Solus Christus

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Okay, Solas Christus. Sounds good, right? Only Christ alone. So, before we begin, I think we should just think about what we’re called. And it’s interesting, I think sometimes when people ask you, are you a Christian, how some people will answer that. So, if you say you’re a Christian, what does that mean? You believe in Jesus, but what do you believe about Jesus and what has he done for you? And we identify that way. Some people, when you ask them, are you a Christian, they’ll say, well, I’m a Roman Catholic. Or I’m an Episcopalian. I’m a Baptist. I like those answers. And I say, well, no, I asked you if you’re a Christian.

Well, yeah, but I’m that. And I said, so the idea is, where did we ever get this Christian thing? And sure enough, it’s in the Bible. Acts 11, 25, and 26 says that so Bartimas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And for a whole year, they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians, followers of Christ. So always, who is Jesus? Whenever the cults come to your door, don’t get sidetracked on verses about baptizing from the dead or any of that nonsense. Always reduce it back to who is Jesus Christ. If you get that answer right and believe what he’s done for you, you’re a Christian, and you’re going to go to heaven, regardless of all the other errors you got in your head.

And remember, we all have some theological error, but this is an important one to know who Christ is and what he’s done for us. We’re going to go through quite a few verses, but you need to keep in mind the definition here. So Solas Christus is Christ alone from the Latin Solas Christus, is one of the five Solas of the Reformation. And remember these Solas were preached and taught about in books and writings from the reformers, but it was all brought together in the early part of this century into the five. But the scripture alone and Christ alone are like solid foundation things, right? So as one of the five Solas of the Reformation, It emphasizes that a salvation is made possible for man only, only by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Nothing more, nothing less. Jesus’ death, we stand on that. The other thing to remember is sola scriptura, Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is chronicled perfectly in the holy scriptures. Only from scripture is it possible to derive any knowledge of his saving work. You can derive what God’s creative work is, Christ’s creative work. Remember, he made all things. We’ll learn that through some verses. You can see through natural revelation those things. But salvifically, you need to learn it through what the Bible says or somebody preaching you the gospel, and you be quickened by his spirit to believe that. And you need to always reduce it down, because people will say, oh yeah, I believe in Jesus.

He’s a great philosopher, and I believe in God, and yes, there are many a great wisdom, and all of that kind of stuff. As soon as he does that, you always ask back, well, do you believe Jesus Christ is God? That’s the showstopper, because people, they’ll lead right up to that, but then they realize, ooh, if I say Jesus is God, now I have this Trinitarian problem. I got God the Father, God the Holy Spirit. I got Jesus. I got all this stuff going on and people are going to grant me as, Oh, you’re just one of those Jesus people. So they get nervous when they do that. You know, well, I believe he’s the son of God. Well, that doesn’t cut it.

That’s true, but that isn’t big enough. Okay. So you always reduce it back to who is Christ. And if he’s not God, we’re in trouble. All right. because how can a man, a person, die for your sin or everybody’s sin? Can’t happen.

And that’s the unique perspective that we have in our religion. That in our religion God set it up that he is the only one that can die and make it right for us. Which is like you can’t find that anywhere else. Everywhere else God is the big muckety-muck and he’s making all these commandments and we have to work our way and we have to try to become like him and all of that. No, Christ does it all. He promises that if we believe in him, he will conform us to the image of his son and conform us to his image. That is part of the Christian life, is day by day he conforms you to his image, which is, that’s crazy. But it’s true. And those of us that have been around and long enough in the faith and seeing body life, that’s what it does. It causes us to act like little Jesus’s, which is really good. So we’ll start out with these verses kind of in order from Old Testament to New. Then I’m going to end with some quotes from some people that we know, guys like Calvin and Luther and that kind of thing. And then I’m

going to close it by reading a chapter of the New Testament. Sean read it a little bit with our charge this morning, but Ephesians 1, I want to read that whole chapter, because as you think about it, and we glide over these verses all the time, but just each and every phrase is so rich in what’s going on that you go, wow, I never thought of it that way maybe, which is part of the thing here.

