Christ Alone

We began with Scripture Alone.

Each of the solas rests on the first: sola Scriptura. Scripture alone is the place where we go to gain our picture of Christ.

Today we grow off of that and into the second statement.

Sola Christus - Christ Alone

Pretty simple really: we are saved by Christ alone. There is no one else that CAN save.

Sola Christus is the belief that Christ alone is the basis on which the sinner can be saved and justified in God’s sight.

2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”

Acts 16:31 “They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.””

John 14:6 “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Why is this important today to KNOW this?

Whatever age we live in, whether the age of the Reformers or the present age, we are tempted to pollute the beauty of Christ through our idols.

John Calvin said it’s in our very nature: “Man’s nature. . . . is a perpetual factory of idols. . . . Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity.”

History - From the Reformation

In the early sixteenth century, the church was at the center of people’s lives in Western Europe.

Over the previous centuries, the Roman Catholic Church had devolved from the “Company of the Saved” to the “Salvation Company.” - Ligioner Ministries

What is meant by “Salvation Company”? In Luther’s day people had become enslaved to the sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church, and instead of looking to Christ for their standing before God they looked to the Church.

Basically, it was thought that there was a ‘storehouse of grace’ in the Catholic Church. Priests were its sole dispensers and the faithful had to come to them. (Does this sound familiar?) [Pharisees and Sadducees]

Scripture shows something drastically different.

The effect of his teaching was to shift focus from the Catholic Church and its clergy to Christ alone—salvation not from a company with priests turning on the taps of grace, as it were, but salvation in a singular person: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Look at what the world teaches!

Universalism - everyone can get to heaven.

Heaven is your own interpretation.

“to you, Jesus saves”

You can save yourself mentality.

Do enough good, and a good god would not send you to hell.

The list outside the church goes on and on.

Let’s Face a reality!

Even within the church, our temptation is to think that there is something in ourselves that can contribute to our redemption.

Perhaps it’s obedience to the law, or perhaps it’s good works that spring from faith itself. But Scripture counters: “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom 3:10).

Romans 3:10 CSB

as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one.

Isaiah 64:6 CSB

All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment; all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.

God and God alone can save us.

Let me be more specific, since there is a lot of usage of the word God: let us never get confused -

John 3:16–17 CSB

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

His only Son: Jesus

Acts 4:11–12 CSB

This Jesus is the stone rejected by you builders, which has become the cornerstone. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”

Matthew 16:15–17 CSB

“But you,” he asked them, “who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus responded, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven.

Jesus is the only Savior. Jesus is the Messiah. Messiah is Christ. There is none other. Jesus is the Christ: Christ alone.

WHY do we need the Christ?

God alone can save us:

God - YAHWAH - the personal name of the Father, saves us through His son. Back to John 3:16 “For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

Jesus, the Word of God, became Flesh.

John 1:1 CSB

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:14 CSB

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Romans 3:21–26 CSB

But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed. God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and justify the one who has faith in Jesus.

This Son, Jesus, would become our representative if you will. He will become our Substitution.

It’s called Substitutionary Atonement. Big words.

It just means that instead of us paying a price, that in reality we could never pay, Jesus paid the price for us: once for all.

John 14:6 CSB

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Not A way, A truth, and A life - NO - THE WAY, THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE!

NO ONE comes to the Father EXCEPT through Jesus.

NO ONE.

Some may say: well I don’t believe that. Well, your opinion of that does not matter. Jesus said it, that settles it: believe it.

It looks like this:

Whereas we failed to keep the law, Christ obeyed the law for us;

whereas we deserve the penalty for breaking the law, Christ died for us.

Christ fulfilled the law we could not keep, and he bore the wrath of God that we deserve (Rom. 3:21–26).

And he did so in full.

As that old hymn says, “Jesus paid it all.” That means, then, that the work of Christ, and Christ alone, is the basis on which the ungodly are justified in God’s sight.