Self-righteousness and self-sufficiency are the darlings of sinful human nature, which she preserves as her life. That makes Christ seem ugly to sinful human nature. Sinful human nature cannot desire Him. He is just directly opposite to all nature’s glorious interests. Let sinful human nature but make a gospel, and it would make it quite contrary to Christ; it would be to the just, the innocent and the holy. But Christ made the gospel for you: that is, for needy sinners, the ungodly, the unrighteous, the accursed. Human nature cannot endure to think the gospel is only for sinners: it will rather choose to despair than to go to Christ upon such terrible terms. When nature is but put to it by guilt or wrath, it will go to its old haunts of self-righteousness and self-goodness. An infinite power must cast down those strongholds; Christ will look at the most abominable sinner before Him. None but the self-justified stands excluded from the gospel, because to such an one Christ cannot be made justification: he is no sinner.
