A person who is healthy does not go down the street and repeat to anyone he or she meets: "Oh how healthy I am! And my kidneys! I feel my blood circulating healthily through my blood vessels. In a word, I am a picture of health! Do you also have a certificate of your state of health?"

As long as he is not reconciled with God, a man is burdened by the feeling of his own righteousness. He tends to deal with himself, his feelings and good deeds, looking in them for the proofs of his righteousness and, by that itself, of God's approval. However, God does not demand that from us.

We should not appear before God offering Him our own righteousness, but accept the righteousness granted to us by God as a gift.

When we pray, we do not wait to experience the change of our sinful heart. We should not deal with ourselves and look into our feelings searching a proof to grant of our prayers, but we pray, looking at Christ, until we build up a perfect confidence that He has heard our voice and granted us. We should try not to encourage ourselves by ourselves, but by God.

If we have realized a high resemblance with Christ's character, we will not be aware of that:

"But our not boasting with our spiritual grandeur and, in approaching to Christ, our considering ourselves ever more worthless and sinful, do not mean that we will act ever more sinfully. There exists an enormous difference between the "feeling" of worthlessness and sinfulness and "committing" sinful deeds... When apostle Paul said: "I am the first among sinners", he did not mean by that: "I do bad deeds all the time and sin permanently", for he likewise says:

'Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?' (Romans 6:1-2)" (Maurice Venden)

The gift we are offered by God consists of two elements: forgiving (2 Corinthians 5:19) and consecration (Ezekiel 36:25-28). The first gift - justice - ascribed to us, gives us the right to Heaven, and the second gift - righteousness - qualifies us by the character for Heaven.

A real faith is a "hand" by which we accept the gift offered. We accept salvation not because we have confidence in us and in our readiness to accept it, but because we have confidence in God for he has promised to put it into our heart when we ask for it.