The crucial question

We come to a crucial question:

Q29.  How can we be saved?

A. Only by faith in Jesus Christ and in his substitutionary atoning death on the cross; 

so that even though we are guilty of having disobeyed God and are still inclined to all evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of our own but only by pure grace, imputes to us the perfect righteousness of Christ when we repent and believe in him.

This answer teaches us about ourselves, God and the way of salvation.  Let's look at those points in turn.

• What we learn about ourselves

We are guilty.  We have disobeyed God.  We are inclined to evil. To put that another way, we haven't a leg to stand on in the judgement.  We have no hope.  We have sinned and messed up, all on our own. We need to be saved.

• What we learn about God

He is gracious.  He does not treat us as we deserve.  He does not act according to what we have earned. He is generous.  He give us the perfect righteousness of Christ.    So when he looks at us, he does not see all our sin, he sees the perfection of Jesus Christ.

• What we learn about salvation

Jesus earned it, through his substitutionary atoning death on the cross.  That is a mouthful, but each of those words matter. Jesus died as a substitute.  He didn't do anything that deserved death.  He stood in the place of another.  He stood in my place.  It was that personal. Jesus death is atoning.   Death is the punishment for sin, but Jesus didn't simply die.  He didn't simply take that physical pain; the torture of the cross.  His death was atoning.  He took on the spiritual pain, of the wrath of God.  He was separated from the love of his Father for a time.  His death on the cross, was atoning. We must repent and believe.  Doing so, says something about ourselves and something about Jesus.  In repentance we say - we have done wrong, we have sinned, our hearts are inclined to evil.  We say sorry.  We choose to stop.  We turn around. In believing - we say, Jesus truly paid it all.  I am looking to him, as my Saviour.