Jesus Christ. “Through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are chronicled in the form of letters. With respect to the communication of facts, the letter is the most reliable genre in literature. God has made it easy to find salvation, for it just so happens that the way of salvation is written down in detail in the most popular, most easily obtained, Book in all of history. On one side of the Book it is prophesied that a Saviour will come. On the other side of the Book, the Saviour has come. His circumstances, character, and conduct are the same in prophecy as they have fallen out in reality. He was born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem; he was descended from the tribe of Judah; he was called a Nazarene; he fled into Egypt; he died in Jerusalem; he fed the hungry; he healed the sick; he raised the dead; he was despised and rejected; he was acquainted with grief; and he was numbered with the transgressors. All of this and more was prophesied of the Son of God hundreds of years before he came into the world as Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man. It would be remarkable for even one specific prophecy to come to pass in the life of any man. But the prophecies concerning Jesus are not only specific, but sundry. One writer counted thirty-three prophecies coming to pass in the life of Jesus in one single day. God has made it easy to notice who it is that he sent into the world to save sinners from their just deserts. Elijah and Elisha raised the dead through the power of God; Jesus was the power of God who raised the dead. Unlike any man born in history, he had power over his own life. “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father” (John 10.18.) He was subject to the Father, but had the prerogative of God, for he was and is, God the Son. Now he is the authority in heaven who will judge the quick and the dead on earth.
Jesus was more than a teacher. He was more than a prophet. He was more, and is more, than man has ever been and that man can ever be. He did not miss the mark; he came to earth to obey the law of God, and fully and flawlessly did so. For the sins of man he died on the cross. The way of eternal life is through trust in what he did for sinful man. What did he do over and above the miracles that authenticated his ministry? He obeyed God’s law to the letter; and he died the death that man deserved for breaking that same law. This was satisfying to God; but that satisfaction does nothing for a sinner unless he puts his trust in Jesus. To benefit, through faith, from what Jesus has done, is the only way to heaven. To want another way to heaven is an insult to the holiness, mercy, and wisdom of the Triune God. Refusing to be saved in God’s way leaves the sinner open to God’s justice and wrath. Justification is necessary, and can only be obtained through faith in Jesus’ name; no man who rejects the gift of God through Jesus Christ can be justified.
But either sinners want to work up to heaven instead of get pulled up by free grace through faith, or they want to get eternal life through someone other than Jesus Christ the Lord, the Mediator of grace. When sinners pray to Mary, they rely on their own prayers as much as they do on Mary, do they not? Neither prayers nor Mary can save. Only Jesus can. Some sinners are offended that God the Father would accept the sacrifice of his Son as the deed to satisfy his wrath. But while the Bible says that Jesus suffered the wrath of God, it also says that he laid his own life down in order to do it. What sinners are put off by is not the treatment of Jesus by the Father, though; that is their excuse. They are put off by the repentance that the Bible requires. If going to heaven through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for sin comes at the cost of repenting first, that is too uncomfortable for them to contemplate. It is due to the corrupted nature of a sinner that he refuses eternal life so he can go on sinning. But how long can he sin for? These are not the days of Methuselah—therefore, how long? Can a sinner sin for seventy or eighty years? He can’t do it for much longer than that. What is eighty years compared with eternity? Why enjoy sinning for less than a century if it means being punished for an eternity of centuries because of it? The average sinner would rather receive the wages of sin than repent; that is, he would rather keep his sentence of death leading to hell than receive eternal life if the reception of this life means that he must repent first. Since the offer of eternal life is extended, and since this present life leads directly to damnation, there is nothing more urgent than to receive the gift of eternal life. This present life is uncertain; the offer of life eternal is temporary, and is withdrawn at the moment of death. The reception of eternal life comes with one condition. It must be received through Jesus Christ, which means: by faith in his name, which faith implies: the repenting that Jesus preached.
Some sinners claim to reject the offer of salvation because Christians do bad things. So often this is nothing more than an excuse as well. Even if sinners are sincere in this concern, and even if bad things are done by Christians, or have been done, in the name of Christ, that does not mean that the salvation that God provides through Christ is a lie. Many cruel deeds have been done in the name of Jesus Christ. But is it right to hate the way of salvation because counterfeit faiths exist? Numerous churches and masses of professing Christians have made a mockery of the name that is above every name. But this fact does not nullify who Jesus is, the good that he did on earth, the merit of his death, his power to save, or the certainty of his promises. Jesus is not responsible for the misconduct of persons who pretend to follow him. He is not guilty of the misdeeds that are committed in his name; in fact, he died for the misdeeds of others. He must be evaluated according to his own person and record, which are equally blameless. Can it be wise for a sinner to let all the infamy that has been done in Jesus’ name keep him from obtaining the gift of eternal life from God? God the Father has chosen Jesus Christ alone for sinners to be saved by, regardless of Roman Catholic Inquisitions, Salem Witch Trials, cultic churches, and ministers getting caught with prostitutes in cheap motels. It is right to criticize false Christianity. But it is dumb to reject salvation through Christ because of all the wicked deeds that have been done in his name. Do we throw our money out because counterfeit bills exist? How much less ought we to throw away the pearl of great price (the way of salvation through Jesus Christ the Lord) because some false professors wear fake gems?
