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Christ Alone is Sufficient for Salvation and Sanctification

 

 

 

In C. S. Lewis’ fictional masterpiece, The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape, an  experienced demon, mentors his nephew, Wormwood (also a demon, but “in training”) on the art of breaking down Christians. In essence, the devil’s strategy is not to replace or remove Christ completely, but to promote a “Christ AND” religion. 

What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of "Christianity And." You know--Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychic Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians, let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the same old thing.

This is a humorous piece of fiction in many respects, but not so much when it comes to Satan’s subtle tactics. Lloyd Jones once said that the worst kind of error consists in perversions (twisting) of the truth. How true this is with regard to the “undermining” and “diminishing” of Christ’s sufficiency for both salvation and sanctification. We are living in a day and age when both “religious” and “secular” systems of thought are raised up against the knowledge of Christ.

With regard to salvation, we are living in a pluralistic society where all truth is relative, everyone must respect, tolerate, and yea, verily, now even help promote all views, even if anti-Scripture! Yet, the Bible makes the claim that it is in Christ Alone that salvation is found.

“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other Name, under heaven, that has been given among men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father, except by Me” (John 14:6).

Our Lord Jesus knew that to claim Himself as the “only way” automatically “excluded” all others! So it is today. Salvation is not in Mohammed, Buddha, or Hinduism! Salvation is not in the “American dream,” social justice, legalism, or any type of “self-made” religion! It is in Christ Alone!

But also, with regard to our sanctification (the process of becoming like Christ), Christ alone is sufficient. Christians who are in Christ, have been given the Holy Spirit, who empowers us to put off sin and walk by the Spirit, that we not carry out the desires of the flesh (Gal 5). Because we have Christ alone, we don’t have to live enslaved to our sinful desires, giving in to worldly pleasures, or adopting the world’s thinking on various “watershed” issues prevalent in our society. What we need most is to continue to behold the majesty and beauty of Christ on the pages of God’s Word, that we would become more and more like Him.

What we need is to be confronted, daily, with what He desires from us, for God’s glory and our eternal happiness. In Christ alone we “are complete” (Col 2:10). In Christ alone are “hidden all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3). Christ is “our life” (Col 3:4), and one day we will be revealed with Him in glory. Christians, CHRIST ALONE (Solus Christus) is sufficient (all we need!) for salvation and sanctification, no matter what our current culture says. May we, like Paul, say, “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14).