GETTING THE MESSAGE/United to Christ by faith alone

We will return to our study in Revelation next week. This week, in John 20:19-23, we are considering the value of salvation. Who can put a value on salvation? Or who can comprehend what it means to lose your soul? The Lord says the soul is worth more than the whole world, and so to lose your soul means you lose your most precious possession.

In Jonn 20:19, “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” The disciples had heard the reports of an empty tomb and that some of the women had seen Jesus, but they had remained distressed and fearful. 

After Jesus had pronounced peace to them, he showed them his hands and side. Peace means that Jesus, by his death on the cross, had fulfilled all righteousness, satisfying the justice of God according to the law of God on their behalf. Jesus had made a substitutionary atonement to take away the debt of their sin. The fear the disciples had of the Jews was misplaced. Jesus had restored them to favor with God, saved their souls by his death.

This is something that we need to understand. The demands of God’s law must be met. We are exposed to the terrors of God’s justice as law breakers. We tend to have a sense of entitlement, which comes from a misunderstanding of God’s law. We think we can stand on our own performance before God, put God in our debt for the good things we have done. This sort of mindset leads to death. If not for grace, we would have no hope.

The proclamation of peace by the Lord means our sins were laid upon him and that God pardons our sins and accepts us as his children for the sake of Christ’s merits. Blessed is everyone to whom God gives true grace to, for grace leads one to Christ. Christ is the rock we must swim to, or we will be drowned souls. 

To trust in your own righteousness is self-righteousness. Forgiveness of sins comes only through being united to Christ by faith. If you miss Christ, then you miss the only way to God and will perish in your sin. As the Puritan John Owen once said, “He who thinks of going to heaven in any other way than faith in Christ shall never come there.”

A common objection in the minds of men is that if our acceptance by God is based on Christ alone and not in anything we have done or will do, then it doesn’t matter how we live. The answer to that is what you see Christ doing to his disciples in verse 22: “He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

The gift of the Holy Spirit equipped the apostles in unique ways, but every Christian has the Holy Spirit and the new life he works in us brings great changes. One of those is how we view God. The Spirit of God gives the soul a sense of the majesty and holiness of God, and how sin appears in his presence. Isaiah, in the presence of God, said, “Woe is me.”

The Spirit of God teaches us to shut our mouths to our own righteousness and boast in the glory of Christ and his cross that declares peace for us in the presence of God. Until a soul can truly say like in the hymn Rock of Ages, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling,” he has not seen the deformity of his own sins as they appear in the light of God.

The heart humbled by God’s Spirit no longer lives for himself and sin, but for Christ. The Christian life isn’t reduced to moralism, I don’t do this or that, but a desire to be conformed to Christ and grow in holiness to honor him. The Christian life is always about Christ, turning from sinful passions to godliness, while we look forward to his glorious appearing. 

The Spirit teaches us the reality of eternity and the value of salvation. And what value there is! Christ brings us to the Father, who knows how to make all things work for good to his children. There is no father like God for love. You cannot love your own soul so entirely as he loves you. Christ gives us unsearchable riches, writes our name in the book of life. Thomas Watson said, “The soul has the blood of Christ to redeem it, the image of God to beautify it.”