In Christ Alone

In Christ Alone “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by Me.” (John 14:6) I returned last week from a Keith and Kristyn Getty worship conference in Nashville. Perhaps their best known song is “In Christ Alone.” As we come to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, we are reminded that this is one of the Reformation’s chief tenents along to a confession of “by faith alone,” “by grace alone,” and “by the Scripture alone.” Let us look further into this. John 14:6 is a very emphatic statement. First of all, it is one of the seven “I AM” statements in the gospel of John. Jesus could have said this less emphatically. Literally it reads “I, I AM.” This certainly gives us the idea of I and no one else. The very statement excludes any other way, truth, or life. Secondly, it reminds us of Exodus 3:14 and Yahweh telling Moses in response to Moses’ inquiry for His name answers, “I AM that I AM.” So making this statement equates Jesus to the Yahweh who spoke to Moses at the burning bush. This makes Jesus no less than God. Not only is the “I AM” emphatic, so is the predicate. We have three nouns used as adjectives which tell us something about Jesus. Each of them uses the definite article “the.” Jesus is not “a way” for the Father. He is “the way,” the only way. The three nouns are connected by the conjunction “and.” And puts these three nouns on an equal footing, although others have tried to use :life” and “way” as modifiers to “way” and translate is “The true and living way.” But I feel this weakens the statement. Jesus is described in the prologue of John with the words, “in Him was life.” He also states later that the Father granted Jesus to “have life in Himself.” All other life derives from Him. Also, Jesus is exclusively “the truth. Other statements can be true or factual, but only Jesus is “the truth.” Finally, the proposition concludes with “No one comes to the Father, except through Me.” So this statement is triply strong. It cannot lead to any other interpretation. The truth of this interpretation stands or falls as a whole. Either this statement is absolutely true or absolutely false. There is no middle ground here. John is either apostle or apostate. This assertion about Jesus is made throughout the Gospel of John, In another I AM statement, Jesus calls Himself the door to the sheepfold. All others who try to come in some other way are thieves and robbers. In John 15, He describes himself as the vine who gives life to the branches and causes them to produce fruit. Jesus is exclusive. There is no room for Mohamed, Buddah, or even Moses. Jesus is the one who gave command to Moses on the Mount. I do wish to affirm a Trinitarian position here. There is not the Son only, but there is the Father and the Holy Spirit also. In Matthew 28, the name of the “Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” are bound together with the coordinating conjunction “and” in a similar way to what we mentioned in John 14:6. This use of the conjunction makes all three members of the Godhead equal. The epistle of First John reinforces the idea of the uniqueness of Jesus to the Christian faith. He states that “He who has the Son has the Father also.” In contrast, he says that “He who does not hold to the Son does NOT have the Father.” You simply cannot be a Christian or even a believer in the only true God apart from recognizing who Jesus is. Jesus in his farewell discourse tells the disciples and us as well of the role of the Holy Spirit. Though equally God with the Father and the Son, His role is subordinate to Jesus in that He reminds us of Jesus’ words and leads us into “all truth.” And since all truth is centered in Jesus, this means that the role of the Holy Spirit is to lead us to Jesus. This is the chosen way. Some may feel that undue emphasis is placed on Jesus to the detriment of the Father. Even in Evangelical circles, there seems to be some embarrassment about the person of Jesus. Jesus has been reduced so that the Father might receive greater glory. Some elevate the Holy Spirit above Jesus as well. But this is rank heresy. If God has so appointed Jesus Christ such exalted privilege, who are we to disobey God by diminishing Jesus? Even if we could make overmuch about Jesus, and we can not, the previous statement about the one having the Son has the Father also serves to say that we are still fully affirming the Father when we glorify the Son. We simply cannot honor the name of Jesus enough. One cannot rightly call someone a “Son” without also affirming the existence of the Father. When you affirm the Son, you affirm the Father also. I do realize that the doctrine of the Trinity as well as about the relationship between the human and divine nature of Jesus is a great mystery or which we can only grasp lightly. But the Scripture