The Essentiality of Christ: There Is No Coming to God Apart From Jesus

Scripture tells us in Romans 3:23 (NIV): “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We also see in Romans 3:10-18 (NIV): “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.’ There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Indeed, apart from Christ, it appears every part of our bodies contribute to our condemnation before a Holy and Righteousness God. And apart from the Remedy of Jesus, the payment for our sins is eternal death as Paul writes in Romans 6:23 (NIV): “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Without Christ, mankind remains helpless and hopeless – no matter what earthly pomp or human wisdom surrounds or indwells him. We cannot save ourselves. Christ is absolutely essential for the salvation of our souls. Jesus Himself tells us in John 14:6 (NIV): “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus is the Way because He is the Truth and the Life. The real purpose Jesus came to walk this dusty earth was to live a perfect life so that He could be the perfect sacrifice for all of our sins. He came to earth to bear the sins of mankind upon His Own precious and perfect body. Every.sin. Paul writes this clearly in 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV): “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” What an amazing verse. Christ leaves Paradise, becomes a man, lives a perfect life and then dies for us on the cross having all my sins and yours and the worlds heaped upon His Perfect Body as the Perfect sacrifice for sinners that we all are. And for the first time, God looked away – and the separation was intensely and painfully penetrating for our Lord Jesus. The crucifixion was horrible but the excruciating pain of forsakenness was what our Lord cried out about.
  
The great Apostle Paul writes this so beautifully in Philippians 2:5-11 (NIV): “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” 

The pattern for the believers’ sanctification is Jesus as we are called to walk as He did through His power and for His glory. And believers are changed by grace giving way to grace giving way to grace. From the first Adam we received the displeasure of God; from the death and satisfaction of the second Adam we obtained the favor of God. Indeed, as Jonathan Edwards wrote: “The least glance of God’s glory in Christ exalts the soul.”