Sola Christus

All men are sons of Adam banished from the garden and the kingdom by God’s flaming wrath taking up residence as sons of disobedience in our father’s kingdom of sin and death. In this kingdom we obey the flesh and it’s lusts, we are enslaved to passions leading to eternal death, we follow the prince of this world in his pride and rebellion, and our inheritance is one of fire, gloom and the worm. And then a dying man in his weakness proclaims a foolish message of the man Christ Jesus who can sympathize with our weaknesses, who suffered the very pangs of hell in his body suffering and dying as the Prince of Peace. And not by might or power of the dying man, but by the Power of the Spirit, this foolish message becomes a sweet savor unto life. We here his cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, as our cry, the cry of those who deserve eternal death and judgment from the God whom we have shunned and rebelled against. And we know that His judgment has been poured out upon him, that he has taken our chastisement, bore our grief and sorrows, taken our blows and suffered our death, and that somehow in the wisdom of God, by his wounds we are healed. We see his hands and his side and we see our life is in him who died in our place rescuing us from the kingdom of darkness and death bringing us, in himself, out to eternal life in the salvation of our God. And suddenly, not because of anything that we have done, there is peace with God. We have the gift of life eternal as children of the living God and a promised inheritance in the kingdom of his beloved Son. What have we done? Nothing! It is free grace, salvation in the Son, the Mediator of a new covenant where there is life, righteousness and holiness in Christ, and the knowledge of the truth. Is there faith? Yes! Is their repentance? Yes! It is there as a gifted expression of joyful submission to the God of glorious holy grace.