Salvation is in Christ Alone (Solus Christus)

The Five Solas: Solus Christus

A few weeks ago, we started working through a sermon series which I’ve called, “Why the Reformation Still Matters.” We’ve been looking at five important issues that were at the heart of the Protestant Reformation, many of which continue to confuse Christians in America today. Back in the day these five issues were labeled by Latin phrases: Sola Scriptura – Scripture Alone, Sola Fide – Faith Alone, Sola Gratia – Grace Alone (we’ve looked at these three over the past few weeks). Today I’ll show from Scripture that the one and only Savior for sinful humanity before a Holy God is Solus Christus – Christ alone. And next week we’ll finish up the series by unpacking Soli Deo Gloria – to the Glory of God alone.

So if you haven’t done so already, please turn with me to 1 John, Chapter 2.  I’ll be reading the first two verses. But before I read our text, let’s ask for God’s Spirit to work in us through the preaching of His Word this morning:

[Pray and Read Text]

The Central Importance of Solus Christus

Common sense would tell us that you need some sort of ball in order to play basketball. You need broth of some kind in order to make soup – otherwise you’ll end up with something different: a thick stew, maybe, or a casserole. In order to have a lawnmower race, you need to have lawnmowers. If you take away the core ingredient, each of these things will cease to be what they are.

And this is true of Christianity, as well. In order for Christianity to be what it is, Christ is needed. This may seem obvious to many of us. It’s even in the name – Christianity. But there have been multiple times that I’ve gotten into conversations with students at Mid Michigan College. And I’ve asked questions like, “If a friend asked you what Christianity is all about, what would you tell them?” And it hasn’t been uncommon for students to say, “It’s about trying to be a good person,” or “Christianity is about going to church and believing in God.” And I want to be charitable here – it’s possible that some of these students had a hard time putting their thoughts into words in the moment. I get it. But if Christianity is just about being a good person, or about attending a religious place of worship and believing in some sort of transcendent power, then Christianity isn’t any different from Islam, or Hinduism, or from the morally-conscious humanist who devoutly worships himself in the shrine of his own home.

If we’re holding to some version of Christianity that can function just fine without any mention of Jesus Christ, then the thing we’re believing isn’t Christianity. If we’re presenting a religious perspective which says that someone can be sincerely devoted to some other God, or can place their trust in the saving work of someone or something else other than Christ Jesus (Solus Christus) – we must be clear in saying, that isn’t the Christian faith, and it won’t save anyone from sin, death, and Hell.

The person and work of Jesus Christ is entirely one-of-a-kind. He can’t be replaced or reproduced from some other source. Christ is indispensable to Christianity. And we know this because the Bible teaches that the one place we should look to, for peace and favor with God, is Solus Christus – Christ alone. This was one of the pivotal concerns of the Protestant Reformation. It wasn’t that the Roman Catholic church had rejected Jesus Christ outright. Instead, Roman Catholic tradition had obscured the centrality and sufficiency of Jesus’s work to save sinners. The Reformers emphasized that we don’t look to Mary, the mother of Jesus, to put in a good word in for us. We don’t rely on Roman Catholic saints or deceased family members to pray for us. We don’t rely partly on Jesus, and partly on our own good works to be right with God. Instead, hope for sinners is found in one place – in one Savior: solus Christus, only in Christ.

And this is what the apostle John emphasizes in our text, here. You’ll see that John is writing this letter to fellow Christians, who he cares about deeply. In verse 1, he calls them “my little children” as a way of expressing his tender concern for them. And then he goes on to clarify that one of his main purposes in writing this letter is to urge his fellow Christians to leave behind their former patterns of idolatry and sinful desires. He tells them, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” John understands the seriousness of sin – that every sin is an act of enmity against God, something that’s inherently evil, and deserving of death. It makes sense that John would want to speak out against it. And then John goes on, here, to explain what Christians should keep in mind in the event that they mess up and sin anyway.

Now, if the apostle John believed in the Roman Catholic system of penance – if he believed that people in the church who sin need to merit their way back into God’s saving grace, this is where you’d expect John to talk about it. You’d expect him to say, “Now if any of you do sin, your salvation has been put at risk! You need an earthly priest to explain the deeds of penance you must do. You need to perform and produce good works to regain good standing with God.” That’s essentially what Roman Catholicism would say.

