Christ’s Death Doesn’t Save The Christian
February 4th, 2009 by DannyNelsonWhat is the gospel? Let’s suppose you were given this essay question for your final exam in Gospel 101. What would you say? I hope you wouldn’t say, “Jesus died for me.” Of course, you would fail on principle in this situation since you were asked to answer in essay format and not a single complete sentence. Yet the question remains… was it enough for Jesus to simply die to redeem His flock? If the answer is yes, then why didn’t Emmanuel descend on Good Friday, be crucified, rise on the third day, and ascend back to Heaven? Why on earth did He come as a baby and live among us for thirty-three years before dying?
The answer is that, in and of itself, Christ’s death was insufficient for salvation. What it did do was satisfy God’s justice. This is no small matter; God’s justice is relentlessly demanding. And rightly so; God is, after all, just in the ultimate sense. Satisfying God’s justice was not something we could accomplish on our own, but Christ, through His sinless life, accomplished something else we could never do… earn God’s favor.
Christ’s life was perfect. He upheld every miniscule requirement of the law. This is something, as I’ve said, we could never do. The reason Emmanuel came as a baby was to go through the physical act of accomplishing a truly obedient life. If we are saved through works, then Christ would be the only human to accomplish salvation. And there is the beauty: He did! And He did it on our behalf. We are saved by works, but not our own. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone.
