Regardless of how good or how bad we might consider ourselves, anything that keeps us apart from God, even trust in our own righteousness and good works, continues the original sin of Adam. Men are not willing to come to terms with their own bankruptcy before God. Any religious system or formula that fails to shift a man's center from self and his own efforts back to Christ and His righteousness is not of God. All such efforts are humanistic and become at last demonic in a final separation from God. Faith comes to rest on Christ, not on ourselves.
Faith involves believing the truth, but it is more than assent to the truth.
Faith means that we sense a personal Presence. Two persons are involved with each other, Christ and you. To be truly Christian, faith must bring Christ, His life, and His death, within reach of our own involvement. Unless the living Christ takes over in our life through the power of the Holy Spirit, there is no point of contact between us and God. Christ grips us at the center of our life.