One With Himself, I Cannot Die

Revisiting Solus Christus in 2024

When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: “I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made a satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there I shall be also.” - Martin Luther

What place have these most pestilent Sophists left to Christ to exert his power? They say that he deserved for us the first grace, that is, the occasion of deserving, but that it is now our part not to fail the occasion offered. O overweening and shameless impiety! Who would have thought that those who professed the name of Christ would dare so strip him of his power and virtually trample him underfoot? The testimony commonly rendered to him is that whoever believes in him has been justified. These Sophists teach that no other benefit comes from him except that the way has been opened for individuals to justify themselves.¹ - John Calvin

60. Q. How are you righteous before God?

A. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ: that is, although my conscience accuses me, that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have never kept any of them, and am still prone always to all evil; yet God, without any merit of mine, of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never committed nor had any sins, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me; if only I accept such benefit with a believing heart. - Heidelberg Catechism, Question 60

Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is the divinely appointed mediator between God and man. Having taken upon Himself human nature, yet without sin, He perfectly fulfilled the law; suffered and died upon the cross for the salvation of sinners. He was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended to His Father, at whose right hand He ever liveth to make intercession for His people. He is the only Mediator, the Prophet, Priest and King of the Church, and Sovereign of the Universe. - The Abstract of Principles, Article VII. The Mediator

King Jesus Has No Need For Stewards

Imagine being in Pippin Took’s shoes (Or hairy feet) standing next to Gandalf encountering the steward of Gondor in the movie, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. You and your wise wizard friend have ridden miles to send warning of the impending military doom that Sauron will send from his realm of Mordor. Yet when urging this royal caretaker to bolster the defenses and call for aid to the neighboring kingdom of Rohan, the steward, Denethor II, snaps at you with this:

All the die-hard book fans agree that Denethor ends up in madness and despair in both the book and the movie. In fact, in the book, right before killing himself, Denethor cries at Gandalf:

‘But I say to thee, Gandalf Mithrandir, I will not be thy tool! I am Steward of the House of Ana´rion. I will not step down to be the dotard chamberlain of an upstart. Even were his claim proved to me, still he comes but of the line of Isildur. I will not bow to such a one, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity.’²

To deny the true king’s return is not the work of a steward but a traitor and usurper. A steward is one who serves the king by overseeing the kingdom’s administration, especially when the king is absent. Yet Denethor makes himself to be the de factor ruler of Gondor which is not what stewards do. Thankfully, as the movie/book continues Gondor is saved by her allies, particularly through Aragorn who then leads the armies of the West against Sauron, and ultimately is crowned the king of Gondor.

“Joseph, I thought October on your Substack was about the Reformation, not LOTR appreciation month.” And right you are, because, I want to show you that when it comes to the doctrine of Salvation, Jesus alone saves sinners. Put another way: if Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who has brought salvation, then he does not need others to accomplish that work. Only the Triune God can rescue and redeem those who have rebelled against him, and Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, is the only one who can bring sinful humans back into the right relationship with God.

King Jesus doesn’t need lesser stewards to bless sinners with salvation.

The Reformers called this reality Solus Christus or “Christ Alone.”

Stop Getting in the Way of Jesus

Before I critique the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) with what Protestants disagree with, I want to point out that both Roman Catholics and Protestants have historically agreed on key points about who Jesus is. Both affirm Nicene Trinitarianism and Chalcedonian Christology which affirm that Jesus is the eternal Son of God who possesses both a truly divine nature and a truly human nature without any mixture.³ Furthermore, both affirm not only who/what Jesus is but also that he lived a perfectly obedient life, was crucified on a cross, physically rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. Critically, both believe he alone is the mediator between God and man. For example, compare the following statements about Jesus from The 1689 London Baptist Confession and The Catechism of the Catholic Church:⁴

You can see there is much agreement with these sections. In light of these, this begs the question, “If there is much agreement about who Jesus is and what he did, what gives for the Protestant Reformers to make a fuss with the RCC about Jesus?”

