Let me tell you once for all, that you cannot make yourself fit for heaven. You cannot clothe yourself with the garments of salvation. You cannot renew your own nature.
Somebody says: "You discourage people by telling them that they cannot change themselves." That is the very thing I want to do.
Discouragement of this sort is the very thing I always aim at in my dealing with the unsaved. I am afraid that there are many people who believe that they are saved when they are not.
My belief is that God never healed a man till he was wounded, and that He never made a man alive till he was dead. It is God's way first to make us feel that we are nothing, and can do nothing, and that we must be saved by grace. We must learn that Christ must save us from beginning to end, or else we can never be saved at all!
Oh, if I could only bring all my hearers into a condition of despair about themselves! Then I would know that they are on the road to a simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our extremity is God's opportunity. Oh, how I long to see you get to that extremity!
It is absolute helplessness and death that puts the sinner where Christ can deal with him. When he is nothing, Christ shall be everything.
Have you never heard of the man who saw a person drowning, and plunged into the river after him? The sinking man tried to clutch him; but the swimmer knew that if he let the man get hold of him he could not bring him to shore. So he kept swimming around him.
The man went down, and still his rescuer did not touch him. He let him go down again, because he was too strong. When he was going down the third time, then the rescuer laid hold of him. The man was at the end of his strength; he was helpless, and so could not impede his deliverer.
This is what you have to be, sinner friend. When you cannot do anything for yourself, then you cannot any longer hinder Christ. Your part is just to yield yourself right up into His hands to be saved alone by Him.