But the apostle says something much different. He says rely entirely on the perfection of Jesus. Rest in the completeness of what Jesus has done. John says: “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.” The apostle tells sinners to rely on Christ alone, for every saving grace – solus Christus.

And as we work through these two verses in 1 John 2, I want to explain why the apostle John does this. And I’ll explain this under four points this morning. First, I’ll point out Christ’s Advocacy; Second, Christ’s Ascendency – his high position; Third, Christ’s Attributes. And fourth, Christ’s Atoning Sacrifice to deal with our sins. Then I’ll close by adding a few remarks on what Solus Christus practically means for us. So again, my four points will be Christ’s Advocacy, his Ascendency, his Attributes, and his Atoning Sacrifice – then I’ll close with practical applications.

Christ’s Advocacy

So let’s jump right in, here, by considering Christ’s advocacy. In verse 1, John says, “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate.” An advocate is someone who calls out for someone else – who speaks in our favor, on our behalf. It’s kind of like when you’re applying for a job, and on your resume you include a couple of personal references. The people you put on your resume are your advocates. If the employer calls them up on the phone to ask, “Should I hire so-and-so?” those are the people who speak on your behalf to say Yes and to explain all the reasons why you’re the right person for the job. An advocate is someone who speaks for us (in our favor).

And it’s quite plain in our text who this advocate for us is – it’s Jesus Christ. Jesus calls out to God the Father on our behalf.

Now, I imagine that this probably sounds agreeable to many of you. We all like it when there’s someone out there saying nice things about us – who’s advocating for us. And so it may be tempting to imagine that Jesus is just one more person like that – just one other friendly face who has nice things to say about us.

But in reality, Jesus’s role, to advocate for us, is much more serious than that. It’s far more essential for us than many people realize. Because you have to remember the context of this passage – John is speaking to people who are sinners – to people who have violated the rules and regulations of Almighty God. We aren’t talking about trivial infractions, like jay-walking. But we’re talking about evil activities and devilish inclinations that violate the very nature of God, in his infinite goodness – that’s what sin is. It deserves to be punished with a divine penalty. And it disqualifies human beings from having any sort of standing before God, to make a case for ourselves, or to ask for his favor.

I think that many of us are already aware – if we were guilty of a crime and we had to defend ourselves alone, before a human court, it would be bad news. We might even add to our guilt by violating legal protocols and giving bad testimony. We would all want a lawyer to speak for us. And if having an attorney to represent us and to advocate for us is such an important thing in human courts, how much more necessary is it, then, for us to have an advocate before the Holy Judgment Seat of God?

Do we deserve to have an advocate like this? Not at all. But God has provided us with one anyway, for us to receive by faith. And for everyone who’s trusting in Jesus, John declares the good news “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate.” Notice that the word advocate is singular here. The apostle John doesn’t imagine that we’re looking for multiple people to help with the job. Because God has provided one person (solus Christus), who is the all-sufficient, effective mediator, who stands in the gap between us and God, to advocate for us.

The way this works isn’t Jesus plus Mary – not Jesus plus the prayers of deceased saints. Instead, the hope of sinners, to be set right with the judge, rests on the perfect advocacy of Jesus. It rests on Christ alone – solus Christus.

Christ’s Ascended Position

And John goes on in verse 1 to explain why Jesus’s advocacy is so precious. It’s because we have an advocate with the Father. This is my second point, dealing with Christ’s Ascended Position. Many times, when people talk about the person and work of Christ, they talk about his supernatural birth – how the divine Son of God took on flesh, and was born as a baby in Bethlehem. They talk about his miracles, and the things he taught. They talk about his death on the cross, his burial, and his resurrection – these are all true and essential things that we should of course be concerned with. I don’t want to downplay their significance.

But many Christians often neglect to appreciate the ascension of Jesus – his rising up to be in heaven. In fact, I think many of us are actually a bit disappointed by it. I think we imagine that if we still had Jesus here, walking around with us, that would be better for our faith. But the ascended position of Jesus is tremendously good news, and it’s something we should be quick to embrace.

