Last time we discussed that it’s faith, and nothing else, that saves us. Now let’s discuss who we put that faith in, and why only Christ, through the work He did on the cross, is what saves us.
Why solus Christus had to be defended
We’ve been walking through everything that led to Christianity splitting from the Catholic church. One major issue that people had to deal with was understanding what had to be done for a soul to pay for sin so it could be right with God. In other words, who is responsible for paying our debt to God?
In the Catholic church, Christ was the first step in salvation. His work on the cross did quite a bit of work toward the forgiveness of sin, but it didn’t do enough. We had to pick up where He left off, performing good deeds and living as part of the Catholic church in order to pay off the rest of our crimes.
Of course, if we spend one day paying off 5 sins, there’s a good chance we’ve committed 10 other sins. Perhaps it was a moment of anger, a sinful taste of pride, or giving in to greed or laziness when we saw someone in need. No matter who we are, we can simply never outrun our mounting list of crimes against God.
Thus, even after an exhausting life spent earning our way to Heaven, we still won’t be done. This is where the Catholic belief in Purgatory comes from – a belief that there is a waiting area between Earth and Heaven where we go to finish paying off our debt and being made perfect. There’s no real idea of how long a soul must spend in this Purgatory, but each will be there as long as it takes to earn forgiveness and finally spend eternity with God.
Put simply, the Catholic church was teaching that it was Christ plus works that saved. His work on the cross wasn’t all we needed for forgiveness, and thus what He did for us wasn’t enough. It was completely effective to pay off each individual sin we commit, thus we have to pick up where Christ failed. This was a huge problem when people actually studied what was taught throughout the entire Bible.
Christ plus nothing
In my article on salvation through faith, I dug deep into why works can never save us. I highly recommend clicking here to read that discussion. However, the importance of solus Christus lies in the balance it strikes between the power of Christ compared to the power of us.
Any religion that teaches we must do something to earn salvation, or even God’s favor, gets this balance wrong. They have a false understanding of salvation because they have a false understanding of Christ. So many people live a life of misery, fear, or failure because they don’t understand what Christ did on the cross, and therefore they don’t know that all their efforts to be “good enough” are trying to accomplish something Christ already did for us.
There are two reasons people often want to add to Christ’s work on the cross. The first is because they have a false idea that we can somehow be good enough to impress God. Yet a casual look at any part of the Bible will reveal story after story of people failing to do good as they fall into idolatry, pride, and many other sins. And yet God is clear that we are capable of no good on our own:
“There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12)
So when we try to earn our salvation, we are really saying that we do have righteousness on our own, we can understand, and we want to seek after God under our own power. We say some of us can do good, while God says not even one of us can.
The other way we get this wrong is that we don’t realize just how effective Christ was on the cross. Many false religions believe that Christ’s death was merely a step in our forgiveness, but it wasn’t complete. They teach a weak, incomplete, and incapable version of God who took on human flesh. They believe that the completion of His plan requires us. Yet look at how God describes what was accomplished with Christ’s act on the cross.
For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. (1 Timothy 2:5-6)
This passage not only shows the unbiblical belief of going to a priest or praying to a saint in order to get access to God, it also shows that the payment of our sin is complete. Christ was our ransom, and not our down payment. We were purchased from the wrath of God purely through His sacrifice, and at that moment our debt was wiped clean. Each of our sins was punished over 2,000 years ago, and there’s nothing left for us to earn.
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13-14)
Notice the tone of these words. Rescue and transfer aren’t something that will happen, but have already happened. We have been rescued from darkness, and we have been transferred to the kingdom. Although we haven’t experienced it yet, God already looks at us and sees people whose sins are forgiven and have gained the righteousness of Christ.
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. (Romans 8:28-30)
Many love Romans 8:28, yet the verses that follow give us such a beautiful picture of what Christ did on the cross. Despite the evil and brokeness of the world, God uses all of this to bring His people back to Him through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
And just like the passage in Colossians talking about our rescue and redemption as things that have already happened, here we see God once again viewing us as people who have been justified and glorified. We won’t be glorified on this side of Heaven, but we see that Christ’s death was so effective, and so complete, that those who are in Christ are guaranteed this eternal life.
In Christ, alone
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)
It’s so clear that we contribute nothing to our salvation. We are people who love sin and hate God, and thus are incapable of any way to earn anything from God. Even the good we do is 100% because of the work of Jesus Christ in our lives.
We must have a right balance of who Christ is compared to who we are. The more we think of ourselves as capable of impressing God or earning His favor, the more we diminish our need for Christ. After all, if we can add even 1% to our salvation, then Christ is only 99% effective in saving us.
Yet that’s not what we see in the Bible. Instead, we see people who are desperately wicked and in love with sin. We see a Savior who had to come to the world that hates Him so that He could do what we never could. And we see that because Christ paid for 100% of our sin, we have to work for 0% of our salvation.
How solus Christus will change your life
Understanding the magnitude of what Christ accomplished on the cross will change our lives. Much could be said, but I want to point out two things that will give us great peace as we follow Jesus Christ.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (Galatians 5:25)
First, Christ’s death means that we have no anxiety about our eternal destiny. If we’ve truly repented of our sins and asked Christ to pay the price we never could, then we have nothing to fear. Now, instead of working to stay in God’s family, we can live a life of good works because we’re in God’s family.
Our works won’t be done to earn something, but will simply be a result of our gratitude for what Christ has done and a love for our holy God. The fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 can finally be seen and embraced as a natural result of being in Jesus Christ, rather than something we have to conjure if we want to prove ourselves to God or others.
For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. (Romans 6:5-7)
We have victory over our sin because Christ has already conquered it. Before salvation, we had no choice except to be sinful. Now that we have our sins forgiven and the Holy Spirit living inside us, there is no sin that is too great for us to resist.
Although we won’t be perfect, we can still live as though sin is no longer our master. Those areas where we keep failing aren’t impossible because Christ is more than enough to conquer them. Sin has no hold over us, it’s just a question of whether we’ll walk in obedience or continue flirting with that sin that put Him on the cross.
Solus Christus, Christ alone. He isn’t just good enough, but He’s all there is for our salvation, and He’s all we need in this world.
