And, today, God has made a contract. Not because you were good, not because you had joined church, not because you had been a good rank in society. You can be ever so good, you can live a clean life, you can go to church every day, you can sacrifice every day, you can give a part of your money, you can give up all the sins of the world, and everything, and live just as true and faithful as you can, and you will miss Heaven just as far as East is from the West. That’s right. It isn’t by goodness that we are saved, but it’s by His mercy that we are bought, that God wanted to make sons and daughters. Goodness never makes them. The Spirit of God makes them. If it wasn’t so, He wouldn’t have had to send the Holy Ghost.

The Deity of Jesus Christ, 1949-12-25, Jeffersonville, IN, §114