Man…Our trust should not be in mankind, but in the creator of mankind. Jeremiah 17: 5, says: “Thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord.” The lord is telling us that mankind will let us down but He will never let us down, He is a very present help in our time of trouble (Psalm 46: 1). When we put mankind ahead of God, we are saying that the strength of mankind is greater than God’s; this allows our hearts (our spirits/the center of our being) to be pulled more toward what mankind provides, and less toward what God can provide.
Works…Many Christians take pride in the works they have done for God, they even compare their works to other Christians which puffs them up even more. Ephesians 2: 8-10, puts works in perspective for us. We are saved by God’s grace through faith, and even our faith is a gift from God, our works encourages us to boast. Works don’t save us, God’s grace does; works is not a pre-requisite to salvation, but a post-requisite of salvation. Verse 10, tells us that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we could walk in them. It’s not about us, but all about Jesus. When we perform acts of service for the unsaved, we are letting our light shine before mankind; but all the glory goes to God, not to us. (Matthew 5: 16)
Our own Righteousness…Righteous is defined as morally right or justifiable; virtuous. A lot of Christians believe that they are righteous people apart from Christ because they treat people right and have high moral values, but this is what God says about this kind of righteousness: Isaiah 64: 6 “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Obviously, our understanding of righteousness is different than God’s. When we feel that we are righteous in and of ourselves we leave ourselves open to manipulation by the Devil. We are prone to sin frequently while making excuses for them, and like a leaf our sins take us further away from God. The only righteousness we have is what we received from Christ Jesus; 2 Corinthians 5: 21: “For made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be right with God through Christ.” Apart from Christ our righteousness is like filthy garments; with Christ we become the righteousness of God; not because of what we did but for what Christ did for us.
Excerpts from my Book, "In God we should Trust"