If you have never been converted, your condition is far more serious than you realise. Fallen human nature is not capable of producing anything acceptable to God, because even the best that we do as unbelievers is spoiled by sinful motives, sinful goals.
When God surveys human attempts at righteousness, he searches the heart with divine scrutiny, and what men and women are prepared to pass off as good, he condemns. Bad motives spoil good acts. Our own efforts to search our hearts do not go deep enough, and we are too ready to congratulate ourselves for some act of kindness or generosity, when our eyes are really on the praise of men and what we will gain by making our acts known.
What then have I got to do? Try to be good. Try to please God. Try to mend my ways. No, says the Lord Jesus Christ, you can't. Coming to God means God must change you. You can't change your ways. This is what he has just said? What kind of a tree are you? Before conversion you are an unbeliever tree; it’s as simple as that. You can't produce believing fruits. You are an unregenerate, unsaved, godless tree. You can't produce fruits that will ever be pleasing to God. At this point, you come to an absolute dead stop, and, by dint of your own application, you can proceed no nearer to God, because you're the wrong genus; you're the wrong tree. An evil man cannot produce good out of his heart. So how can a change be brought about? Just as we cannot cancel the debt of our sin to God, so we cannot change our own nature, and give ourselves a heart that truly loves God. We need Christ to make atonement for our sins, by taking the full punishment that we deserve, to that our sins are put into the sea of God’s forgetfulness. We also need the Spirit of God to create a new nature in us, which for the first time is able to obey God willingly, and has a genuine hatred of sin, even though it be our own sin. We have no power to bring about that change, but we must long for it and pray for it, and seek Christ as our redeemer and plead with God to receive us in mercy.