Obdurate sinners will be denied heaven no matter what their excuse is for rejecting the offers of grace. There is no way to heaven by going around Jesus. He cannot be gotten around. He is all-powerful and omnipresent; he stands in the way because he is the Way. There are no other futures for a man to come to than eternal life and everlasting death. His destiny must be one or the other. Jesus himself endorses both of these ends, and only these, in his closing Revelation to John the apostle, right near where he declares himself as the beginning and end: “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22.13.) One end will terminate thus: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still” (verse 11.) This is one future. The other end will be: “he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” This is the other future. Who are the righteous that are spoken of in this last verse? These are the “blessed…that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life” (verse 14.) The ‘blessed’ are not saved by doing what is right; they do what is right because they are saved. Their lives have been cleaned up; this is why they live clean lives; this is why some of them have been called Puritans.
What do sinners do after they sin? They clean up; or they at least prefer to be clean than dirty. What would it be like to be left filthy forever? Is a dirty destiny to be desired more than a holy one? Holiness is indeed unapproachable. It makes us uncomfortable. It made saints like the prophet Isaiah and the apostle John exclaim and tremble. But once the saints are fully redeemed at the general resurrection of the dead, holiness will attract them more, even by an infinite measure, than the grossest lusts allure the most debauched persons right now. It may be that sinners will long for their sins even from hell. But whether they will long for them or else loathe them, it is certain that they will not be able to enjoy them. They will see, from their place in the abode of the damned, how happy the saints are in the city of God. “The wicked in hell will be sensible how the righteous in heaven enjoy the favor of God” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, p. 215.) Better to be slowly starved to death while having to look at people feasting than to be conscious that others are delighted forever while we are eternally miserable. The Lord Jesus says that ‘everlasting fire’ was ‘prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Matthew 25.41.) Yet he says that this is where unsaved sinners must go. To have to go where even Satan and his fellow demons must go must be a worse outcome and destiny than the best writers of horror have been able to imagine. The only way to a better future is through Jesus Christ, who went through hell on the cross to save all sinners who are willing to repent.
That person is rare today whose impression of sin, death, Jesus, faith, and the afterlife even marginally agrees with the Bible’s revelation of the same. There are many things that we can afford to be wrong about. But subjects that the future of our soul swivels on are not things that we can afford to misapprehend. The wages, or payment, for sin is death; there is no righteousness, outside of Christ, to cancel that payment; this is why death outside of faith in Christ must be everlasting. We have sin; we are sinful; God will not dwell with sinners. Sins must be turned from, and they must be seen by God as either covered or cleansed by Christ (depending on which figure of speech one prefers to use.) Sinners who won’t repent will be shut out of heaven because nothing unholy is permitted entry there. Life on earth is our probation. If our probation fails, we are undone forever; there is no purgatory to make up for a botched probation. The future of man is an ever-dying existence in unquenchable fire. We have seen people in the process of dying; imagine this process going on without end. Hell and the lake of fire are worse than that. Through faith in Christ the future can be better, even by infinity, than what heaven can be imagined to be. Happiness in heaven is proportionate to the misery of hell. One future is as high and heavenly as the other is bottomless and hellish. The whole creation groans and travails right now (Romans 8.22), that is, until it gives birth to something new. The entire cosmos will be renovated on the basis of Christ’s redemption. The saints of God will enjoy the full scope of God’s creation, from the Milky Way to the Pleiades and beyond.
“To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth on him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10.43.) When the apostle Peter uttered this, “the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word” (verse 44.) The truth of verse 43 has, therefore, been certified from heaven. Jesus Christ is the Saviour of sinners from their sins, just as the angel sent to Joseph said (Matthew 1.21.) Look at all the witnesses in these few verses: ‘all the prophets,’ Luke (the author of the book of Acts), Peter, the angel, Joseph, Matthew, and the Holy Spirit. Even more witnesses could be called forth to testify that Jesus is the Saviour that sinners need. Who but stiff-necked sinners determined to go their own way would demand more? It will be—it must be—no future but conflagrations for sinners who ‘pull away the shoulder’ (Zechariah 7.11.) Warnings in Scripture can be shrugged off here and now; not so there and then.
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