Like so for the first verse I want to read tonight is Isaiah 9 6, interesting, For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be on his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Prince of Peace. Interesting title. What is he making peace with? He’s making peace with a rebellious world that didn’t want what he had to offer. He came and we through our sin killed him. But he came as the Prince of Peace. The New Testament starts off right away, John 14.6. Jesus said to him, I am, this is one of the ego emies, the great I am statements in the Bible, I, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. Pretty clear, Jesus himself is looking and saying, I, I am, which is a statement that he is God. Remember that goes back to Exodus 3 in the burning bush. No one comes to the Father except through me. There’s no other route. You can’t work your way, you can’t buy your way, you can’t get there on

somebody else’s ticket only through Christ. In Acts 4, 8, and through 12, Peter preaches in Jerusalem, then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, Rulers and people and the elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled By what means this man has been healed? Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him, this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders which has become the cornerstone, And there is no, there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given among men by which we must be saved.

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given among men by which we must be saved. This gets repeated all throughout the New Testament and the more you learn about your Bible The more you see it pictured in the prophecies in the Old Testament. It goes on and on The reformers like to say Looking at the Bible from cover to cover. It’s about Jesus. I like that I see that the big story is telling his story history all throughout the Bible even in all these Old Testament things I mean sometimes we have this narrative of Joseph and you can picture him as a Christ saving the Israelites through the Saving of the harvests and all that kind of stuff so you can see these pictures of them But the real story is winding down through those generations Until Christ comes upon the earth and brings all this about so you can see it that way But you can carry that too far also you can see Christ everywhere and it you can see types but you can carry that analogy, I think, too far.

Acts 20, 27 through 29, when Paul was talking to the Ephesian elders, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the Church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. Not our blood, not somebody else’s. God’s blood bought the church. I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. So even though he knew that the church was bought with his own blood and they were true believers, he’s warning the leaders of that church to guard against the wolves and the false teachers that come along.

And it’s fascinating, one of the statements I’m going to read later, as we go after we go through these verses is in 1996 how the church, the bigger church out there, many denominations got together trying to correct some errors and I think it’s an attempt but it’s no way strong enough. So after 2,000 years the fight is still going on as we well know. 1 Corinthians 2.1 says, And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come, proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.

And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Christ and him crucified. Lots of people want to talk about, oh it’s Jesus’s philosophy to be kind to the poor and feed the poor and do all these good works and everything else, but if he didn’t die we would still be dead in our sin. He had to die for our sin, which is like crazy. And the The understanding of that takes care of so many things that have gone askew in church history. If the reformers would have really stayed away from the issue that the Jews were the Christ killers, and we’ve talked about that in the other thing, how they would realize that their sin put him on the cross, even though in that time the Jews turned him over to the Romans and everything.

It’s our sin that put him up there. And keep in mind all the time, that kind of thing.

Corinthians 3 5 through 6. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant. Not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. How many times have you presented the gospel to people and they just don’t get it? How many times have you read a passage of scripture over and over trying to understand it but when you pray that God would reveal himself to you he answers that if you are one of his chosen people so it’s wonderful how God works through the three persons of the Trinity to uncover those things for you. In Colossians 1 13 through Paul again goes off. He has delivered 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. We have been redeemed from the slave market. We have that through what Christ has done for us. He is the image of the invisible God, the

the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven, on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile him to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

If indeed you continue in the faith stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. He has now reconciled in his body a flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless above reproach before him. Sometimes we in our Bible study thing and our doctrinal things and our, uh, Calvinistic thinking about all kinds of thing, government and all of that, we lose sight of the simplicity of the gospel and the amazing thing that God has done for us. And we shouldn’t do that because without that, we can’t even begin to understand all this.

So it’s always good to come back to the foundation of solace Christus. All right. In 1 Timothy 2, 5 through 7, For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. In order to fulfill this role of mediator, Jesus had to be fully man as well as fully God. Really is amazing that God has to die for us, And yet he needs to be both 100% man and 100% God for the sacrifice to be any good, which is just mind shifting. And without the Holy Spirit, you can’t understand that. That’s the way he created it, though.

This verse, if you have any problems about solas Christus or whatever, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, it’s pretty clear. People can talk about all kinds of other things, Mary, good works and all of that, but it doesn’t work. Hebrews 2, 16 through 18. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, hmm, human, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. He had to be that to make that propatiation for us, that payment.

Hebrews 4, 14 through 16. Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who is in every respect has been tempted as we are, and yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that me may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need.” When you get in that time of need, you can define need a lot of ways. Sometimes you define it, I just want to get better. I want to get healthy. I need a better job, all of those things.

