Christianity Requires No Works to Merit Salvation but It Will Cost You Your SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

"It will cost him his self-righteousness.  He must cast away all pride and high thoughts, and conceit of his own goodness.  He must be content to go to heaven as a poor sinner saved only by free grace, and owing all to the merit and righteousness of another.  He must be willing to give up all trust in his own morality, respectability, praying, Bible-reading, Church-going, and sacrament-receiving, and trust in nothing but Jesus Christ.  Let us set down this item first and foremost in our account. To be a true Christian it will cost a man his self-righteousness."
~ J. C. Ryle 1816-1900, "Holiness"

There is really something we can be sure of that salvation is both free yet it can cost you something in return.  Becoming a Christian will really cost you your self-righteousness.  Nothing has been more painful for anyone but to wake up to the reality that they're not as good as they think they are, God can't accept them just because they tried their best because He demands sinlessness and that grace is something you don't work for.

Romans 3 really talks about the sorry stage of man and verse 19 states this sad reality that all men must be silenced before God.  Telling people what is sin is hard because a lot of stuff they're used to grow up with or love doing isn't wrong to their eyes.  Many people think that sin isn't sin or that it's okay to sin as long as you offset it with good works.  When sin is addressed as sin it shows the horrible and ugly state of man.  Even the most vile sinner tends to think today that they are okay with God no thanks to religious hypocrisy and the heresy of relativism.

People attack salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ because they are full of their pride and self-righteousness.  They think that they must do their effort in salvation when they can't.  Salvation has never been an issue of justice but God's mercy.  Sinners owe God a debt that they could not pay except by spending eternity in the Lake of Fire.  Yet God in His mercy offered a way out of sin and its eternal consequence by letting the sinless Jesus pay the debt He didn't owe.  Such a message is repugnant to the self-righteous people of today.


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