians are to pray, but it is not doing what people think of as prayer, but rather it is to behold His glory and then seek God in prayer.

The two goals of prayer and the rest of the means of grace are polar opposites in what they seek as a goal, but also the view of God that is behind and underneath them. God and His glory is the greatest good for God to seek and also for His people to seek. When people seek themselves in prayer or in the means of grace, they are committing the great evil of idolatry. When people think they are seeking God by their duties rather than by the power of grace seeking grace, they are looking to the arm of flesh and self to do what grace alone can do. In order to seek God by grace and for grace, it takes the glory of grace to shine in the eyes of the soul to see Christ as greater than all the excellencies of the world and His righteousness as the only true righteousness that there is. In the light of His excellencies all the things of the world appear as dust and ashes. In light of the glory of His righteousness, all the righteousness that self can raise up is seen as filthy rags. The soul must behold Christ or it will grind away in the dirt and mire of the world for its short pleasures and for muddy coverings rather than true righteousness.

Isaiah 2:17 The pride of man will be humbled And the loftiness of men will be abased; And the LORD alone will be exalted in that day, 18 But the idols will completely vanish. 19 Men will go into caves of the rocks And into holes of the ground Before the terror of the LORD And the splendor of His majesty, When He arises to make the earth tremble. 20 In that day men will cast away to the moles and the bats Their idols of silver and their idols of gold, Which they made for themselves to worship, 21 In order to go into the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs Before the terror of the LORD and the splendor of His majesty, When He arises to make the earth tremble. 22 Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils; For why should he be esteemed?

Whatsoever is of nature’s spinning must be all unraveled before the righteousness of Christ can be put on. Whatever is of nature’s putting on, Satan will come and plunder every rag away, and leave the soul naked and open to the wrath of God. All that nature can do will never make up the least gram of grace that can mortify sin, or look Christ in the face one day.     Thomas Wilcox

The Scriptures are quite clear about the need for souls to be humbled and broken before the soul is ready to look to Christ alone and His grace alone. Wilcox puts it in an analogy of clothing and the picture is that of spinning which is how they made clothes in his day. The idea, then, is that men and women make their own clothes of righteousness (obtained by morality and works) by spinning rather than look to the righteousness of Christ alone to cover their nakedness. When a person comes to see that his own works in obtaining righteousness is nothing but filthy rags, that person should see that all of his own covering must be unraveled that s/he might not trust in the slightest or smallest thread of his own working. Grace alone must work in the heart of this person and show the person where the rags are and where the small threads are.

For a person to reach the point of recognizing his or her own utter lack of righteousness that person must seek the Lord for this, though once again the seeking of the Lord does not earn it in any way. As David cried out in Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way” (vv. 23-24). The soul is spiritually dead and cannot see these things, and even when the soul is alive there is remaining darkness and it must have light to see. The soul must cry out to God for grace to open its eyes to see and then for grace to give it the desire to flee from sin and especially the sin of self-righteousness. Only grace can reveal the depths of sin and the depths of self-righteousness that every human being has. Only grace can give a person the real desire to be holy and only grace can give a person the broken heart that is needed to quit defending self and seek to be broken from self-righteousness and pride. How powerful is pride in the heart when part of its work is blinding sinners to their sin and self-righteousness. How terrible it is when the disease itself tries to blind us to the disease in the guise of health.

Matthew 18:3 and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.

The two passages of Scripture (one from each Testament) just above show us the necessity of this unraveling work of coming to and end of self and of self-righteousness. Can a person trust in the righteousness of Christ alone while trusting in self-righteousness to any point and degree? Can a person trust in grace alone to do the work while trusting in self-righteousness to any degree? The main point of Matthew 18:3 is that humility is the opposite of greatness and how very small children (even infants) are utterly dependant upon their parents. True conversion is when proud, self-righteous, and self-reliant sinners become like infants and receive all from Christ.

The passage in Isaiah shows the type of people that God dwells with. He does not dwell with the proud and the self-righteous, but He dwells with the contrite and lowly of spirit. This was the “spirit” that Christ had when He dealt with the Pharisees with strong words and yet had mercy upon the weak, helpless, and sinners. Self-righteousness is odious to God, yet those who have no righteousness of their own but know that they have nothing but their own sin and yet hold to the righteousness of Christ are the ones that Christ dwells with. God can behold the worst of sinners if they are in Christ and behold them in His love because of the perfect righteousness of Christ. On the other hand, God can look at the highest standard of human morality and religion and it will be an abomination to Him apart from Christ. We must seek for our own threads of self-righteousness to be unraveled and cast away from us as the worst of things. We should cry out in humility and brokenness for God to have mercy on our souls and grant Christ and His righteousness to us. Nothing else will save the soul and grant the soul the presence of the living God.