Two fundamental issues arise from Roman Catholic theology. First, the RCC views itself not only as the true church but also as the extension of the incarnation of Jesus Christ who mediates God’s grace to the world. Thomas Joseph White writes that after the resurrection,

Jesus’ body remains in a mysterious relationship to the ongoing life of the Church, and he can render himself present to human beings in a variety of ways. First, there is a simple, almost indefinable, but utterly real presence of the risen Lord to all those who have the grace of supernatural faith. . . . Second, Christ is present in and through his sacramental activity. The sacraments are instrumental causes of grace . . . Christ is present in us by his grace which he shares with us, and this is in an especially clear way through his sacraments.⁵

The RCC holds to this position by pointing to passages that show how Christ is the head of his body, the church (Eph. 1:20-23), how the church is the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:32), and how Jesus identifies himself as being persecuted when the church is persecuted (Acts 9:4). They also refer to Augustine’s concept of totus Christus in which he states “The whole Christ consists of Head and body. The Head is he who is the savior of his body, he who has already ascended into heaven; but the body is the Church, toiling on earth.”⁶ Because of the close connection between Christ and the church, “he is identified as closely as possible with the church. To reverse the concept, the Chruch is the totus Christus—the whole Christ: deity, humanity, and body. Consequently, the RCC’s official catechism asserts that the Church is like a sacrament.⁷ The church is not one of the seven sacraments but is like one in that it is a visible and tangible sign of God’s invisible grace. Thus, through the RCC, God works salvation into people, leading us to the next issue.

Second, consequently, the church's sacraments are needed to infuse the merits of Christ into one’s nature to maintain or restore his or her state of grace. It sounds like a broken record in light of previous articles,⁸ but the RCC holds that salvation is not by grace alone through faith alone but by grace being infused by us working through the sacraments. This idea of God’s grace being infused through the sacraments makes sense in light of the church's identity being the totus Christus and being like a sacrament. In a sense, the RCC is the extension of Christ’s incarnation because it is through the Church that Christ’s merits are given through her sacraments. This is why the RCC believes that “Christ is present in and through his sacramental activity,”⁹ and (historically until Vatican II), there is no salvation outside of the RCC as she is the only true institution that rightly practices the sacraments. Thus, to stand righteous before God, one must maintain or recover a state of grace through the sacraments of the RCC as presided by her priests.

Although other issues can be unpacked, the RCC’s understanding of the Church as a mediator and the sacraments as necessary for salvation compromise the clarity of the Gospel and the sufficiency of Jesus’s work which caused the Reformers to respond with Solus Christus. Stephen Wellum summarizes the key disagreement this way:

Salvation is found in Christ alone, but for the Reformers, this entailed the rejection of Rome’s sacrmental theology and an affirmation of Christ’s all-sufficent work as our covenant head, representative, and substitute. Christ does not merely pay for our past sins by penal substitution; he also pays for all present and future sin. Because Jesus is God the Son incarnate, by his obedient life and death, he has fully paid for our sin: there is nothing we can add to his work. Instead, by grace through faith, we are united to Christ by the Spirit’s effectual work and declared just before God since Christ’s righteousness is ours by imputation.¹⁰

Union with the Perfect and Divine Mediator

Solus Christus can be defined as follows:

Christ alone is the one who has accomplished the work of salvation for us. His work and merit are thus credited to us by faith in him alone.

I do want to add something that I forgot to add: Christ alone is the one whose work is all-sufficient for our entire salvation because he is the only person who is all-sufficient. Wellum writes:

The Reformers rightly argued that Christ’s obedient life and death is enough for us. In Christ alone God’s righteous demand against sin is definitively and completely satisfied. Precisely because Jesus is God the Son incarnate, his merits alone are sufficient; there is nothing more that we can add to his work. Furthermore, we become the beneficiaries of his work by faith alone because our Lord lived and died for us as our mediator and as our great prophet-priest-king. The bond between Christ and his people is unbreakable. Christ’s obedient life and death is now ours and the Spirit directly unites us to Christ. In Christ alone, we are declared righteous because he acted as our covenant representative and substitute. In Christ alone, we have a redeemer who truly saves and in whom we are complete.¹¹

To understand why Solus Christus matters, let’s consider several biblical and theological pillars:

First, Jesus is the Incarnate Son of God who, being truly God and truly man, qualifies him to be all-sufficient in his work of salvation.

This may seem unnecessary due to how Protestants and Catholics agree on the divinity and humanity of Jesus, but if we reflect on the God-ness of God and the reality of the incarnation, we will see how the RCC being totus Christus and her sacramentalism are problems when it comes to the doctrine of God and Christology. For starters, Jesus is the second person of the Triune of God who is truly God and truly man. Biblically, God is the Triune, Covenant LORD who is perfect in all that he is. Thus, the Son of God in his divinity is simple, all-sufficient (divine aseity), immutable, impassible, and infinite in all of his perfections (ex. omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, etc.). But this divine Son of God takes on to his person a truly human nature, and he acts per his two natures as one person without mixing both. If that is the case, then Jesus accomplishes the work of salvation (incarnation, life of obedience, death, resurrection, and ascension) as the God-man who works according to both natures. It is this Jesus in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:19-20). This Jesus is the eternal Son who “emptied himself” not by removing or diminishing his divine nature but “by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7-8).

