* By Faith Alone & In Christ Alone — Romans 1:16–17
* Introduction
Under the title “Sola Fide and Solus Christus,” I will deliver the third message of our fall revival. In this fall revival, we are learning the core declarations of the Reformation under the theme “Return to the essence of faith.” The key is this: when we trace our faith back to its source, we find a biblically firm and historically grounded root. In other words, our church was not suddenly established in this age; we are proud heirs of the Reformation.
Our root begins with “Scripture Alone.” When the church drifted away from God’s truth, the Reformers restored it by the Word of God alone. As they studied Scripture, they discovered that human salvation is entirely accomplished by God’s grace, and therefore believers can only praise Him with humble hearts before His presence. Tonight, we will reflect on what is perhaps the very heart of the Reformation—Faith Alone and Christ Alone—so that our faith may be strengthened and made firm.
* Luther’s Personal Experience
Perhaps you remember that on the first night of this revival, I briefly introduced Martin Luther. Luther originally majored in law but later decided to become a priest. Now, think about it—what caused such a drastic change in his life? It happened while he was returning home after finishing his law studies. As he was approaching his village, a violent storm broke out, and lightning struck near him.
Imagine how terrifying it must have been—rain pouring down, thunder crashing, and lightning flashing right beside him. Shocked, Luther fell to the ground, trembling in fear, and barely managed to stand again. Then, in desperation, he cried out to Saint Anne, who was revered as a patron saint at that time, saying, “Saint Anne, help me! I will become a monk!” That very moment became the decisive turning point that led Luther to enter the monastery.
* Overcoming the Fear of Death
From this event, we can see that there was already a deep fear of death in Luther’s heart. Yet this fear was not unique to him; it was shared by nearly everyone living in that era. You may have heard of the Black Death, one of the most devastating plagues in human history. About a hundred years before Luther was born, the plague had swept across Europe, killing almost forty percent of the population. Even after that, it reappeared intermittently, constantly reminding people of the terror of death.
In addition, Europe in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—the period when Luther lived—was filled with political and economic upheaval, which made people anxious about death and judgment. Against this background, the dramatic lightning incident helped Luther realize something vital about himself: though he claimed to have faith, he was not at all ready to face death. Thus he resolved to enter a monastery, believing that through a life of devotion he might finally earn God’s approval.
* The Middle Ages and Luther’s Limitation
Why, then, did Luther choose to enter the monastery? It was because people in the Middle Ages believed that withdrawing from the world and living an isolated, religious life in a monastery was the best way to draw near to God. Monks were regarded as those who would receive the highest reward in heaven.
In that context, imagine Luther entering the monastery. He was a man with an exceptionally sensitive conscience, deeply honest before God about his sin. Therefore, he devoted himself to monastic life with such intensity that it began to harm his health. He believed that if he lived with enough discipline and religious zeal, God would eventually show him favor.
* How Much Is Enough?
However, a serious problem began to arise in Luther’s heart. He started to question: How much repentance, how much discipline, and how much effort are enough for God to accept me? At first, Luther believed that if he confessed his sins diligently and practiced self-denial, he would receive complete forgiveness. But soon he realized that his sins were countless—far too many to confess one by one.
In time, he came to understand that no matter how earnestly he examined himself, he was far more sinful than he had ever imagined. The more he sought to repent, the more aware he became of his own depravity. As a result, his heart grew weary and bitter. Without realizing it, Luther began to resent God, thinking of Him as a cruel judge who demanded perfection from a helpless sinner.
Moreover, the official teaching of the church in those days made things even worse. The church taught that salvation required not only grace but also one’s own good works added to that grace. For Luther, this left no hope—only despair. He concluded that no matter how hard he tried, he could never accumulate enough merit to be saved, and he sank deeper into discouragement.
* The Righteousness of God
Then how did Luther find a breakthrough in this dark and hopeless situation? After becoming a monk, he was later ordained as a priest, earned a doctorate, and began to serve as a professor of biblical studies. As he systematically studied and taught Scripture, he finally began to uncover the answer to the problem that had tormented him for so long.
In particular, while lecturing on the Book of Romans, Luther found the key in today’s text: “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Romans 1:17, ESV). The crucial question was this—what does “the righteousness of God” mean?
In his day, most people understood that phrase to refer to God’s righteous character in judgment—that God, as the just Judge, reveals His righteousness by punishing sinners. In other words, they saw it as the terrifying standard of divine justice that condemned humanity.