is clear that Jesus is the means of all creation and eternal as well as fully human and born of the Virgin Mary. We would have to have to be God to understand this. However, it is sufficiently revealed in the Bible. The Reformers wanted to restore the person of Christ to His rightful place. The Roman Catholic Church had diminished Jesus in two ways. They exhaled Jesus as the angry judge. At first this looks affirming of Jesus, but place Jesus so remotely from humanity that intermediaries to Jesus were developed. This led to the exaltation of the Virgin Mary and the saints. For since we are so unworthy to come before an angry judge, we needed someone to turn his fierce anger away from us. Mary and the saints were used as a means to calm Jesus down, In addition, these mediaries were seen as having produced more good works than were needed to save themselves. The church claimed rights over this treasury of merits and could sell them for cash in the form of indulgences. The remoteness of God from the laity also meant that the Church usurped the divinity of the Godhead. As God was immortal, invisible, and the like, the church claimed that the Pope was the visible manifestation of the invisible God. He was vicarii Christi, or Vicar of Christ. He in a sense was the incarnation of the deity. It is interesting that the Greek word “Antichrist” can be rendered into the Latin “Vicarii Christii.” The Reformers saw that when they read the Vulgate and the recent Greek Text of the Scripture done by Erasmus that Scripture and the theology of the Roman church were totally at odds with each other. The Church tried to keep this secret by forbidding translation of the Scripture from Latin to the common languages. As people were slowly learning to read, this incompatibly would become clear. The Reformers translated the Scripture into the common tongues, often at the cost of their lives. Either Scripture was the authority of the church, or the Roman hierarchy. The Reformers held that Scripture was “the” authority and rule of faith, hence, Scripture alone. The Reformers say by the authority of Scripture that the entire Catholic system of sacramental grace was totally at odds with Scripture. Although the Sacraments could be seen as means of grace, they were means and not the end. One was not made right with God by taking the Sacraments in and of themselves. As the priest controlled the sacraments, they controlled who received grace. But Scripture instead teaches that grace is a freely given gift of God to the elect without strings or works. It is this grace alone which saved the elect. Human works had nothing to do with it. So the reformers held to grace alone. God in his freedom, freely offers grace to whom He will apart from works. This is truly the interpretation of Scripture. The means of receiving this free grace was by faith alone. Those who simply believed in Jesus and confessed that He is LORD and asset that He rose from the dead would be saved. It is by faith alone that grace is given. Of course, central to this is what we discussed earlier, is that this faith is directed to Christ alone. It is this Jesus, revealed in Scriptures and affirmed by the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin and raided from the dead by the Spirit of Holiness whom we solely confess as our hope of salvation and eternal life. Northern Europe was transformed by the Reformation. Boys and girls learned to read and write from the Scripture. The common people were lifted out of the darkness of ignorance. Family life was made honorable, and one’s job became a sacred calling. No longer was the calling of God a privilege granted exclusively to the clergy. And now as we are approaching 500 years of the Reformation, it seems that we are on the verge of returning to the Middle Ages. The universities are failing to educate people to critically think. Instead they are indoctrinating them with propaganda. Common people are leaving their minds and bodies at the doors. Instead of believing in the vicarious work of our Savior Jesus Christ, we are letting entertainers on television live their lives in us rather than having a life of our own. They do our sports. The tell us what to do and believe. These people hardly have the right to be called vicars. Yet the world gives them the incredulous credence once ignorantly granted to the Pope. Instead of living the victory which Jesus Christ won for us, we have become victims instead. It is time to wake up. The Protestant church is sickened to death’s door. It is said that the Pope is about to declare the end of the Reformation. Sadly to say, it looks true. A new secular Catholicism had descended on us, and the church is lost in darkness. It is time to return to the Scripture and to the Christ of Scripture. It is time to get a life, the life Gof God in our souls.