Christ is Enough

Romans 3

²⁷ Where, then, is boasting?  It is excluded.  Because of what law?  The law that requires works?  No, because of the law that requires faith.  ²⁸ For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.  ²⁹ Or is God the God of Jews only?  Is he not the God of Gentiles too?  Yes, of Gentiles too, ³⁰ since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.  ³¹ Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith?  Not at all!  Rather, we uphold the law.

In Christ alone, my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm

What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand

This is where the song, In Christ Alone, begins.  Reminding us that it is not about what we have done, not about who we are on our own, not about what we have to offer.  Our hope is in Jesus.  I have wondered if the writers of the song had seen that Catechism Q&A 1, I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.  Or maybe seen the Belgic Confession Article 22.

Therefore,
to say that Christ is not enough
but that something else is needed as well
is a most enormous blasphemy against God—

for it then would follow
that Jesus Christ is only half a Saviour.

And therefore we justly say with Paul
that we are justified “by faith alone”
or “by faith apart from works.”

Likely they have not seen our statements of faith.  But they have seen this text from Paul in Romans.  The place where we also get our statements of faith.  Seeing that God is not requiring us to get everything right.  He is expecting us to receive faith and reconciliation with him through the work of Christ, connected by the work of the Spirit giving us the faith to believe.  It brings us to a place of being with God.  Not focused on our doing.  Being with God.  And our being with God is not because of us, it is because of what God does, what he has done, and what he declares about us.  His declaration to us is that we belong to him.  And he holds us as his in his faithfulness.