- [Kathleen Nielson] Why is the idea of Christ alone, Christus Solus,
still important now, 500 years later?
I would suggest at least three answers to that question.
First of all, the word of God, actually, it doesn't matter what I would suggest
as an answer to this question.
The word of God tells us that all flesh is like grass.
I'm like grass.
The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of God remains forever.
And the word of God tells us that Christ is the beginning,
the first born from the dead, that in everything, he might
have the preeminence.
The word of God tells us that in him, all the fullness of God was pleased
to dwell and by him to reconcile to himself all things, making peace
through the blood of his cross.
That's what the word of God says, and that remains forever.
Not just the word, I would suggest also the church.
On Christ, the church is built.
The pictures of scripture help us grasp that concept of the picture of Christ
as the cornerstone, where the stones being built as a house, as a holy temple,
on Christ, the cornerstone.
We are the bride of Christ.
We are the body of Christ, all Christ, Christ alone.
But third and surely most important would be simply Christ himself.
So often, we talk about the idea of Christ alone, the concept, which we affirm and
we do, and we want to and we must, but surely, it is the person of Christ
himself, not just the idea, but the very living,
resurrected person of Christ alive right now, seated at the right hand of God,
interceding for us.
The one whom John just glimpsed there in heaven with that white robe,
his eyes blazing like fire and his face shining as the sun in full strength.
And John fell to the ground as though dead.
It is that glorious, resurrected Lord Jesus Christ,
who's the only reason for this glorious truth, which looking at him,
we don't just affirm, but cry out.
Christ alone.
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- [Trevin Wax] In his lectures on Galatians, Martin Luther once wrote,
he said, "If you want to make atonement to God apart from Christ the Mediator,
making your works, the mediation between Him and yourself, you will inevitably fall
as Satan did and in horrible despair lose God and everything."
So, obviously, Luther believed very strongly in what we have talked
about in previous sessions that it's by grace alone.
But here we're talking about specifically that emphasis on mediation,
who's going to go between us and God is Jesus Christ alone, our mediator,
or do we also need other people?
Is Mary, Jesus's mother, a mediator?
The saints that have gone before?
Priests, do they go between us and God, the Pope himself?
So, this idea of Christ alone being our source of salvation,
or Jesus being our only mediator, how would you define Solus Christus?
- [Albert Mohler] Yeah. This is the easiest of all the Solus to define.
I think most evangelical Christians know how to define it because we sing it
all the time.
- [Trevin Wax] We do.
We do. - [Albert Mohler] "Jesus paid it all,
all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson spot.
He washed it white as snow."
The question of Solus Christus is who and the answer to that is Christ.
Christ and no one else.
Christ alone.
So, to whom do we look for our salvation?
Christ alone.
Who's life and death accomplishes our salvation?
Christ alone.
Who's resurrection from the dead seals our salvation?
Christ alone.
And in whom is salvation found?
Christ alone.
Now, there's some sophisticated language for this when we talk about the basis
of our justification.
But it all comes down to the fact that the who question has to be answered.
And in the most glorious way, the reformers answering the same way that
all Christians throughout the ages have answered the question.
It is Christ alone.
That means all of Christ, everything taught about Christ
in the entire scriptures.
And it means Christ and no one else.
It means Christ most pointedly and not me.
It means that I am not the reason for my salvation.
I'm the reason for the need.
And it also means no one else, no priest, no Pope, no preacher, it's Christ alone.
- [Trevin Wax] Why did this cause such a stir back at the time?
I mean, this seems like...you say we sing this and this is something that Christians
have believed all throughout the ages.
So, why at the time was this idea of Christ alone so controversial?
- [Kevin DeYoung] I think you can go back even further, just as a part of human
nature or the struggle of God's people in the Old Testament.
It was always that Yahweh alone.
I mean, yeah, "I'm the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods."
It didn't have a problem, you know, with Yahweh's God, it was, "Well,
but we've got to hedge our bets.
And a lot of other people have some other gods that we can see and they do
some impressive stuff.
And we love you too, Yahweh.
But what about Baal or what about Asherah?"
It's the same dynamic in the human heart.
"Yes, we want Christ, but might we have some other
things or people?"
All that you have mentioned already.
Might there be saints that we could pray to, or perhaps our parents or in some
other religions, it's an ancestral heritage or even
good evangelical Christians.
It's maybe the books that I'm reading or the theology I have or the preacher that
I listened to.
We're always wanting to add something to that.
We don't want to diminish Christ, but, of course, we do.
I mean, if you're married and you think this is really wonderful and, you know,
we all have a wonderful wife to be married to, and you try to explain to her,
"I love you very deeply, but I'm going to have a few other wives,
but I don't love you any less,"
she's not going to believe that logic.
- [Albert Mohler] For a good reason. - [Kevin DeYoung] Nor should she.
The alone in those vows are absolutely essential.
And so it is when we look to Christ alone for our hope.
- [Trevin Wax] It's interesting that you're bringing together two aspects
of faith here.
