I understand to be the teaching both of our nature and the Bible. My limits will not allow me to quote Scripture to sustain this view. How a Sinner May Attain to Righteousness. A sinner is a selfish moral agent. Being selfish, he will, of course, make no other than selfish efforts to become righteous.
Selfishness is a state of voluntary committal to the indulgence of the sensibility.
While the will is in this state of committal to self-indulgence, the soul will not and cannot put forth any righteous act. The first righteous act possible to an unregenerate sinner is to change his heart, or the supreme ultimate preference of his soul. Without a change of heart he may live a perfectly outwardly moral and religious life. I say again his first righteous act must be to change his heart. To say that he will change this for any selfish reason is simply a contradiction, for the change of heart involves the renunciation of selfishness.