But when you really reduce it down, what is your greatest need to be reconciled to God because of our sin. And because of that, Christ has paid all of that. The rest of this stuff is just benefits. I mean, we live in a great time where Christianity has formed a world and that we have penicillins and all kinds of things. Most of us would have been dead long ago. My mother’s, my mother should, well, she was very fortunate. I was born in 1946. She almost bled to death. And 10 years later, that became a fairly simple procedure in giving birth to get away from things that I had as a kid would have killed me if I would have been born 100 years earlier.

And it’s just smallpox inoculations, things like that. We forget that sometimes. And yet, because we think we have all these things figured out, we forget our basic problem is what do we do with our sin problem. And that’s what God has done through us, through his Son. Hebrews 7, 25 through 26. Consequently, he is able to save to the othermost those who draw near to God through him. Since he always lives, he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens. Just on and on the praise goes.

First John 2, 1 through 2, my little children, I’m writing to you these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins. And not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

We’ve been through that. The whole world means all different parts of the world. Don’t get sidetracked down there. But he is the propitiation for our sin. In second Peter, ones 16 through 21, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Peter, an eyewitness to Christ, doing all kinds of interesting things, trying to build tabernacles and all that kind of things. I will never forsake you, yet he did, but is telling the people we did not follow cleverly devised myths. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.

We ourselves heard this very voice from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain, And we have something more sure, the prophetic word to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing that this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of men, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. We are admonished in this to look to Christ alone, for He is the mediator of the new covenant of grace. He is God’s final word to man.

There is no other means where men might propitiate the wrath of God. Jesus alone satisfies the requirements of God Almighty, because Jesus alone is the true expression of God’s love. God dying for you. That’s just amazing to think all that through and to think about how what a just blessing that is that God looks upon us that way. The London Baptist Confession says this, this office of mediator between God and man is properly only to Christ, who is the prophet, priest, and king of the church of God, and not be either in whole or in any part thereof transferred from him to any other. Okay? This office of mediator between God and man is proper only to Christ who is the prophet, priest, and king of the Church of God and may not be either in whole or in any part thereof transferred from him to any other. We We bring the message, you might be a leader in the church, you might be a great pastor, whatever, you’re just a messenger boy.

And we, living our lives, life upon life and discipling other people, we can bring that message, but we’re just messengers. He’s done it all. Always remember that. You can get sidetracked. 1996, this is the Cambridge Declaration, the evangelical faith realized that it was drifting. There was all kinds of seeker-friendly movements going on. They were talking about merging with the Catholics, all that kind of thing. So they tried to come up with a statement to get back to Jesus. Okay, this is what they wrote. As the evangelical faith becomes secularized and its interests have been blurred with those of culture. The result is a loss of absolute values, permissive individualism, and a substitution of the wholeness for holiness, a substitution of wholeness for holiness.

That’s really good, I think. I just need to be a complete person, so I have to take this class how I can be a good servant and all that kind of thing. A substitution of wholeness for holiness. Recovery for repentance. I just need to recover from my sins and all these things that have caused me to have these problems. No, you don’t. You need to repent. So we need no recovery. We need repentance. We need intuition for truth. No, no, no. Truth. Not what you feel. What does it say? Feeling for belief. No.

Chance for providence and the immediate gratification for enduring hope. A lot of times the way God teaches you the lesson, and those of us that have been around for a while, sometimes we’re learning the same lesson over and over, just packaged a different way. Oh, I’m sorry, please forgive me. Oh, I’m sorry, please forgive me.

Then you graduate to the next level and you realize, oh, now that I’ve got that all figured out, now I have to deal with this. You know, the thing I always love to tell people that in discipleship, the more holy you become, the more evil you know you are. Because as you strip away those things and become more like Christ, you realize, oh my goodness, how screwed up everything really is. So they ended by saying Christ and his cross have been moved from the center of our vision. That’s good. It’s good that they recognize that. But they needed to come back and say, And if we don’t put him back in the center, we’re totally lost or something like that I am NOT the wordsmith as you guys all know but something needed to be way More solid than that But it’s always tough when you get a bunch of people that are have recovery and intuition And feeling and all this stuff going on get them together to make a statement So anyway the sentence Christ in his cross have been moved from the center of our vision if he has been moved from the center

your vision, repent and get rid of that. You don’t need some Cambridge Declaration to get you straightened out, get him back on the throne. Martin Luther said this, he was right in the middle of it, remember, I must listen to the gospel. It tells me not what I must do, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done, past tense, has done for me. I must listen to the gospel, it tells me not what I must do, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for me. It’s been done. You just need to appropriate it by belief.