This is vital because the Reformers argued that the church—although known as the “body of Christ” and “the bride of Christ”—was not the extension of Christ’s incarnation as their Catholic counterparts argued. The RCC argued this because they held “that Christ performed all His acts of mediation only as man. By limiting Christ’s mediation to His humanity, the Roman Catholics found support for the idea of a sacerdotal priesthood. The implication was that since Christ mediated only as a human being, another human could also be mediated, both before and after the incarnation.”¹² However, the Reformers recognized that Christ’s human nature was not simply a channel through which his divinity could work but that he acted in both natures simultaneously. For example, John Calvin states, “Ungrudgingly he took our nature upon himself to impart to us what was his, and to become both Son of God and Son of man in common with us.”¹³ Later he states:

For the same reason it was also imperative that he who was to become our Redeemer be true God and true man. It was his task to swallow up death. Who but the Life could do this? It was his task to conquer sin. Who but very Righteousness could do this? It was his task to rout the powers of world and air. Who but a power higher than world and air could do this? Now where does life or righteousness, or lordship and authority of heaven lie but with God alone? Therefore our most merciful God, when he willed that we be redeemed, made himself our Redeemer in the person of his only-begotten Son.¹⁴

The 1689 London Baptist Confession puts it this way:

Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture, attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.¹⁵

Two key implications tackle the RCC’s position. First, Jesus is essentially truly God and truly man, meaning that he possesses all the attributes of his two natures to his person. As Gregg Allison states “the ascended Jesus is not here. This is not a denial of the fullness of Christ filling his body (Eph. 1:23) in the sense of his divine omnipresence. But it does underscore the error of the totus Christus because King Jesus, the ascended God-man, is not in his church in terms of its essential nature.”¹⁶ This means that Jesus’ humanity cannot be essentially extended to include the church as totus Christus. This leads to us, second, to Jesus not needing any other mediators to communicate his grace to sinners. Remember, by being in nature like that of a sacrament, the RCC understands itself to be the instrument by which God’s grace/Christ’s merit is infused recipients through the sacraments. But if Jesus’ humanity is independent of the institution of the church, then the church can’t be that which mediates divine grace but points to and demonstrates the work of God’s grace through faith in Christ, the Mediator. In fact, as a person of the Triune God, the Son with the Father “sent the Holy Spirit not for the continuation of the incarnation, but the continuation of his mission of saving fallen people.”¹⁷ Furthermore, being that Jesus is truly divine and truly human, he alone is qualified to accomplish and mediate our salvation without any need for other mediators. As Paul writes, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Tim. 2:5).

Second, Jesus is our Mediator alone because he is our great high priest our perfect sacrifice.

If the RCC is wrong for asserting itself as the mediator of grace through the sacraments, then how does Jesus demonstrate himself as our only perfect Mediator of salvation? Although we can unpack how Jesus fulfills the roles of prophet and king, I want us to consider how he is our great high priest who perfectly represents us and offers himself as the perfect atoning sacrifice for all our sins. In the Old Testament, God made a covenant through Moses with the nation of Israel and instituted the Levitical priesthood by which the people were able to fellowship with him. However, “According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation” (Heb. 9:9-10). The problem with the Mosaic Covenant’s priesthood system was that Levitical priests were themselves mortal (Heb. 7:23), sinners who needed sacrifices for themselves (Heb. 7:27), and offered sacrifices that needed to be regularly repeated (Heb. 9:25). In short, the Old Covenant’s mediators and sacrifices were insufficient to atone for all the sins of the people.

But Jesus comes into history as our only true Mediator because he is the better high priest. Unlike the priests of Levi, Jesus alone is the sinless God-man not needing sacrifices for himself. He is not of the priesthood of Levi but of the order of Melchizedek and is a priest forever (Heb. 7:11-22). Unlike the Levites who served in temple that is shadow and copy of the heavenly temple (Heb. 8:5), Jesus himself serves in “heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Heb. 9:24). Finally, unlike the repeated sacrifices “as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:25-26). Jesus is the perfect lamb who was slain “once for all” for our sins by satisfying the wrath of God against our sins (Isa. 53:3-11) and rising victorious over death and “sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:13-14) symbolizing that his atoning work is complete.