The ascension confirms that human flesh is no longer barred from entering into the Holy presence of God. The ascension of Jesus testifies to us that the Father is well-pleased with him – that Jesus is perfectly flawless and fit for heaven. And, of course, it’s from Jesus’s ascended position that He lives forever as our advocate, to speak on our behalf.

And Jesus’s position isn’t just generally somewhere in heaven. It’s in the very near presence of God. Multiple parts of the Bible, including Hebrews 10:12, tell us that Jesus is at God’s right hand. John 1:18 describes Jesus as being in the bosom of the Father – being right next to the Father’s heart. The Bible isn’t claiming that God the Father has body parts. Instead, the point of these verses is to express Jesus’s intimate nearness to the Father in human terms – in language that we can relate to. We’re supposed to walk away understanding that out of all the uncountable legions of angels, out of all the majestic hosts of heaven, no one is closer to God than Jesus, our Advocate.

When you receive a phone call from an unfamiliar phone number, chances are you might not answer it. You may just let the call go to voice mail, to see whether or not the person leaves a message. But if you get a call from someone you know – especially if it’s someone that you know well, someone you love and trust – you’ll be inclined to pick up the phone right away, or to call back as quickly as you can. In a similar way, the Advocate who calls upon the Father for us isn’t a stranger to God, or just a distant acquaintance. He isn’t even just one among God’s many close friends. It Jesus speaks from a position of unmatched nearness – it’s from this privileged position of unparalleled favor with the Father, that our Advocate speaks on our behalf.

Other voices may call out against you. Friends and family might disown you. The world might mock you and revile you. The devil may burst into the throne room of God, to raise a mountain of accusations against you. And sometimes, in our own ears, those are the only voices you and I can hear. But don’t ever forget, the voice that’s nearest to God, is a voice that cries out decisively for our acceptance, and the forgiveness of our sin.

Christ’s Attributes

And we can understand why Christ has this special nearness to the Father when we consider who Christ is – when we consider a number of his attributes. This brings me to my third point, concerning Christ’s attributes.

At the end of verse 1. John reminds us who our Advocate is (Solus Christus), and what makes him unique: “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

You may be aware, the name Jesus is a version of the Hebrew name “Jeshua” – the LORD saves. Jesus’s name reminds us that He is the divine LORD who stooped down in human flesh to save his people. Jesus is both truly human and truly God. And he’s the only person to have two natures like this. By being truly God and truly man, Jesus is qualified to represent God to mankind, and to represent men before God. In the person of Jesus Christ, God and man are brought together in a way that’s distinctly one-of-a-kind. It’s unthinkable to imagine that someone would be able to replicate Jesus in this way or improve upon his work.

But the phrase goes on to describe Jesus as Christ: Jesus Christ the righteous. Christ isn’t part of his name, but it’s a title that literally means anointed one. In Jewish culture, people who were set apart by God for certain official positions would be anointed with oil – it would be drizzled or rubbed on their forehead. This was how people like prophets, priests, or kings would be set apart for their special service to God. And in the centuries leading up to the birth of Christ, the Jews recognized from the Scriptures that God would at some point send them the Christ – that he would hand-select a specific someone to bring salvation to his people. And that person was and is Jesus. No one else has received God’s sacred charge. We don’t look to earn or acquire saving graces from our good deeds, or from some other mediator or mediatrix. We look only to Christ Jesus – solus Christus.

And John announces that He is “Jesus Christ the righteous,” as the one who stands right with God and his law. Jesus’s righteousness is a divine righteousness – not a discounted knock-off brand of the original – not an RC Cola version of righteousness. But it’s the true, divine fullness of the real thing. And at the very same time, his righteousness is really and truly human righteousness. In reliance on the Holy Spirit, Jesus carried out this perfect righteousness in our human nature – as a man. In every way that humanity has contradicted God’s law, Christ complied. In every way that humanity has failed to do good, Jesus followed through.

