Re: The Gift

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....[You] must everyday denounce as dung and dross your privileges, your obedience, your baptism, your sanctification, your duties, your graces, your tears, your meltings, your humblings...your workings, your self-sufficiency must be destroyed. You must take all from God's hand. Christ is the gift of God....Ah, how nature storms, frets, rages at this, that all is a gift, and it can purchase nothing with its actings and tears and duties, that all workings are excluded, and of no value in heaven. --Thomas Wilcox (1621-1687)

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Eph 2:8-10)

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; (Phil 3:7-9) (VW)