Stop Trying to Fix Yourself Before You Come to Jesus

There is a mistake people make when they begin to take their relationship with God seriously. They believe they need to get themselves in order before they can come to Him. They need to overcome a particular sin, clean up their lives, break old habits, or become a better person. Then, perhaps, they think they will be ready to approach God.

But that is not the gospel.

You do not come to Jesus because you have finally made yourself acceptable to God. You come because you recognize that you cannot make yourself righteous through your own efforts. You come because you need His mercy, and you come in repentance, not presenting your own goodness as the reason He should receive you.

Jesus made this clear when He spoke about two men who went to the temple to pray.

One was a Pharisee who stood before God and recounted his own righteousness. He was confident in what he did and in how he compared with others. The other was a tax collector who stood at a distance, unwilling even to lift his eyes toward heaven. He struck his breast and prayed, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13).

Jesus said it was the tax collector who went home justified before God.

Think about what that means. The Pharisee came with his record of religious achievement. The tax collector came acknowledging his need. One trusted in his own righteousness. The other appealed to God's mercy.

The difference was not that the tax collector had earned forgiveness by feeling sufficiently sorry for himself. It was that he stopped relying on himself and appealed to the mercy of God.

You cannot earn God's acceptance by becoming the person you think you ought to be before you come to Him.

This is where we need to understand repentance properly. Repentance is not simply feeling bad about what we have done, nor is it a promise to do better so that God will accept us. It is a change of heart that acknowledges our sin, abandons our self-justification, and turns toward God for mercy.

That does not mean we come to Jesus with no intention of changing. It means we understand where the change must begin. We do not reform ourselves into a condition that makes us worthy of Christ. We come to Christ because we need Him, and we submit our lives to Him because He is Lord.

There is a difference between trying to overcome sin in our own strength so that we can approach God, and coming to God because we cannot overcome our sin apart from Him. One keeps the focus on what we can accomplish. The other acknowledges our dependence on His grace.

The same principle applies to the person who has spent years in church, knows Scripture, understands Christian teaching, and has developed a respectable outward life. Religious knowledge, good conduct, and years of church attendance cannot replace a heart that has genuinely turned to God. We can become so occupied with how we appear that we fail to face the truth about ourselves.

God is not asking us to impress Him with the condition we have managed to achieve. He calls us to come before Him truthfully.

That is why the promise of forgiveness is so important. First John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (NIV). Notice where the assurance rests. It rests in God's faithfulness and justice, not in our ability to present ourselves as people who have everything under control.

We confess our sins because we have stopped pretending they are not there. We turn from them because we recognize that they are contrary to God. And we trust His promise because forgiveness rests on His character and the work of Jesus Christ, not on a record of personal improvement.

This is not permission to take sin lightly. It is a reason to stop hiding from God and deal with sin honestly before Him.

Some people spend years trying to repair themselves before they surrender to Christ. Others become discouraged because they keep failing to live up to the standard they have set for themselves. They know what needs to change, but they cannot seem to bring about the change they want. The answer is not to abandon the pursuit of holiness. It is to recognize that our need for Christ does not end when we first believe. We continue to depend on His grace as He teaches us to walk in obedience.

We come to Him as we are, but we do not come on our own terms. We come in repentance, trusting His mercy and submitting to His authority. Grace does not leave us where it finds us. It brings us into a relationship with God in which our lives are no longer meant to be governed by our own desires.

The question, then, is not whether you have managed to get your life in order. The question is whether you are willing to stop relying on your own righteousness and come to God through Jesus Christ.

The tax collector had no list of achievements to present. He had no comparison to make with somebody worse than himself. He simply acknowledged his need for mercy.

That is where the gospel confronts our pride. We may be willing to admit that we have made mistakes, but are we willing to acknowledge that we cannot establish our own righteousness before God? Are we willing to come to Him without excuses, without a performance, and without making our acceptance dependent on how well we think we have done?

God's mercy is not a reward for people who have successfully fixed themselves. It is the mercy of God toward sinners who come to Him in repentance and faith.

Stop waiting until you believe you are good enough to come to Jesus. You will never establish your standing before God through your own goodness. Come honestly. Come repentantly. Put your trust in Christ.

You do not need to fix yourself before you come to Jesus. You need to come to Him because you cannot save yourself.