And this makes the righteousness of Jesus thoroughly extraordinary. Because from the dawn of time until now, there has been no other human being who has been totally free from sin and unspoiled by it. None have been righteous – no not one.” The whole of humanity has been in need of a Savior to rescue them from their wrongdoings and their guilt. And this includes Mary, the mother of Jesus. Roman Catholicism would say that Mary was sinless and immaculate like Jesus – but this doesn’t line up with the Bible. It doesn’t even line up with the words of Mary herself, because in Luke 1:47 she herself readily acknowledges her dependence on God, her Savior. Mary identifies herself as someone in need of salvation. Not just as someone who needs help to continue being sinless – but as someone who is cursed with the same curse and afflicted with the same afflictions as the fallen human race.

Jesus Christ the righteous stands alone in his righteousness. His is the only perfect human righteousness that the earth has ever known. And by his perfect righteousness, Christ alone (Solus Christus) is uniquely qualified “to make many to be accounted righteous.”

Christ’s Atonement

Specifically, Jesus Christ the righteous does this through his atonement. This is my fourth point – Christ’s Atonement. In verse 2, the apostle John gives the comforting reminder to Christians who have sinned that Jesus Christ the righteous “is the propitiation for our sins.”

The words atonement and propitiation are words that many of us would probably have trouble defining, but they mean approximately the same thing. To atone or to propitiate means to satisfy the demands of someone that you’ve wronged – to appease them. And so a propitiation, then, is the thing that’s offered in order to bring about that appeasement.

Let’s give a quick example of this. Imagine, for a moment, that you’ve just finished up your grocery shopping and you’re backing out a parking space, a little too far – and you suddenly bump into a sports car behind you – nothing too serious, but enough to leave an ugly dent. The other driver happens to be sitting in the car, and when he gets out of the car, it’s pretty obvious to you that he’s upset. So what are you going to do in that moment? Well, chances are, you’re probably going to try to find some type of propitiation – an appeasement – to satisfy his anger. You might try to satisfy him with that packet of chocolate chip cookies you just bought from the store. Or you might try to appease him with a $50 dollar bill – or by rigorously admitting your guilt and trying to apologize with puppy eyes. Those would all be examples of a propitiation – something that’s offered to satisfy an offended party.

So when verse 2 of our text says that Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, what does that mean? Certainly, it reminds us that we have, indeed, sinned, and we have offended someone. But this time it’s not just a random car owner in the grocery store parking lot. Our sin has offended God. We have provoked him to judicial anger. Second, though, this phrase, ‘He is the propitiation for our sins,’ reminds us that someone has been offered up to appease God’s anger – Jesus Christ. The apostle is directing our attention to what Jesus did at the cross. Jesus voluntarily carried the blame for all the sins of his people. The anger of God toward sin was poured out against him. He was struck down with the death penalty that should have been ours.

But the third and finally, from this phrase, “He is the propitiation for our sins,” we learn that when Jesus offered himself up to appease God’s wrath against our lawlessness, he succeeded. The good news of Christianity isn’t just that Jesus suffered, that he was sacrificed, that he died. But the good news, here, is that his sacrifice actually accomplished something for us. Jesus Christ the righteous succeeded in meeting the legal demands of God’s justice, that burned against our sin. When Jesus suffered at the cross, all the sins of his people – past, present, and future – were taken up to the cross with him. (And) 100% of the penalty, for all these sins, was poured out on Jesus.

And because of this, if you’re trusting in Jesus, then you can know with certainty that nothing more needs to be done to appease God’s anger. There’s nothing you need to pay or perform in the way of penance. And there’s no additional suffering that Christians will need to bear for themselves in the imaginary realm of purgatory. Jesus has satisfied the demands of God, once and for all. He is – forever – the one and only propitiation for our sins – for the sins of God’s people.

But then the apostle John goes on to say something which is often misunderstood in verse 2. John says that Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” John’s point here isn’t that Jesus has fully paid for the sins of each individual person in the world. He isn’t claiming that Christ atoned for everybody – that everyone is going to be saved in the end. Instead, John is just further clarifying the uniqueness of Jesus and what he’s accomplished.

