Thinking We're a "Good" Person Doesn't Save Us

William Barclay, writing in The All-Sufficient Christ, points out that many religious people see salvation as:

"something that a man by merit can win, and not something that in grace God gives. It makes a man think of salvation as something that results from what he is, and not something that results solely from what God is."

Barclay goes on to say, 

"The very essence of Christianity is that in humble and adoring gratitude we can only accept that which God in Christ so generously offers us...
True, such a love drives us to seek to be worthy of it, but that which we do is not the cause but the consequence of our salvation. Every man is saved for works, but no man was ever saved by works." William Barclay


"But God , being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." Ephesians 2:4-10