Solus Christus

July 4th 2023

With “Sola Scriptura” as our starting point, and moving forward from there, certain truths begin to emerge. The more we study Scripture, the more we see. The more we read Scripture, the more we understand. The more of ourselves that we submit to those words long written down, the clearer and clearer what Christianity is, becomes. We must take this route, of using Scripture as the Standard, because no other body of text, no other work, no other book or teaching is, as we talked about last week, theopneustos. 

Take not the teachings of any human, no matter how noble or holy they may seem on the surface, to understand that which is beyond humanity. For they come from human minds and human mouths. They come from imaginations bubbling beneath layers of sin and shame. They come from human hearts, that Jeremiah 17:9 says are full of deceit and desperately wicked. And far be it from any sensible person to use something full of deceit…to teach them something true.

We must go nowhere else to learn what Christianity is, apart from what Ephesians 2:20 describes as the foundation of the Church; the writings of the Apostles and Prophets. It is here, within the inscripturated words of the King of the Universe, Jesus Christ, who knows no change nor is sin found anywhere within Him, that we find the eternal truths of God.

When we start with “Sola Scriptura” as Ephesians 2:20 teaches us is the foundation, and we begin to build the house of our understanding upon the rock that is the confession of Jesus Christ as God, we see exactly that. That within Jesus Christ dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

It was hard to zero in on one specific passage or one specific verse for this message this morning, because Jesus is everywhere in Scripture. The totality of the Bible could be seen as one massive interconnected web of lines and threads, all of whom connect to the single scarlet thread of redemption that is the blood of Jesus Christ flowing from His pierced hands and open side. Every verse, another thread within the 2000 year long web of God’s breath, can lead to Him.

He is mentioned in the fourth word of Genesis 1. “In the beginning …God…”

He is the one walking in the cool of the day in Genesis 3:8

He is the promised One who will crush the head of the serpent in Genesis 3:15.

He is the one who closed the Door on Noah’s Ark.

He is the flood.

And He is the Ark.

He is the ram caught in the thicket who took Isaac’s place in Genesis 22:13.

He is the one whom Jacob wrestled with in Genesis 32.

He is the basket that the Israleite Midwives hid Moses in, in Exodus 2.

He is the one who passed by Moses in the cleft of the rock.

And it was His blood painted across the doors in Exodus 12.

It was Christ amongst the lions of Daniel’s Den and Christ amongst the flames of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace.

He is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, the BRANCH of Zechariah 6.

He is the one prophesied in Isaiah 6, whose shoulders will hold up the government.

He is the One who was sitting atop the glowing throne in the prophet’s vision in Ezekiel 1.

He is the Ark of the Covenant who led His children to victory in Battle.

And He is the mercy seat atop the Ark where God meets His people.

He is the one whom the very stars were nothing but a map to direct wisemen and kings to find nursing at the breast of a homeless virgin.

He is the Word of God, made flesh in John 1.

The one who gives sight to the blind, sound to the deaf, legs to the lame, and life to the dead.

He is the one who has endured every temptation that a human could ever suffer through, and yet did not sin. He is one who knows what it is like to be forgotten, betrayed, stepped over and stepped on. He is the only one who can identify with your deepest weaknesses without succumbing to them. He is the only perfect human, who lived a perfect human life to its fullest extent.

“He is despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” (Is. 53:3-5)

He is the one who, on the cross whose wooden beams He gave life to when its tree was but a seed, knowing full well that it would be the one to be stained by His holy blood, as He drank dry the white hot anger of heaven.

He is the one who died under the celestial weight of His Father’s perfect punishment.

He is the one who has hung up for all to see, naked and bloody, who died and rose again, defeating death for all who will repent and believe in Him.

He is the one who bodily ascended into heaven, and sat at His rightful place above all rule, authority, powers and principalities, at the right hand of His Father.

He is the one, there, now, geographically located at His Father’s right side, continually interceding for us and speaking to Him on our behalf.

He is the One who is, who was and who is to come. The unchanging, undying, perfect, spotless, Lamb of God. He is The Beginning and The End, the Alpha and the Omega, the Son of David, Son of Man, and Son of God, the king of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is Jesus Christ and He is fully and completely God.

He is the second person of the Trinity, the one who will one day split the sky as he rides atop a shining white warhorse, clothed in a blood dipped robe, and with the double edged sword that proceeds from His mouth, it will be Jesus Christ who pours out the neon judgment of God onto a world that has hated and mistreated His Bride.

All of Scripture sings one glorious and heavenly song, whose harmonies the very angels must stand to applaud, and it is that Jesus Christ is God and salvation belongs to Him…alone.

Solus Christus.

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Lest we write this off as some theological teaching, that floats somewhere up in the clouds, that we can think about here and there throughout our life, I must remind you of what Scripture teaches.

Psalm 5:5 says that God hates all workers of evil

Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned

And Romans 6:23 says that our sin has earned us…death.

Not a slap on the wrist. Not a timeout for a season of depression and anxiety. Not a sentence of a few months until we are rehabilitated. Eternal death in the undying flames of hell, is all that awaits those who refuse to repent of their sin.

A.W. Tozer once said, that what someone believes about God, is the only thing worth knowing about them.