There’s one respect in which the apostle is drawing attention to the expansiveness of Jesus’s work. He wants the Christians who are receiving his letter to understand – Jesus didn’t just come to atone for your sins, individually. He wasn’t just sent for the Jews, or for the people of the ancient Mediterranean region. His sacrifice didn’t just pay for the sins of people at Fellowship Reformed Church in Mount Pleasant. But he’s the propitiation God has provided for people from across the whole world – people from everywhere, throughout all of human history. The atoning work of Jesus is that powerful and that pleasing in the sight of God the Father – it extends to hundreds of millions, and beyond. He purifies an ocean of dirty souls! Any and every sinner who calls upon Jesus finds a Savior who fully and finally saves.

But this last phrase in verse 2, here – it not only draws attention to the expansiveness of Jesus’s work. It also underscores its exclusivity. Jesus is the propitiation given for sins. The only one in the world. No other religious figure can set us right with God. Only one person has ever been able to do something to reconcile God and mankind. And this one person does everything. If sincerity was all God required from someone, to be forgiven of their sins – then of course, we would expect to see sincere Buddhists, Mormons, and agnostics in heaven. But sincerity doesn’t save anyone. Not even sincerity plus Jesus. There is just one propitiation available – only Jesus Christ the righteous. Acts 4:12 – “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 this is why the Reformers insisted on solus Christus. We’re saved through faith in Christ alone.

Practical Applications of Solus Christus

But let me close with a couple quick applications. First, salvation in Christ alone is intended to bring you and I comfort and hope – especially when we see our sin. If and/or when we sin, we don’t have to wonder if our relationship with God is over. Instead, we’re urged here to remember who our Savior is. We’re reminded that we have an Advocate who speaks up for us with the merits of his obedience, even when our obedience has failed. Since Jesus has suffered the full penalty for our sins, this means that there is no sense at all in which God is seeking to strike us vindictively, to make us suffer for the wrongs we’ve done. For Christians, the sufferings we face in this life are never coming from a Judge who is against us, but they are only ever coming from a Father who loves us, and who is training and refining us for out eternal good.

So we stand before God in Christ, we can rest in the confidence that our standing before God is secure. The status of our salvation doesn’t rise and fall like mercury in a thermometer, depending on the intensity of our devotion. Instead, Jesus’s permanent, perpetual righteousness is counted to us (through faith) as our righteousness. If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for our sins, but also for the sins of the whole world.

But here’s one more application of solus Christus: let’s be sure that the person and work of Jesus Christ remains at the center of our faith – both individually, and collectively as a church. Certainly, we should go on affirming that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are involved together in the salvation of humanity. These three persons are co-equal, co-eternal, and deserving of our worship as the one, true and living God. I’m not in any way suggesting that the attention we give to Christ should lead us away from the Father and the Spirit. In fact, being Christ-focused should make us more attentive to the glory of our Triune God.

But here’s my point. I say that Jesus Christ needs to remain at the center of our faith, because it’s all too easy for us to come up with a distorted version of Christianity that fixates on something else.

Certainly, there are a number of standard Roman Catholic distortions: they call upon Mary and the saints to do things that only Christ is qualified to do. They fixate on Church tradition and papal encyclicals, and call people to “Come home to Rome” instead of saying, “Come to Jesus.” They fixate on attaining personal merit, and they deny the credit Jesus alone deserves as the “founder and perfecter of our faith.” Yet it isn’t just Roman Catholics who are guilty of things like this.

At the heart of our Christianity, we may have certain pet priorities that distract us from Christ. Our biggest concern might be how cool or entertaining the church service is on Sunday morning. Our biggest concern might be some sort of political philosophy, or cultural issue. Our Christianity might be caught up with winning arguments, or enforcing certain moral standards, or producing talented children, or speaking in tongues, or figuring out in detail what will happen in the end times – or it could be any number of other things. It’s entirely possible, as a church, that we could be so focused on theology, or so focused on fellowship, or so focused on service and evangelism, that we could lose sight of Christ.

But Jesus Christ the righteous is the precious Jewel of heaven, the healing balm that cures our wounds, the rich benefactor who pays our debts. He’s the once-and-for-all Savior, who satisfies God’s justice, and who supplies us freely with everlasting salvation. The world has been given no one else – and we need nothing else, other than Solus Christus – Christ alone. So let’s resolve this morning, to live out our faith, all our days, relying on Him – resting only in Jesus. Let’s pray: