In his magnificent and practical work, Spiritual Depression, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones provides this wonderful description of the dynamics of genuine Christianity:
“The determining factor in our relationship with God is not our past or present, but Christ’s past and present.”
‘How then does it work?’ It works like this. God accepts this righteousness of Christ, this perfect righteousness face to face with the Law, which He honored in every respect. He has kept it and given obedience to it [through his perfect life], and he has borne its penalty [through his death]. The Law is fully satisfied. God’s way of salvation, says Paul, is that. He gives to us the righteousness of Christ. If we have seen our need and go to God and confess it, God will give us his own Son’s righteousness. He imputes Christ’s righteousness to us, who believe in Him, and regards us as righteous, and declares and pronounces us to be righteous in Him. That is the way of salvation, the Christian way of salvation…
To make it quite practical let me say that there is a very simple way of testing yourself to know whether you believe that… [After] I have explained the way of justification…to them, then I say: ‘Well, then, you are now ready to say that you are a Christian?’ And they hesitate. And I know they have not understood. Then I say: ‘What is the matter, why are you hesitating?’ And they say: ‘I do not feel that I am good enough.’ At once I know that in a sense I have been wasting my breath. They are still thinking in terms of themselves; their idea still is that they have to make themselves good enough to be a Christian, good enough to be accepted with Christ. They have to do it! ‘I am not good enough.’ It sounds very modest, but it is the lie of the devil, it is a denial of the faith… The essence of the Christian faith is to say that He is good enough and that I am in Him!
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As long as you go on thinking about yourself and saying: ‘Ah, yes, I would like to, but I am not good enough; I am a sinner, a great sinner,’ you are denying God and you will never be happy. You will continue to be cast down and disquieted. You will think you are better at times and then again you will find that you are not as good as you thought you were… How can I put this plainly? It does not matter if you have almost entered into the depths of hell, if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin, it does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God. You are no more hopeless than the most respectable…person in the world. Do you believe that?”
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GRACE & PEACE 
Good points….
I have found in talking to people (besides my brother) that when they say such things as I’m not good enough or I have to clean up or somthing to that affect, what they are really saying is that they do understand how they fall short and that they know they are in fact a sinner.
I think this knowing is a good thing, because of exactly what Rom 5:8 tells us. Jesus did come to save the sinner no matter how bad or how good.
Now back to my brother…haven’t discussed the issue with him lately but I need to revist it more and more. Here’s a man on his third marrage, (his current marrage is a great one and he has a wonderful wife) Viet-Nam vet who carried a M-16 in the delta and his unit sustained 98% killed or wounded. Saw unspeakable things and did such because he had to. His responce to me has been, David, you don’t understand…God could never Love a person like me. I’ve done terrible things in my life.
What darkness hids in his heart I don’t know, but I know it’s beacuse of maybe pride, an ever present sense of being alone, (tough issues with an abusive dad growing up) a hard heart, or just running away and maybe believing a Loving God could not allow such distruction and pain that he’s seen and or been part of felt.
It’s my prayer that one day God will allow him to see how much he’s loved and cared about. Just as there are so many people like my brother that our captive by sin and truly believe that God couldn’t love them. Sad to say I think fundamentlism and the perception that we need to be clean before coming to the Throne of Grace is a hidious deception of Satan that has hurt uncountable people.