Because he alone is the great high priest, he is alone is our mediator and the perfect sacrifice for all our sins. Whereas the RCC states that the Church is the extension of Christ’s incarnation and thus her sacraments are how we infuse the grace of God into us, the perfect priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus shows us that we can come to God without any hindrance or prerequisites other than the empty hand of faith. The author of Hebrews states “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:14-16). We need no other priest to intercede for us on our behalf because Jesus “hold his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:22, emphasis added). If Christ’s perfect priesthood and sacrifice our completely ours, then we don’t have live in a system of fearing whether or not we have infused enough of Christ’s merits through the sacraments. As Mark Dever states:

O the joy we have in knowing that the work of atonement is done! Christ’s sacrifiace does not need to be repeated, because it was complete. It is complete. We don’t need to wonder whether we can be saved or whether we will be saved if we are trusting in Christ. I have heard it said that every other religion in the word is the religion of “do” but that Chrsitianity alone is the religion of “done.”¹⁸

Third, Jesus is our Covenant Head who fulfills all of God’s Covenantal Promises

Speaking of being the better high priest, Jesus not only fulfills the Mosaic Covenant but also all of God’s covenants in his one plan of redemption. Since the beginning of creation, the LORD God gave covenantal promises, commitment, and guidelines to our first parents to be his image-bearers by having dominion over all creation (Gen. 1:26-31).¹⁹ Thus, God created Adam “to rule over creation as God’s representative priest-king, which also extends to all humanity,”²⁰ and he is the federal head or representative of humanity whose mandate is “to rule over God’s creation, to put all things under his feet (cf. Ps 8), and to establish the pattern of God’s kingdom in this world, spreading God’s glorious presence to the entire creation.”²¹ However, due to Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God, all humanity has been tainted with sin and cursed with death, “But thankfully God has promised that his purposes for humanity and creation will continue by his provision of a human seed (Gen 3:15), a Redeemer, which has to be understood as ultimately bringing about the reversal of the disastrous effects of Adam’s sin and the achievement of our calling as humans in the world to see God’s glorious presence fully realized in a new creation.”²²

Therefore, Jesus is the fulfillment of all of God’s covenant promises throughout the rest of the biblical narrative that reaches its climax in the New Covenant. Wellum writes that “as God’s plan unfolds across time and as God enters into covenant relations with Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David, step by step, God, by his mighty acts and words, prepares his people to anticipate the coming of the “seed of the women,” the deliverer, the Messiah. A Messiah who, when he comes, will fulfill all of God’s promises by ushering in God’s saving rule to this world. This point is vital for establishing the identity of the Messiah, especially the truth that this Messiah is more than a mere man; he is the divine Son incarnate.”²³ So Jesus isn’t just the great high priest who accomplishes what the Levitical priesthood of the Mosiac Covenant couldn’t do. He is the everlasting king who as was promised to David will have an everlasting dominion (2 Sam. 7:12-16). He is the offspring of Abraham through whom all the nations will be blessed (Gen. 22:18). He is the new Israel who unlike the people of Israel completely obeyed the Father as the perfectly obedient Son. He is the fulfillment of the covenant with Noah by being the true ark that sinners can be saved from God’s righteous wrath. Ultimately, he is the new, second Adam who unlike him overcame the temptation of the devil (Gen. 3:1-7; Matt. 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-14; Luke 4:1-13), completely obeyed the Father as the true obedient Son of God, and through his obedience even to death on a cross and his triumphant resurrection (Phil. 2:5-11), his “one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:18-19).

Although the background of Christ fulfilling all of God’s covenants seems unrelated to addressing Roman Catholic doctrine, Solus Christus is supported by this because “the primary message of the covenants is this: unless God himself acts to accomplish his promises, we have no salvation. After all, who ultimately can remedy his own divine problem of forgiveness other than God?”²⁴ To show how this plays into Solus Christus, this leads us to my final point.

Fourth, Christians receive all of Christ’s benefits through Union with him by faith alone in his person and work alone.

