Christ did it all. There is nothing more that needs to be done in order to be saved. Works will not get you there, for there is one who died and rose on your behalf and made satisfaction for all of your sins. Not just some, and certainly not just your sins before you became a Christian. No. All of them. Not only so, but Christ Himself established a Church and He delivers this free grace to us through Word and Sacrament. He washes us clean in our Holy Baptism. He pronounces us forgiven in absolution. He delivers us His Word in the preaching of the Gospel. He feeds us His body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. It's all a one-sided deliverance of gifts. This is Gospel. This is THE Gospel. To turn around and say that we have to add to that is to effectively deny the Gospel. To say that there is something more to add is to claim that Christ did not do enough. May it never be so!
If Christ is not sufficient by Himself, nobody would be saved. Not one. If you think that Christ saved you, but now it's up to you to make good of grace to finish your salvation, then it's safe to say that you probably don't understand grace or your sinfulness. Different churches sometimes teach exactly this idea in different ways. Some churches flatly say that we are justified by faith plus works. Hey, 10 points for honesty and clarity. Others give you Christ and then take Him right back once you've made a decision - putting you on the treadmill of living out the life in a victorious way.
The truth is, even for the Christian, you can never move beyond the Gospel. You can never move beyond Christ. He is the center of everything for us. And Christ has done it all.
But Christ had to do it all, didn't He? I mean, just look at what the Holy Scriptures say about who we are and what we have done.
Jeremiah 17:9: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Romans 3:10-12: as it is written, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
Then go ahead and read verses 13-18. Not to mention, keep in mind that it's impossible to totally stop sinning, and God still has a standard of absolute perfection. Of course, that is why Christ does it all. The epistles of St. Paul point this out quite nicely. He writes numerous letters to first century churches addressing sin problems. 1 Corinthians is a great example. And he never hesitates to call these people brothers. They're simultaneously sinner and saint. Thus says St. Paul.
And to further the good news, Christ directly delivers His grace and good gifts to us directly and objectively through means. He does not grace us secretly in a Gnostic manner so then we can turn around and show Him how obedient we are by getting baptized and eating crackers and Welch's grape juice. That's not what the Scriptures say. The Bible does not talk about these sacraments in an ornamental fashion. It talks about them in a Sacramental fashion. They are God's objective means to save us.
That completely sufficient Christ gives us Himself in completely sufficient means of grace. Pretty nice, huh?
Hence, it's quite important that your theology and worship majors on the majors, so to speak. Who is Christ? What do we believe? How is man made right before God? To put it simply, if worship and theology is not Christocentric, it's missing the point and ends up majoring on the minors, so to speak.
The completely and perfectly sufficient Jesus at the center. All the time. For you.
+Pax+
+Pax+
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