Before and After the Cross

You need a Savior. Always.

Before the cross God sent His prophets to tell people that Jesus was coming. The message was fact whether they believed it or not. These prophets said they had better get ready. They needed to respond in faith, which is a gift from God. These prophets didn't use the name Jesus, but names like Emmanuel, the Lord's Anointed, and other identifiers of God providing a way of salvation by grace through faith. Dripping with mercy and bounded by love, this salvation to be given would radically change one's relationship to and standing with God. It will make the dead live, the blind see, the deaf hear and the lame walk. A humanly impossible transaction would take place. God would do what man could not. Some responded in faith and others stood condemned by their unbelief.

After the Cross God sends His Church to proclaim a message of a coming Savior who will return to judge the world in righteousness. All who will believe will be accepted into the fellowship of the King. Their destiny drastically changed from hell-bent sinners to heaven-bound holy ones, whom God frees to love and serve Him as His representatives to a lost and dying world.

Before a person comes to faith in Christ they need the only Savior. Afterwards they need the only Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. For in Him we live and move and have our being. He is the Author and Perfector of our faith. He is the Leader and Sustainer of our faith. He is the Beginning and the End of our faith. He starts us on the road to heaven, and takes us there and is our sole sufficiency forever. Before the Cross the gospel was preached, and after the Cross the gospel is preached. It is an eternal gospel of the grace of God in Christ.You always need a Savior and that Savior is always the Lord Jesus Christ.The window of opportunity is only open while you live, but its effects are lasting. To say it is eternal means it has eternal ramifications, eternal sufficiency, eternal worth, eternal power as it works forever in those who are saved. Getting them saved, keeping them saved, bringing them into the glorious freedom and joy of the kingdom of God.

Misguided people continually look for functional saviors apart from Christ that actually bring death. Only Jesus gives life. He will not be mixed with anything to become more effective. He stands alone as all-sufficient Savior. The message is true whether you believe it or not. Reality has been revealed to the believing. The Cross is always our glory and our hope. Jesus is our only hope, our Savior, Lord and Friend forever. May God alone be praised.

Saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, revealed in God's Word alone, for God's glory alone.