The Reformers saw our salvation as Sola Gratia (by grace alone) and Sola Fide (by faith alone) because it was grounded in Christ's all-sufficient identity and work on our behalf and provided to sinners through union with him. The scandal of the Gospel, as clarified by the Reformers, is that sinners can be declared righteous not on the basis of their merits or efforts but solely on the perfection of Christ credited to them by faith in him. This confounds the RCC which typically regards this imputed righteousness as legal fiction, but the question that must be reckoned with is this: “How do you deal with the reality of Union with Christ?”²⁵ As covered previously, God’s immeasurable grace cannot be demeaned by saying that we must restore our state of grace by infusion of it through sacraments, and faith in Christ means that there is peace between God and the one who believes in his Son for his righteousness as his own (Rom. 5:1). Therefore, to be justified by faith in Christ means not only to stand legally righteous before the presence of the Father but also to be permanently united to Jesus Christ himself, thus being “blessed . . . in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3). Let’s unpack this by tying in the three previous points.

First, by faith in Jesus Christ, Christians are united to the God-man whose resurrection, righteousness, and fellowship become ours. I will cover more about this in a later post, but because Jesus is truly God and truly man, he suffered and died in our place but rose from the dead victorious over sin and death. All humanity is “dead in the trespasses and sins” and held captive to sin, but “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-6). This new position of new life, resurrection, and ascension to fellowship with God is for Christians “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). Only God can save those who have offended him. Because Jesus is truly God, he is able to save us to the uttermost by conquering the power of sin and death. Because he is truly man, he can suffer and die in our place and rise from the dead to accomplish what we never could. It is by faith alone in Christ alone that we are united to Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:11-14; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:1-3) and thus have been permanently tethered to his perfect righteousness, new life, and fellowship with God.

Second, by faith in Jesus Christ, Christians are united to the great high priest who is their only mediator to the Father and whose perfect sacrifice is credited to them by faith in him. Because Christians are united to Christ by faith, he as our great high priest makes intercession for us so that we are saved the uttermost. We can draw near to God with confidence because we are in Christ who represents us before the Father (Heb. 4:15-16). Furthermore, there is no additional work that we have to contribute for our salvation since Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice has once and for all satisfied all of God’s righteous demands against our sin. As Paul writes in Romans 8:1-4, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Therefore, because of Christ’s perfect sacrifice, nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39).

Third, by faith in Jesus Christ, Christians are united to the true and better Adam who is the guarantor of the New Covenant and fulfillment of all God’s covenants. Christ’s ministry was superior because he was the mediator of a covenant that only God had to fulfill. Whereas the first covenant head, Adam, failed and brought sin and death to all humanity, Jesus, by his perfect obedience, substitutionary death, and victorious resurrection brought life to all who believe in him (Rom. 5:12-21). Therefore, Jesus is the guarantor and mediator of a better covenant than the ones before, particularly the Mosaic covenant, because the New Covenant is founded on better promises. As Jeremiah states, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:33-34).²⁶ It is in Christ Jesus that not only all of God’s covenant promises find their “yes and amen,” (1 Cor 1:20) but also, by faith in him, “the church . . . God’s new creation/humanity that remains forever, constituted by believing Jews and Gentiles, . . . equally and fully receive all of God’s promises in Christ.”²⁷ By faith alone in Christ alone, we are united to Christ our Covenant Mediator through whom we receive all of the covenant benefits due to his fulfillment of them all through his New Covenant.

To conclude this section on union with Christ, let me share some of Calvin’s comments on this:

He alone is well founded in Christ who has perfect righteousness in himself: since the apostle does not say that He was sent to help us attain righteousness but himself to be our righteousness [1 Cor. 1:30]. Indeed, he states that “he has chosen us in him” from eternity “before the foundation of the world,” through no merit of our own “but according to the purpose of divine good pleasure” [Eph. 1:4–5, cf. Vg.]; that by his death we are redeemed from the condemnation of death and freed from ruin [cf. Col. 1:14, 20]; that we have been adopted unto him as sons and heirs by our Heavenly Father [cf. Rom. 8:17; Gal. 4:5–7]; that we have been reconciled through his blood [Rom. 5:9–10]; that, given into his protection, we are released from the danger of perishing and falling [John 10:28]; that thus ingrafted into him [cf. Rom. 11:19] we are already, in a manner, partakers of eternal life, having entered in the Kingdom of God through hope.²⁸

All Other Ground (and Saviors) is Sinking Sand

I love living in South Florida because of the easy access to the best beaches in the United States. I’m always looking forward to planning a Saturday beach day with my peeps to dive into the refreshing water, soak up the sun, and play some beach volleyball. But here is the annoying thing about the beach: dealing with sand. No, I’m not Anakin Skywalker who hates the sand from Tatooine, but I’m always annoyed by how hard it is to get sand off when leaving the beach. It gets everywhere, and if you plan to change clothes right after and you don’t get most of it off, it is quite uncomfortable, to say the least.

