The subtlety of Satan is such that there are those in our day who so vehemently stress and emphasize Christ’s imputed righteousness as the sinner’s only ground of justification before God, that they fail to preach CHRIST HIMSELF who is our righteousness, CHRIST, “who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” Consequently, they may be leading men and women to trust in a system of theology, rather than in CHRIST, who is the sum and substance of all theology.
We worship that gloriously unique God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Mary. He is our Sacrifice. He is the very sum and substance of our theology, that divine truth we know and love. What we call “Calvinism” or “The Doctrines of Grace” are embodied in Him. One may be familiar with those doctrines and not know Him, but one cannot know Him and have a lasting problem with those doctrines, because . . . they emanate from Him, being of the very essence of His glorious Person and Work. True faith (the gift of God wrought through His Word, Ephesians 2:810; Romans 10:17) cannot conceive of Him as being anything less than absolutely sovereign, nor of His work, for and in the sinner, as being anything other than absolutely free and totally effectual. Thus, praise His Name! He is a real and sure hope for real, helpless, “dead dog” sinners!
Jesus Christ, in the totality of His glorious person and His efficacious work, is the sum and substance of all that we hold dearest, and of all that we are and have in our relationship with the Father.
-Maurice Montgomery
