Am I good enough for God to help me?

This morning I read verse 1 of Psalm 43:  "Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation."  I immediately thought 'oh, I can't ask God to vindicate me and plead my cause because I'm not good enough.  It's only when I'm being good that I can ask God to vindicate me.'  OK.  Can you see what's doctrinally inaccurate about my initial response to that verse?  It has everything to do with the gospel.  Here it is:  I can ask God to vindicate me; not because I deserve it, because I don't.  I can ask him to vindicate me and plead my cause on the basis of propitiation.  Propitiation is the Bible term which means to render favorable.  Propitiation doesn't procure God's love for me - doesn't bring about his love because of something I did but instead it renders it consistent for him to exercise his love for me.

So the question is, if propitiation means that I'm rendered favorable in God's eyes, who did the rendering?  We're given the answer in 1 John 4:10:  "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."  Jesus was sent to render me favorable in God's eyes.  Because his sacrifice for me was perfect, God accepts it as a payment for my sin and therefore sees me as perfectly good; in other words, sees me as someone he can vindicate.

Again, in God's eyes I'm perfectly good because Christ's sacrifice was perfectly atoning.  Therefore, he can vindicate me and plead my cause at any moment of every day, not because I'm good but because Christ earned it for me.

That's the gospel.  And that's why I love Jesus so much.