But here’s another fact about sand: It is not the best building material. Whether it’s making castles or elaborate sculptures, sand cannot withstand the force of waves and children running around. It’s not like the cement and concrete that is laid out at the Broadwalk attraction at a nearby beach. Here in South Florida, most of the buildings are built with these sturdier materials so that when hurricanes crash upon the coast, they will at best stand firm or at worst suffer minimal damage. But you don’t have to be a 21^st-century engineer to figure that out. Even Jesus would use a similar analogy in one of his most famous parables:

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.” – Luke 6:46-49

As we have seen, Jesus alone is the ground for our entire salvation, not other mediators or efforts we can conjure from ourselves. The RCC may rightly confess that Jesus is the perfect God-man, and yet their understanding of how his work is applied to our lives is skewed by adding to Jesus the mediation of the church and sacramentalism. The reality is that Christ, the infinite Son of God taking on a truly human nature, is all-sufficient to save and does so by being our great high priest and the mediator of the New Covenant. By his perfect sacrifice, we have been brought near to God through union with Christ by faith alone in his person and work alone. There is no other foundation for our salvation other than him alone. For those who have trusted in him, they can truly sing with gusto the following hymns:

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him is mine!
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th'eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, should die for me!
- Charles Wesley, “And Can it Be, That I Should Gain?”

My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly lean on Jesus' name.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand:
all other ground is sinking sand;
all other ground is sinking sand.
- Edward Mote, “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less”

Behold Him there, the risen Lamb
My perfect, spotless Righteousness
The great unchangeable I Am
The King of glory and of grace
One with Himself, I cannot die
My soul is purchased by His blood
My life is hid with Christ on high
With Christ my Savior and my God
With Christ my Savior and my God
- Vikki Cook and Charitie Lees Bancroft, “Before the Throne of God Above”

1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 794.

2. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1955), [PDF file, accessed October 11, 2024], https://rsd2-alert-durden-reading-room.weebly.com/uploads/6/7/1/6/6716949/03-the-return-of-the-king.pdf, 1118.

3. For a summary of orthodox Christology from a Roman Catholic theologian, see Thomas Joseph White, The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 138-157

4. "Chapter 8: Of Christ the Mediator," The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, The1689Confession.com, accessed October 12, 2024, https://www.the1689confession.com/1689/chapter-8; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), accessed September 10, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM, 480, 613-4; White, The Light of Christ, 168-9.

5. White, The Light of Christ, 178.

6. Augustine, Exposition of the Psalms, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, 6 vols. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000-2004), 4:149, quoted in Gregg R. Allison, 40 Questions About Roman Catholicism (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2021), 59.

7. CCC, 775-6.

8. See previous treatments: Sola Gratia and Sola Fide.

9. White, The Light of Christ, 178.

10. Stephen J. Wellum, Systematic Theology, Volume 1: From Canon to Concept (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2024), 40.

11. Stephen J. Wellum, “Are the Five Solas Biblical?” Southern Equip, October 31, 2017, https://equip.sbts.edu/article/five-solas-biblical/.

12. Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 340.

13. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.465.

14. Ibid., 466.

15. "Chapter 8: Of Christ the Mediator," The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, The1689Confession.com, accessed October 12, 2024, https://www.the1689confession.com/1689/chapter-8; See also John 3:13; Acts 20:28.

16. Gregg R. Allison, 40 Questions About Roman Catholicism (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2021), 66.

17. Ibid.

18. Mark Dever and Michael Lawrence, It Is Well: Expositions on Substitutionary Atonement (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 26.

19. For further explanation supporting the Adamic Covenant or Creation Covenant, see Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 211-258.

20. Wellum, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, 443.

21. Ibid., 445.

22. Ibid.

23. Stephen J. Wellum, "Solus Christus: What the Reformers Taught and Why it Still Matters," Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 21, no. 3 (2017): 101, accessed October 26, 2024, https://cf.sbts.edu/equip/uploads/2016/05/Solus-Christus-What-the-Reformers-Taught-and-Why-it-Still-Matters.pdf.

24. Wellum, "Solus Christus," 104.

25. See my past article on Union with Christ here.

26. Bruce, F.F. The Epistle to the Hebrews. Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990, p. 189-90.

27. Wellum, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, 481.

28. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.793.