God Loves… Himself

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.

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.

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 something like a nuclear bomb to the religious thought in the modern world to assert that when we come to God we can (must) only bring Christ with us. If we try to bring anything but Christ with us, Christ will not be with us. This is a magnificent way of setting out the truth that the Gospel and all Christian activity is Christ and Christ alone and that by grace alone. The next statement, however, is also quite the bombshell itself in terms of what it is saying. The soul that tries to rest or trust or look to any of its own qualifications will poison and corrupt faith. It is not just that the faith is not less pure, but it is that it is poisoned and corrupted.

The idea that faith can be poisoned and corrupted may not sound quite right to some, but upon thinking through it from the view of Scripture it becomes a frightful truth. Romans 4:16 teaches that the reason that salvation is by faith is so that it may be by grace alone. Whatever faith is and whatever it is intended to do, it is to make room for grace and grace alone. When works are added to faith, then, faith is not doing what it was intended to do which was to save sinners by grace alone. Faith that is not attached to grace alone is not true faith because true faith and true grace go together. The ingredients of works do indeed poison and corrupt faith.

We also see this same teaching in Romans 11:6 where it is taught that grace is not grace when works are mixed in. This is a tremendous teaching when we see that the Gospel is not just some grace or mostly grace, but that the Gospel is a pure and undiluted grace or it is not grace at all. God saves to the praise of the glory of His grace and not to the glory of His grace and human works. The pure grace of God will not stand to be mixed with works and/or merit because that makes grace no longer to be grace. Clearly, then, we can see that the ingredients of works and merit do poison and corrupt true faith because true faith will only look to true grace.

Another passage of Scripture that weighs in heavily on this reads like this: “Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; But the righteous will live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). Pride and faith are opposites. Where there is pride, there is not pure faith. The soul of the proud person is not right within him and yet the only way a soul is right in a person is by grace alone. As other Scriptures state (James 4:6; I Peter 5:5), God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. What these teach us with great clarity is that true faith can only come from a humble heart and that means that pride and faith are in direct opposition to each other.

The proud heart is a heart that loves self and lives by self. The proud heart is all about self. This shows us that the proud heart, though indeed it may try hard to be humble and deceive itself into thinking it is humble, does not receive grace alone. Oh how pride is destructive and poisonous to true faith and will exalt a false faith. Pride blinds people to the nature of true faith and to the presence of pride. The soul that looks to its own works and merit rather than Christ or in addition to Christ is a proud soul. Pride opposes pure grace and even stands in opposition to pure grace. How men and women need to look at their own hearts and pray that God would open their eyes and hearts to see if they have a pure grace or whether they are resting in a false grace (mixed with other things) and blinded to that by pride. One can even know that any ingredients of pride and works will mean grace is not pure and yet knowing it in the brain is not good enough. One must actually be emptied of self and pride. This actually being emptied of self and pride is where most people will stop. They want to know it, but they don’t want to be emptied of it. However, grace will not be given to the proud. It is that serious.

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.