You're bringing in the aspect of our trust must be in Christ alone
and in no one else.
But then also this idea of exclusivity, this idea that it is to Christ alone,
that I must be faithful, right?
That I must be exclusively devoted to Jesus Christ above all else.
So, those two things go together with this understanding.
- [Albert Mohler] Trevin, there's one way this shows up in evangelical piety,
just in the way that evangelical Christians talk that really betrays
the fact that sometimes we don't mean Christ alone.
Let me just give you one example.
When someone asks us, "How did you come to be saved?"
How do we begin that sentence?
How do we begin the response?
We're tempted to begin with ourselves.
And that's exactly the wrong place to start.
The New Testament model, the reformers that pointed to Christ alone
was that Christ is the answer to every question, you know.
So, how is it that we're saved? It's because while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.
You know, it points continually back to Christ and we're always trying to draw
ourselves into the equation.
But it also means it's not because of some human priest.
It's not because of the confidence we have in any human ministry.
It's because Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.
- [Kevin DeYoung] And it's really key because if we don't have
the in Christ alone, we're apt to misunderstand that in faith alone
and we end up with just a sort of Disneyfied version of faith.
You just kind of got to believe. Well, no, it's not just faith in faith,
but it's the object of faith.
And even as Christians, we can sometimes fall into that error
of acting as if our faith justifies.
Well, the faith is, strictly speaking, the instrumental cause
of our justification, it's what joins us to Christ.
- [Trevin Wax] But it's still not because of something you did.
- [Kevin DeYoung] It's not, no.
Faith is not then the work that then earns that favor.
I mean, I use the analogy of ice skating on a frozen pond.
And you may tiptoe out there wondering if it's secure or you might fall through,
and you might not be a very good skater, but as you sort of wobbly make your way
around the ice, what is it that keeps you from falling in the water?
It's not your faith. It is the thickness of the ice.
And it takes the faith to get out there and do it.
But it's the object of that faith that holds you and sustains you.
And so it is with our life in Christ.
It's the object of the faith that saves us.
- [Trevin Wax] I think it's very encouraging to people who wonder because
with the kind of conscience as we have and the kind of sinfulness we know is in us,
so many of us who are believers can look at our own hearts and our own smallness
of faith and think, maybe, "Am I believing enough?
Do I have enough faith?"
And this brings us back to the reality, this idea of in Christ alone
is to say, no, your hope is not in how much faith you can muster up,
is in the size of your faith, but in the greatness of the savior,
that he's the one,
the object of our faith. - [Albert Mohler] Yeah. That is such an
important point. And I think we just have to come back to it and say,
it's not an amount of faith, it's the object of faith.
- [Kevin DeYoung] That's right. - [Trevin Wax] That's right.
- [Albert Mohler] And that betrays something else that goes on in a lot
of our cultural conversation where people say, "You just have to have faith.
You know, we just have to have faith."
That's a person of faith.
We should have a certain allergy to hearing that because faith always has
an object in the scripture.
It's faith in God.
It is faith in Christ.
Luther made that point brilliantly when he said, "Faith is no faith
without an object."
And the only saving faith is faith in the saving one who is Jesus Christ.
And so, I think we need to watch our language really carefully.
- [Trevin Wax] Yeah. When people say, "I have faith, or I'm a person of faith,"
the question is faith in what? - [Albert Mohler] In whom?
Exactly, in whom? - [Trevin Wax] That's the key question.
You just brought up something there that I think is very relevant
to today's conversations. Back in the time of the reformation,
when they said Christ alone is the source of salvation, they were showing the
distinction between Christ and all of these other forms of mediation who can
stand between us and God.
In today's society though, we have a cultural atmosphere or
environment where there's almost an allergy to saying anything whatsoever
to saying that there is one source of salvation.
People want to shy away from that to say, "Well, maybe, yes, Christ is where
I find my salvation.
But what if there are other people in other religions or other views
where they...are there other sources of salvation out there?"
So, what is the danger of that?
- [Albert Mohler] Well, it's a danger that's all around us
and it's a danger that isn't very thoughtful.
As a matter of fact, you have people who will say,
"Look, how can Jesus be the only savior?"
Oh by the way, he's the only one who claims to be savior.
In other words, it's not like the other belief systems of the world,
the other major religions have other savior figures.
That's not even true.
Because Christianity alone explains what our problem is and why we need a savior
and how God in His mercy provided all that is necessary for us in Christ.
And so, what we have is this very lazy form of thinking, it's not
only unbiblical, it's just not even very thoughtful where so many people around us
are going, 'Well, everyone must eventually end up in heaven.
God must be eventually pleased with everyone."
And so, every religion is simply treated as a different pathway in order to get
to the top of the mountain, or like I heard an illustration some
years ago, it's the same light refracted through different colors in a stained
glass window or anything.
But the closer you look at all these world religions, the more different they are.
And it's Christianity that understands the problem with sin, it's Christianity that
understands the answer is Christ.
And so, when we say Christ alone, we really mean Christ alone.
That's what the scripture teaches.
