Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel? – Jeremiah 15:12
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. – Luke 5:32
Here is a man with the fetters of his transgressions about him, but “he will get them off,” he says: prayer shall be his file; tears shall be the (nitric acid) to dissolve the metal, and his own resolutions shall, like a hammer, dash the links in fragments. But it cannot be: the iron shall never break this northern iron and the steel. Habits of sin yield not to raspings of the unregenerate resolves. You are condemned, and only Christ the Son of God can set you free from the fetters which hold you in the condemned cell. All your efforts apart from Jesus are utterly useless. He must bring liberty—you cannot emancipate yourselves. You say that you will break off the chains of evil habit. There are some you can break off, but can you alter your nature? “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” That were an easy task compared with a man renewing his own heart. Let not thy puny strength be wasted on so futile an effort as that which aims at self-salvation; how shall weakness achieve the labor of omnipotence, or death accomplish the sublime miracle of the Immortal? The imaginations of the thoughts of your heart are evil, only evil, and that continually, and do what you will they will remain so. The dead cannot give themselves life: it needs superior power to hew off the fetters which hold you prisoner in the sepulcher of your natural death…Come, bring thyself, chained as thou art, to Him, or if thou canst not stir an inch, cry out to Him! Ask Him to deliver thee! He can do it. Trust in Him, for trust in His precious blood and reliance upon His perfect sacrifice will make thee a free man in a moment, never to be a bondslave again.
He Hath Said 