* God Gives Us Righteousness as a Gift
But as Luther meditated on this verse, he came to a completely different understanding. He realized that the righteousness of God is not the righteousness by which God judges, but the righteousness by which God makes us righteous when we believe in Him—it is a passive righteousness given to us by grace. In other words, God is so merciful that He grants His own righteousness as a gift to those who believe.
Furthermore, Luther recognized that the phrase “The righteous shall live by faith” originates from the prophet Habakkuk in the Old Testament. Through this discovery, he saw that the Old and New Testaments are connected by one central truth: salvation comes through faith—trusting in God alone.
In his commentary on Romans, Luther wrote, “The righteousness of God is the cause of our salvation. It is not the righteousness by which God Himself is righteous, but the righteousness by which He declares us righteous through faith in the gospel. It is called the righteousness of God in contrast to the righteousness of man, which comes from works.”
* We Go Through the Same Process
From this, we clearly see that Luther’s personal journey—his struggle, his discovery, and his transformation—is the very path that every believer must also walk. How do most people today live? Many no longer see sin as sin. When they think of God, they often imagine Him as a kind, gentle grandfather next door. People have set their own low standard for God, and because their moral standards are also low, they hardly ever think about His holiness.
Yet the Bible clearly tells us that God is not as we imagine. Even when we do not sense our sin, He searches the deepest parts of our hearts. As Leviticus 11:45 says, “For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (ESV).
God has declared that He is holy, righteous, and perfect—without even the slightest flaw—and He demands that same holiness from us. Therefore, when we stand honestly before Him, we must confess that we are sinners and cannot call ourselves righteous. Then comes the question: how can a sinner stand righteous before a holy God? Scripture tells us there are only two possible answers.
* Losing Speech Before God
How did the medieval church answer that question? It taught that people must perform good works, confess their sins to a priest, or purchase indulgences to gain forgiveness. Yet even those who followed all these rules still could not be sure that their sins were forgiven, and so they lived in constant fear and anxiety before death.
When we read Scripture carefully, we realize that such fear was inevitable. The Bible clearly teaches that the more a person tries to approach God through his own good works, the more he will realize his own misery. Romans 3:19 says, “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (ESV).
The law here represents all the commands of God revealed in Scripture—indeed, all moral standards given to humanity. What does this mean? When a person stands before the law of God with honesty, he becomes speechless. The more we try to obey God’s commandments, the more we see how completely corrupted we are.
To be totally depraved means that our very souls are so damaged by sin that it is impossible for us to perfectly keep God’s Word. James 2:10–11 also declares, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.”
In other words, even if we manage to keep one commandment throughout our whole lives, if we fail to keep all of them, we cannot be called righteous. We stand before the judgment seat of God with nothing to say, completely silenced by the weight of our guilt.
* Jesus Is Perfectly Righteous
So then, how does God work for people like us who are utterly incapable of keeping His law? What the medieval church failed to teach was that there is another way—a way that God Himself has provided apart from the law and human merit. Romans 3:21–22 declares, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction” (ESV).
The crucial point here is this: Jesus Christ Himself is the righteousness of God. What does this mean? God the Father sent His Son into the world, taking on full humanity so that He might live in perfect obedience in our place. During His earthly life, Jesus never once broke any of God’s commands. He fulfilled every demand of the law with complete perfection.
And ultimately, He obeyed His Father’s will even to the point of death—suffering on the cross and being crucified in pain and shame. Therefore, Jesus became the only person in all of human history who was entirely without sin—the one and only perfectly righteous man.
* Jesus Becomes Our Righteousness
Now think about this: what does such perfect righteousness have to do with us? Scripture tells us that this same Jesus Christ, the only righteous One, has become our righteousness. In other words, He stands in our place as sinners so that we may be counted righteous in Him.
Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (ESV). This verse means that the sinless Christ was treated as if He were sin itself, bearing our guilt and punishment, so that through Him we might be regarded as righteous before God.
In the end, the Bible makes it unmistakably clear: only Jesus is perfect and righteous, yet He willingly became our righteousness. He took what was ours—sin—and gave us what was His—righteousness. That is the heart of the gospel.
* How Do We Receive That Righteousness?
Then we must ask, how can this righteousness of Jesus Christ truly become ours? The answer is simple yet profound: by faith alone. Romans 3:22 says, “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction” (ESV). Through faith—and faith alone—we receive the righteousness of Christ.
