FAITH IN CHRIST ALONE

Saving faith is in Christ alone, based upon the Word of God alone. To add any other requirement such as what a person does or does not do, what a person wears or does not wear, or where a person goes or does not go is as damning to the soul as preaching “Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.” (Acts 15:1) Anyone who adds man-made requirements to faith in Christ alone, based on the Word of God alone, has made themselves “a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.” (Gal. 5:3-4) May God be pleased to make us trust in Christ alone and “worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” (Phil. 3:3)

Pastor

“Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.” (Matt. 27:41, 42)

Such is the blindness of natural man that when he attempts to speak of spiritual things, even the most intelligent among them become fools. The intelligentsia of Jewish religion had long hated Christ. They had often gone to where he was teaching to ply him with questions in an attempt to tricking Him into saying something they could use against Him. In so doing they doubtless heard much of His teaching.

Yet, now they say, “Come down from the cross and we will believe you.” Their taunt is utterly absurd. If He comes down from the cross, they will have no reason to believe Him; He will have made Himself a liar. Did He not say, “…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many,” and, “The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again”? If He had come down from the cross, he would have proven Himself a liar and undermined any reason for anyone to believe Him.

But there is a more serious issue. If Christ were to have come down from the cross, there would have been no value in believing Him. Faith would not have brought salvation. Had Christ not fulfilled this death-work, believing Him would leave believers in their condemned state. Their sins would not have been paid for, leaving them in a state of guilt, and God will by no means clear the guilty.

Anyone who does not see the cross-work of the Lord Jesus as the linchpin of the whole scheme of grace does not understand the scheme of grace. The whole of it rests upon “Christ and Him crucified!”

Pastor Joe Terrell

THREE MEN ON A CROSS - Luke 23:33

“And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.”

By nature and practice, I am that justly condemned criminal that spoke in rage against the innocent Son of God. By grace, I am the other vile and wicked man on the other side which God granted eyes to see Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and was promised to be with Him in paradise that very day. By substitution, I am now a perfect, sinless son of God who is completely righteous, wholly holy and absolutely sinless through Him who loved me and gave Himself for me while dying in my place. What a picture of the believer is found in all three men that hung on a cross at Mount Calvary.

Pastor David Eddmenson

Believers on the one hand are nothing but sin, and on the other hand, they have no sin. This is one of the great mysteries of the Gospel that keeps God’s people humble, yet hopeful. It causes them to cast all their care on the One that cares for them. It leads them to have no confidence in the flesh, yet to come boldly before the Throne of grace. It is the reason they can mourn and rejoice at the same time. It shows them their inability to satisfy any part of God’s law, and it frees them from the condemnation of the law. It causes them to bow in humble worship as mercy beggars, yet they hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end. They are nothing yet have everything. They are hell-deserving, yet heaven bound. They are in abject poverty, and they are infinitely and eternally rich. To the natural man, these things are a contradiction. To the child of God…they are his life.