John Calvin, another of our favorites, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.16.2, Christ stepped in, took the punishment upon himself, and bore the judgment due to bore the judgment due to sinners. With his own blood he expiated the sins, which made them enemies of God, and thereby satisfied him. We look to Christ alone for divine favor and fatherly love. Hence, Christ is called King of Peace, Isaiah 9.6, and our peace, Ephesians 2 14 because he quiets all agitations of conscious. If we ask the means we must come to sacrifice by which God has been a piece for anyone unconvinced that God is a piece by that one atonement in which Christ endured his wrath will never cease to tremble.

In short, we must seek peace for ourselves solely in the anguish of Christ, our Redeemer. A lot of flowery words there, but again reiterating over and over, it’s Christ alone that can do that for you. And anybody that makes a statement and adds to that, no, no, no, major heresy and really dangerous heresy when you do that because you’re really flirting with your eternal soul at that point. Philip Graham Reichen, Pastor and author, a guy that we know he was, 10th Avenue Presbyterian, now I think he’s president of Wheaton or one of those places. He, in a book that he wrote on this, said, start with sola scriptura, scripture alone.

When the reformers said scripture alone, they meant that the Bible is the only foundation for faith and practice. No person, no institution, stands in judgment over God’s word. Our only ultimate authority is the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture. Once you accept the Bible’s authority and start to study it, one of the first things you notice is that it is all about Jesus Christ. That is true not only of the Gospels, which give biographical information about Jesus, and of the Epistles, which a pride theological interpretation of Jesus, but also in the entire Old Testament, which holds the messianic expectation of Jesus.

After his resurrection, Jesus walked to Emmaus with two of his disciples, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what was said in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. 2427. Salvation in Jesus Christ is the message of the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. When we accept Scripture alone, the Scripture itself points us to Christ alone. So that’s basically it. Jesus is the end all to be all. That’s it. Once you recognize that and you accept what he’s done for you, you are a Christian. You don’t need to be a Baptist. You don’t need to be a dispensationalist.

You don’t need to be this, that. You are a Christian, okay? And as we’ve talked in other lectures, some of the people that are being martyred for Christ, I am sure do not have all the theology that we have and that we teach here, and yet they know they’re willing to have their throat slit, their head cut off for Christ and not to deny him but for that. That’s a powerful testimony and I can’t believe what that must do to the people that martyr those people, how that must feel to them. You know you’ve seen in the movies the Roman soldiers at the cross and all those kind of things but when you see somebody that’s willing to die for their faith that’s a whole different story okay. So think about that.

Okay, I’m going to read Ephesians 1, 1 through 23, the whole chapter. And just think of all the things that Paul’s talking about, who Jesus is in this and what He has done for us and how it’s all taken care of by what He has given us. Okay? Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and Mary’sville, and all and our faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us and him before the foundation of the world and that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.

He predestined us for the adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ. As a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven, things on earth, and in him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all and fills us and fills our church body. So we as Christians, we want to praise God for what he’s done through his son. We want to thank him for that. And you want to remember, I think, that in 1 John 2 or 3, where it says that he is conforming you who believe into the image of his son, step by step, day by day, hour by hour. So recognize that. That’s a lot of incredibly powerful spiritual power. A lot of things are happening to you that are beyond comprehension, really, I think until we get to see him face to face when he calls us home.

So with that, let’s pray and go on forever. Father, we thank you for what you’ve done through your son, Jesus Christ. Help us to always remember that it’s him and him alone that paid for our sin. And through your incredible plan, which you decided before you ever even started, the universe, you knew that it would come to this. And you put us each in our own place to have that moment to recognize that through the way that you’ve chosen us and revealed your work to us. We thank you for that. We thank you for the great gift that that gives us and help us to understand how to pass that on to the people we come in contact with that a life-on-life discipleship and and to be able to bring people along in that understanding.

And as we do that, we learn more and more about you and the power that you hold. We just thank you for all of that. And of course, we thank you for Jesus Christ, for without him, we couldn’t even pray to you as Father. So we thank you for all those things and help us go and be more and more what you would have us be. Amen.