This truth is the foundation of the gospel. Through the long history of the church, we see two entirely different ways of understanding salvation. One depends on human effort—trying to earn God’s favor by good works, just as Luther once did in the monastery, and as countless people around the world still do today. The other way, taught by Scripture, is to confess that we can never be accepted by God on our own and to be justified by faith in Jesus Christ alone.
* What Is Faith?
At this point, we need to pause and consider what faith really means. Many people misunderstand faith, thinking of it as something they do—as if believing were another kind of work. They say, “I believed, and that’s why I was saved,” as though faith were a human achievement.
But the faith described in Scripture is the exact opposite. Faith is not an action we perform to earn something; it is the open hand that simply receives what God has already accomplished for us. In contrast to works—which strive to obtain something—faith accepts with trust what God has freely given.
In other words, faith means acknowledging and trusting in what God has already done for us through Jesus Christ. That is why Scripture repeatedly says, “by faith.” This phrase does not mean that faith itself has power, but rather that faith is the means—the channel—through which we receive God’s grace.
What truly matters, then, is not the strength of our faith but the object of our faith—Jesus Christ, who has become our righteousness.
* The Great Exchange
Another crucial truth is that when we believe in Jesus Christ, something extraordinary happens within us—a spiritual exchange takes place. Second Corinthians 5:21 declares, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (ESV).
What does this mean? God placed all our sins upon Jesus, making Him bear the punishment that we deserved. At the same time, God transferred Jesus’ perfect righteousness to us, crediting it to our account as though it were our own. In this divine exchange, Christ took our sin, and we received His righteousness.
Because of this, when God looks at us, He no longer sees guilty sinners but those clothed in the perfect righteousness of His Son. And this happens not because of anything we do—it is entirely God’s work. Even though we remain sinners in our nature, God now regards us as if we had never sinned and as if we had obeyed His law perfectly.
This is what the Reformers called justification—being declared righteous before God by faith alone, through Christ alone.
* Why Is Christ Alone So Important?
Then think about this: why is Christ alone so important to us who live in this age?A long time ago, one church member came to visit the church. She was not a member of the church I served, but she came to seek spiritual counseling. She said to me,“Pastor, I came because I have one thing that really troubles me. In my church, there are several pastors. One pastor teaches that we are saved by grace alone. But another pastor teaches that we must receive the gift of tongues to be saved. I really don’t know which one is right.”
She asked me this question with great seriousness. I still cannot forget the look on her face, because there was sadness in it. She truly wanted to understand the matter of salvation and had a sincere desire to enter heaven. But the more she listened to the sermons, the more confused she became. Some said we are saved by grace alone, but others made it seem like there were additional conditions.
* We Must Have a Biblical Faith
What we must remember is that this was exactly what made Luther angry. It is certainly true according to the Bible that we are saved by faith, but the church at that time did not teach it. Because of that, the believers were controlled by the priests. They believed that their destiny depended on the priests and the pope. They thought they had to go and confess their sins to the priests and that they had to buy indulgences sold by the church.
At that time, the church officially excommunicated Luther. The Catholic priests burned every piece of Luther’s writing they could find. Then we must ask, is the Catholic Church any different today? The answer is no—it still holds the same position. They also say that we must believe in Jesus Christ, but they do not teach it in the biblical way. The same goes for their doctrine of salvation. They claim that we must complete our salvation throughout our whole lifetime. In other words, they insist that we must continually build up our merit through good works to be saved in the end.
So, on the outside, Protestantism and Catholicism may seem similar, but what they believe inside is completely different. And this is not just a matter of being Catholic or Protestant—it is a matter of whether we truly have biblical faith in our salvation, or whether we merely believe according to our own thoughts and desires.
* People Without Assurance of Salvation
A long time ago, I attended the funeral service of a church member’s relative. The deceased was a Catholic. It was my first time attending a Catholic funeral. From the viewpoint of a Protestant pastor, that service left a deep impression on me. The priest led the ceremony very politely, and incense—which we normally do not use in Protestant services—was burned throughout. The funeral lasted much longer than I expected.
But what struck me most as a Protestant pastor was this: during the entire service, the priest never once said with confidence that the deceased had gone to heaven. He only kept repeating prayers like, “Saint so-and-so, please allow this person to enter heaven.” At first, I thought he would mention it just once or twice, but he kept repeating it again and again until the end of the funeral.