That's what Christ himself said.
When he said, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father
but by me."
And so, frankly, you know, we do hear this kind of atmosphere we
breathe of either a universalism saying, everyone eventually will be saved,
or inclusivism that says, eventually everyone gets included in this
without any respect to Christ or faith.
Not only does the Bible refute those things, but they fall apart the closer you
look at them.
They just aren't even coherent ideas.
- [Kevin DeYoung] And if we get even closer to that, we see just how pervasive
this is in churches like ours even.
Because you could have a lot of Christians that say, "Well, you know, I agree.
You can't just...you know, only Jesus saves."
But they might say, "Well, do I really need to put my faith in him?
Might there be people in some tribes somewhere that they're following the light
that they have and then they are saved by Christ, though they don't know the name
of Christ?" The idea of anonymous Christians or inclusivism.
And I'm going to ruin some people's day here, but even the great C.S. Lewis
was really off in this respect.
I mean, that's basically what he argues in Mere Christianity.
And you see it come through at the end of The Chronicles of Narnia
The Last Battle, with Emeth who's worshiping Tash.
Well, you were really worshiping Aslan all along.
That doesn't work and you just have to go to the upper room discourse,
which is John 14 through 16 there and into the prayer in John 17, because Jesus says,
"Not only am I the way the truth and the life," we know that, but he also says,
"I will give to the Holy Spirit to lead you into truth and to glorify me."
The Holy Spirit works to glorify Christ.
So, the Holy Spirit doesn't just indiscriminately cause people to be born
again and save them.
That's not what we mean by God's freedom or grace or sovereignty.
The Holy Spirit is always the spirit that throws a spotlight upon Christ.
So, no, we can't have people just saved without reference to a knowledge of
and explicit faith in Christ, because that would be the spirit to deny
his very work and existence in bringing glory to Christ.
- [Albert Mohler] You know, I think of Paul's argument in Romans Chapter 10
because he hits all of this and he affirms that all who call upon the name of the
Lord will be saved.
That's such good news.
And then he says, "But how will they call upon the one of whom they have not heard?"
And then he comes all the way down saying they've got to hear of Christ.
And then he makes very clear that salvation comes to the one who believes
in his heart that God has raised Christ from the dead,
that professes with his lips, that Jesus Christ is Lord.
In other words, it's Christ alone.
That is it.
And that means that it's our responsibility.
This is the great commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel.
Because if people...Paul is so clear in Romans 10, "If they don't hear,
they won't believe.
If they never believe, they will not be saved."
And then he says, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ."
It's Christ alone.
- [Trevin Wax] That's so true.
I think of the worldview of our culture being a very different scenario than what
we see in scripture.
A lot of times, the idea and the culture is that, well, God is there on top
of the mountain, and we're all making our way up, different paths trying to get
to God somehow.
But the scripture shows a very different picture of this altogether.
There's no one righteous, no one even seeking God.
There's no one trying to get up the mountain to God.
The picture in scripture is God sent Jesus Christ.
He is the one who has come down the mountain to us.
There's no one else coming for us.
He is the only savior because he is the one who has come to rescue us in our need,
not simply so that we can work our way to Him.
And so, even the entire way that we think about religions and salvation,
within the framework of a biblical worldview is very different than the way
that culture has taught us. - [Albert Mohler] The reformers came back
to the issue of assurance once again.
In other words, how in the world can we have the assurance of our salvation?
It's because of Christ alone.
Our confidence is that all that was necessary for our salvation was
accomplished by Christ, which means all that was necessary for our
salvation was accomplished by Christ.
So, it's not only that he did enough, it's that he did it all in such a way that
it is ours by God's gift and this ties all the solos together.
But if it's not Christ alone, then it's Christ with someone else.
And you see this in the piety of somewhere, it's Christ and Mary
or it's Christ and the saints.
The reformers knew all this and affirmed it's Christ alone.
- [Kevin DeYoung] And I love how you talk about all the solos fitting together.
Because that's what we're seeing.
If you start pulling at one of these strands, they all start to unravel.
You don't really understand how God gets glory or what grace really looks like,
or how faith joins us to Christ.
Because, you know, sometimes people will say, "Well, what about the, you know,
the innocent tribesman somewhere who's never heard of Christ,
will God punish him?"
And you say, "Well, absolutely not.
God will not punish the innocent tribesmen.
Well, he doesn't exist."
- [Trevin Wax] No one innocent.
- [Kevin DeYoung] There is no one innocent.
There is no one there who's just, "Well, I haven't heard of Christ and I've lived
such a good life."
No, we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We need this savior.
He's our only hope, our only comfort in life and in death.
And he's the only one on whom we can depend.
- [Trevin Wax] Well, my prayer is that the people that are
studying this core truth of the reformation are going to feel the comfort
and warmth that comes from knowing that they are assured because in Christ alone
is our salvation, but that will lead them to missionary passion.
That we will not cut the nerve of the great commission, but that we will go
out with the good news.
Jesus Christ still saves.
- [Albert Mohler] Amen.
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