Your salvation, brothers and sisters, is the single most important thing in your entire life. You may be alone, unloved and betrayed. You may be dealing with depression or addiction. You may be homeless and hungry. You may be dealing with a disease that is destroying your physical body. But the disease of sin, that is ushering your soul straight to hell…is far worse than anything this world or the demons therein may bring before you.

Your salvation is higher in priority than your job, your family, your spouse and your children. Your family may be well off, fed until their stomachs ache, draped in the finest clothing, and living comfortably because of the effort that you exert at the job God ordained for you to have…but if you are heading to hell…all of it will be nothing but a dead rose atop a rotting casket.

Pay attention, brothers and sisters, to your salvation. To what will happen when you die. To where you will go when your heart beats its last and the door within your earthen grave creaks open to give escape to your soul. 

When your day in Court has reached you, and you are standing before the all knowing Judge of the Universe and His mighty gavel is poised and ready to fall forever atop your worn and weary soul…what will you be able to say? What words can sway Him whose eyes never close?

Will we speak of our good deeds to Him who can discern the very thoughts and intentions of our hearts, who knows the motivations behind our motivations? Will we be well prepared with exact dollar amounts of how much money we have given to Churches and charities, and smugly think that will quench the wrath of God? Will we have a list of every Bible Verse we have memorized, and begin to recite them to Him as if mere memory can pay the price of our cosmic treason against His eternal Throne? Will we show Him pictures of our Baptism or how many times we took Communion?

Trust not in human means and human minds, brothers and sisters. Lean not on your Baptism or your Communion. Put no faith in Saints or Angels. This is what the Apostle was speaking of in our verse this morning, when the Holy Spirit inspired his pen to warn us to “not let anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the World.” (Col. 2:8) We can not put faith or trust in any tradition to make us right in the eyes of God, but trust in Jesus Christ alone to save us.

Solus Christus.

And here is where the beauty comes in. Should the fire and brimstone of flickering yellow hellfire be too much for your Sunday morning mind to bear, and it feels as if I have placed upon you a weight too heavy for you to lift…good. For that is what sin does to us. It holds us down, and drags us to hell while we smile and swear at the sky.

When the Apostle penned those words in Colossians 2:8, warning us to not trust in the ego-inflating traditions of men, he tells us why in the very next verse, verse 9. He says: “For in Him (that is Jesus Christ), dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;”.

And here is that beauty; the thrice holy God of the Universe, who demands absolute, sinless, moral perfection be the price to pay to enter Heaven, and who gave us the Law to cause us to cry out for mercy, sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who is fully God, to live a perfect and sinless life, so that all whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus Christ, who Romans 8:3-4 speaks of when it says: “For what the Law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us…”

The fire and brimstone, falling from heaven that we have earned, was willingly poured out on Jesus Christ

 We are saved from God, by God; because no one but God could fulfill the righteous requirement of the law.

The love of God for His own glory, and for His own Bride, brought the Second Person of the Trinity to Earth, for the singular purpose of fulfilling His Father’s plan and saving His children from their sins. Salvation is through Christ alone.

Solus Christus. 

Salvation is through Christ alone, because what or who else can stand under the divine weight of an angry God?  Can your good works, your good behavior, your religiosity, stand the tests of Heaven? They would be nothing but dust and ashes under the tides of eternity as they breached the banks of our hearts.

God Himself accepted the punishment that we were due. (x2)?

And when the Apostle continues after verse 9, onto verse 10, that same God who stood in our place, wrote these words: “and you are complete in Him (Christ), who is the head of all principality and power.”

When you first repented and believed in Jesus Christ, when your cold stone heart was replaced by one that beat heavenly blood through your soul…you became complete in Him. In Christ. There is nothing else you must do, to be right in the eyes of God. Indeed, there is nothing you can do, to be right in the eyes of God. You were made complete. You were no active participant in your own salvation, but God, being slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, full of patience and mercy, stood outside your spiritual grave just like He stood outside of Lazarus’s physical grave 2000yrs ago, and brought you back to life.

And in that very moment, you were made complete. Finished. Full. The plan of God that involved saving you, was complete. And if in that moment of your salvation, you died as soon as the words left your cracked and dry lips…they would open again in Heaven, singing “All glory and honor and praise be unto the Lamb.”

This is what it meant, when our King, in His dying words upon the cross, said aloud “It is finished”. (Jn. 19:30). The salvation for all who will ever believe was once and for all purchased. Every Saint from the Old Testament, every Saint alive right then and there that day, and every Saint who will ever walk the Earth for ten thousand years after He gave up His spirit…the price of their Salvation paid in full. There is no remainder of wrath for the children of God. No left over punishment that we are still due. We need not fulfill a million other requirements to enter Heaven, for when our hearts were replaced, our sin was accounted to His sacrifice, and His righteousness was given to us.

The very righteousness of God, brothers and sisters, was given to us, because of Christ alone.

So when we have our day in His courtroom, be it this afternoon, or another dozen years from now, and we are standing naked and alone before the God of the Universe, and He demands an account of how we have lived our life, a reason why we intentionally broke His law and disobeyed Him over and over and over again…we will, with trembling voice and shaking knees, approach our Judge and whisper “Please God don’t look at me, look at your Son who paid my price. He said it was finished and I have nothing to offer you.”

And what will the Judge of the cosmos say in return? He will look at you, see the blood of His Son, and say “Well done my good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master.”

There is salvation in no other name but Jesus Christ -- Solus Christus.