I want very much to be perfectly righteous and moral. Every believer wants this. Often I look at up- right, morally admirable men and want to be like them. I respect such men and want to be like them so that I can respect or have pride in myself. Moreover, since these thoughts generally arise when I have experienced some serious moral failure and the legal fear that often accompanies such failure, I find that I want to be moral or righteous in order to remove this fear. Is it any wonder then that God allows me so little progress in this area? As difficult as it is to simply trust Christ in the teeth of my great sin, I fear it would be altogether impossible for me to maintain pure faith in Christ in the face of significant progress in righteousness: I would be too tempted to trust and take pride in my own righteousness.
While by such an argument, I do not justify my sins or even try to mitigate their guilt, it does help reveal part of the reason for my frustrating lack of progress in this important area and thus relieve some of the legal fears. God is determined to keep me (and all believers) in such a state that I stay convinced that if I am not saved by sheer mercy, I shall not be saved at all!
In this we can see why the apostle writes that we must put off sin by "looking to Jesus." Righteousness motivated by any other principle than love for Christ, energized by any other force than the sight of Him, or done for any other purpose than the glory of His name will certainly result in frustrating failure.