Make account that thou hast done nothing, and then thou hast done all. For if, being sinners, when we account ourselves to be what we are, we become righteous, as indeed the Publican did; how much more, when being righteous we account ourselves to be sinners.
It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
We do not become righteous by doing righteous deed but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds.
Jesus loves sinners. He only loves sinners. He has never turned anyone away who came to Him for forgiveness, and He died on the cross for sinners, not for respectable people.
Self-righteousness is unavoidable. You can either be a self-righteous Pharisee where you think you are better than everyone else or you can be a self-righteous pagan who thinks you are better than the Pharisee. If you are a self-righteous person, I could become very self-righteous thinking that you're self-righteous and you think you're so good but I know you're bad. I know I'm bad so that makes me better than you.
I believe you know Jesus said "a doctor doesn't come to the healthy, but the sick, and it's not the righteous but the sinners that I've come for," so I think that that's the scandal of God's love and grace that no one is beyond redemption, and we can see that all through scripture, you know.
The best of men are only men at their very best. Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, - martyrs, fathers, reformers, puritans, - all are sinners, who need a Savior: holy, useful, honorable in their place - but sinners after all.
Jesus is never upset at sinners; he is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners.
The sinners to whom Jesus directed His messianic ministry were not those who skipped morning devotions or Sunday church. His ministry was to those whom society considered real sinners. They had done nothing to merit salvation. Yet they opened themselves to the gift that was offered them. On the other hand, the self-righteous placed their trust in the works of the Law and closed their hearts to the message of grace.
There is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps.
Justification is God's declaration that we, though guilty sinners, are righteous in God's eyes.
Curiously, the righteous Pharisees had little historical impact, save for a brief time in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. But Jesus' disciples - an ornery, undependable, and hopelessly flawed group of men - became drunk with the power of a gospel that offered free forgiveness to the worst sinners and traitors. Those men managed to change the world.
God has nothing to say to the self-righteous. Unless you humble yourself before Him in the dust, and confess before Him your iniquities and sins, the gate of heaven, which is open only for sinners, saved by grace, must be shut against you forever.
Every Christian should find for himself the imperative and incentive to become holy. If you live without struggle and without hope of becoming holy, then you are Christians only in name and not in essence. But without holiness, no one shall see the Lord, that is to say they will not attain eternal blessedness. It is a trustworthy saying that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners (I Tim. 1:15). But we deceive ourselves if we think that we are saved while remaining sinners. Christ saves those sinners by giving them the means to become saints.
Instead of preaching the good news that sinners can be made righteous in Christ and escape the wrath to come, the gospel has degenerated into the pretext that we can be happy in Christ and escape the hassles of life.
Since man's natural instincts lead him to sin, all men are sinners; and all sinners go to hell. If everyone goes to hell, then you will meet all your friends there.