Can you handle the truth?

[t]he gospel of Jesus Christ is that you can’t fix yourself. You can’t get the stain out. And yet, in the grip of sin, you frequently pretend you can. You pretend you can by wallowing around in it, by marinating in it, by trying to work up a holy sweat. But don’t you see what you’re doing? You are trying to save yourself. You are trying to fix yourself. But you can’t and you won’t feel better later. You might have momentary feelings of self-satisfaction, thinking you’ve done a good job feeling bad so you must be making headway. But you aren’t. You can’t. The only way to deal with sin is to give it to Jesus, to confess it to God who promises to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. But His grace really is offensive. His grace is offensive because His grace is so thorough, so absolute. God simply and wonderfully washes you clean and casts your sins behind His back and completely forgets about them. For the sake of His Son Jesus, He remembers your sins no more.

-Excerpt from More Grace Than We Want