Righteous? Really?

Recently I have been praying that Jesus would make my need for grace more a reality for me - to help me see my sin and depravity as it really is so that I have a greater recognition of my dependence on His grace - that I would see my place at the foot of the Cross.  In self-righteousness I was blind to the sin in my life.  Truth says:

"We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away" (Isaiah 64:6)

"Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die." (Ezekiel 33:13)

“None is righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10)

As the Spirit is answering this prayer and searching out and exposing the hidden things in me, it is no lovely thing to be confronted with sin.  The ugliness that lurks in my flesh is appalling to me, it's embarrassing and gross.  Truth says that if I trust in the "good" I have done and yet sin even a bit, that the "good" won't be remembered.  (I've heard people say that they've been "good enough", that the good outweighs the bad.  One sin though annuls all the "good").  And Romans clearly says that no one is righteous, so all of our potentially good things are not remembered.  And even those "righteous" things we did, those are even filthy to God who is perfect and Holy.  

So as God continues to search out and expose sin in my life, I have been thinking and praying on some things.  First, do I weep over sin because I am sincerely broken over that sin and it's offense to God, or am I just weeping from embarrassment and the thought that others will think less of me? Do I rely on my own ability to "fix" these problems, or do I depend on the Spirit's power to transform and redeem me? Do I believe that is possible?  I am trying to take these things to people in my life who really love Jesus to confess and repent.  That is a hard thing to do. I had no idea how physically and emotionally taxing yesturday would be as Jesus kept instructing me to confess these things He is showing me until it was all dragged into the light.  But I'm finding grace there at His cross, expressed through His word, through people who hear my sin and struggles and love me still, evidencing in flesh and blood the covenant, unfailing love of Jesus. 

We are fools to think we don't belong at the foot of the cross just as much as every other sinner.  But it is at the cross where the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).  I don't think that has sunk in yet.  All sin.  And this is something done for me.  I am powerless to do this.  It is purely the grace of a King who loved so greatly that He took all that sin, all that putrid disgusting perversion of goodness, on Himself, bore an excruciating death, and rose in victory over all sin, so that any grossness in me finds death in the victory and power of Christ.  So if my sin is exposed and I am seen as the true wreck I am so that the grace and glory and power of Jesus might be revealed more clearly and exalted more greatly, then okay.