As I listened, my heart felt heavy and sorrowful. Though the ceremony was solemn and beautifully conducted, there was no assurance—only repeated petitions to the saints. It made me realize once again how vast the difference is between believing in Jesus Christ biblically and believing in Him in a non-biblical way.
* Focus on the Book of Hebrews
In that same context, the Book of Hebrews gives us the clearest answer to the question of why Christ alone. Perhaps you, too, are someone who reads the Bible on your own. I went to church from a young age, but because I did not read the Bible personally, my faith remained very immature. When I look back, I can say that the turning point of my life came when, as a young adult, I began to read the Bible for myself.
The same was true for Luther. It was only when he began to read and study Scripture seriously that he finally came to understand the gospel correctly. In my own life, I was deeply moved when I read the Book of Hebrews. That is because I realized so clearly that the entire message of Hebrews reveals one central truth—only Jesus Christ.
As I speak with our church members, I feel more and more that nearly every spiritual question they have can be answered through the Book of Hebrews. It was the same for Luther. Through the Psalms, Romans, Galatians, and especially Hebrews, he came to understand the gospel more deeply. And as that understanding grew and was strengthened, he gained the unshakable truth that enabled him to reform a corrupt church.
* Jesus Who Came as a Man
Then how does the Book of Hebrews reveal Jesus Christ so excellently? Let us first look at Hebrews 1:1–2, which says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (ESV).
What does this mean? In the past, God revealed His will through the prophets and by various means, but in these last days, He has spoken to us through His Son. In other words, in the time we now live, we come to know God’s will only through Christ.
Then what did Christ do? Hebrews 2:14–15 tells us, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (ESV).
This passage shows us that Jesus became fully human, just like us. But why did He do so? The verse makes it clear—He became man to destroy the devil, the one who holds the power of death. From the beginning, the devil deceived mankind, and through him death entered the world. Yet Jesus came to conquer death and to defeat Satan through His resurrection.
Furthermore, Jesus came to set free all who live in fear of death. In Him, we find true freedom and deliverance.
* Jesus Who Makes Atonement in the Heavenly Sanctuary
Furthermore, Hebrews 9:11–12 says, “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (ESV).
This is truly an astonishing passage. What does it mean? Jesus Christ came as the High Priest—not one who enters an earthly tabernacle, but one who entered the heavenly sanctuary itself. And unlike the priests of the Old Testament, who offered the blood of animals again and again, Christ offered His own blood once for all to accomplish eternal redemption.
In other words, only Jesus is the true High Priest who atones for our sins, and only Jesus is the sacrifice who was offered for our forgiveness.
So we must ask: why do so many people today still live without assurance of forgiveness? Why do so many continue to live in fear of death? It is because they do not yet believe firmly in “Christ alone.” But Scripture continually testifies that we are saved only through Jesus Christ.
Because He is the glorious Son of God, the blood He shed for us carries infinite worth and power. Therefore, whoever believes that Jesus died for them will be fully forgiven by God.
* Jesus Who Helps Us
Furthermore, how does God now command us to live? Hebrews 10:19 and 22 say, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus... let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (ESV).
Which part of this passage touches your heart the most? As I meditated on this text, the phrase “let us draw near to God” deeply moved me. It means that we can approach God—not because of any priest, pastor, or saint standing between us, nor because of someone who prays on our behalf—but only through the power of the blood of Jesus Christ.
By believing and relying on Jesus, we can come boldly before God at any time.
Moreover, Hebrews 7:25 tells us, “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (ESV).
What does this mean? It means that Jesus Christ is not someone who helped us only once when we first believed. He is the One who lives forever, seated at the right hand of God, continually interceding for us, helping us, and ensuring our complete salvation.
* Draw Near Boldly
Therefore, as we reflect on the core of the Christian faith—Faith Alone and Christ Alone—the conclusion is this: “Draw near to God with boldness.” When the church lost the gospel and people were deceived into thinking that the pope, priests, and saints possessed divine authority, no one could approach God with confidence.
But through Luther and the Reformers, the truths of Faith Alone and Christ Alone were restored according to Scripture. As a result, every believer was granted unshakable boldness before God.
So I encourage you: rely on Jesus Christ alone and draw near to God with confidence in every moment of your life. Call upon our Father with all your heart. Ask boldly for every spiritual and material need you have, and live each day in the overflowing joy, courage, and peace that come from Him.
May all of you, beloved brothers and sisters, live in that boldness and blessing, in the name of our Lord.
