Compiled from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest @ utmost.org
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of sin, that is, my right to myself, entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Himself the sin of the human race and put it away (Heb. 9:26). This disposition is one of self-realization — I am my own god, and it has one basis, my claim to my right to myself. That is a thing we are born with and cannot touch it; God touches it in redemption.
Jesus Christ is a Regenerator, who can put into any one His own heredity of holiness. He put the whole human race back to where God designed it to be, and anyone can enter into union with God on the ground of what Our Lord has done on the Cross.
Why Jesus Christ is the only way to God and to eternal life with Him, is because God, the Creator and Ruler of all, has given His absolute and sovereign authority to Jesus Christ. And, it is Christ, who as God/Man was the only sinless person who ever lived, has full authority so that He is able to fulfill all of God’s requirements for redeeming and reconciling with His creation.
Matthew 11:27; Matthew 28:18-20; John 3:35; John 10:18; John 13:3; John 17:2; John 19:11; 1 Cor. 15:24-28; Ephesians 1:20-23; Philippians 2:9; Colossians 2:19; 1 Peter 3:22;
God so loved mankind that He came down through the virgin birth as Jesus Christ and became a member of our race in order to be, on the Cross, the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Having paid the penalty in full demanded by His own justice, God can righteously forgive all who admit their guilt and accept the pardon He graciously offers.
When the Philippian jailer cried out, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”, Paul and Silas gave a simple answer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). Surely that means more than simply believing that someone called Jesus Christ existed. Who was He? Lord means “God”; Jesus means “Savior from sin”; Christ means “Messiah,” the one promised in the Scriptures. His very name indicates that He is God who
became a man to die for our sins in fulfillment of what God’s prophets foretold.
To believe that anything else is necessary for salvation, or that there are many ways to God, is to deny that Christ paid the penalty in full, thus rejecting the gospel.
Many who claim to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” have attached their own meanings to the seemingly biblical words they use. In this way are manufactured the many false gospels that usually include false concepts of “Christ.”
And, so, we hear:
- “We do not deny the divinity of Jesus, but rather we affirm the divinity of all people….”
- They call Jesus a Savior, but add, “Any world teacher [Buddha, Muhammad, Freud…] who helps mankind to be free from material, intellectual, or emotional bondage is a spiritual ‘savior.’”
- To a Mormon, eternal life is not a free gift of God’s grace but must be earned and culminates in one’s becoming a “God.”
- ”Christ’s claim that “no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6) is brushed aside by professing Christians in the interest of “religious harmony.”
They are denying the God-given AUTHORITY of Christ as the only One who has the power to reconcile us to God.
We are to believe in Him for who He is and for what He, and only He, could and did
accomplish, by His experience upon the Cross for all humanity. Salvation is a free gift that has already been paid for in full by Jesus our Savior. As a gift, it must be received by faith in Him. That is the only necessity.
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