The worst sin, the most damning sin. By Charles Spurgeon.

Self-righteousness is the worst sin, the most damning sin. Self-righteousness is utter blasphemy. God is holy. Here comes this base imposter and boasts, and I am holy too. Is not that a ludicrous and contemptible form of blasphemy? The heavens are not pure in God's sight. He charges His angels with folly. And do you, who are defiled from head to foot with loathsome sin, dare to talk about righteousness? Righteousness, indeed! You are a mixture of dust and sin.

Self-righteousness is idolatry, for the man who imagines himself to be righteous by his own works worships himself. Practically the object of his adoration is his own dear, delectable, excellent self. All of his confidence is in himself. All of his boasting is in himself. What is this but idolatry in its worst form?

Self-righteousness is profanity, for it calls God a liar. The Lord declares there is none righteous. No, not one. To this divine assertion, the self-righteous man claims himself to be holy and virtually declares that God is a liar. Though God says that by the works of the law shall no man be justified, Yet this man says, by the works of the law, I shall be justified. And so he profanes the word of the Most High God.

The gospel regards all men as sinners and comes to them with pardon. It treats men as hopelessly lost in sin and comes to save them. If there is a man who is righteous in himself, then the gospel has nothing to say to him. Its medicines are not for those upon whom the sickness of sin has never come. It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Jesus came to wash away sin's stains, not to flatter men into a notion of their righteousness. He came to heal the sick, not to applaud the vigorous. To such as are righteous in themselves, there is not a single syllable of promise in the entire gospel.

The world hates both Christ and Christians because they preach that all people are hell-deserving sinners in God's sight. Self-righteousness is most abominable in the sight of God. He is always provoked with pride and says, the proud in heart are an abomination to the Lord. I hate pride and arrogance. Moreover, self-righteousness also denies the wisdom of God's salvation and is utterly opposed to it. God's plan of salvation is based on the fact that we are guilty sinners. And being guilty, he provides a sin-atoning savior to save sinners. But his whole system of salvation is a gigantic blunder if we are or can be righteous in and of ourselves. The man who says, I am righteous, virtually casts a slur upon a work which is meant to be the highest display of God's love and wisdom.

Self-righteousness most effectually bars a man from all hope of salvation. Soul poverty and spiritual destitution alone bring a man to Jesus to be saved. The self-righteous man never repents. Why should he if he has never sinned? Those who never trust in Jesus for salvation are always self-righteous, hence they see no need for a Savior. Jesus brings the water of life to the self-righteous man, but he is not thirsty. Jesus brings the bread of life to him, but he is not hungry. Jesus offers a spotless robe of righteousness to him, but he has no need for it. Jesus offers to enrich him, but he is already wealthy. Jesus offers to pardon him, but he is not guilty. What does the self-righteous man need from Jesus? Nothing at all. And he will get nothing from Jesus but the damnation which he justly deserves.

Yet in the heights and depths of the dying love of Jesus, the true Christian reads the heights and depths of his accursed sin. In the infinity of the sin-atoning sacrifice of Jesus, he reads the boundless blackness of his guilt, and unwilling even to lift up his eyes to heaven, beats his bosom and says, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Heinous sins have damned their thousands, but self-righteousness has damned its tens of thousands.