We talk all the time about Christ dying for our sins. As we should! May we never stop proclaiming his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection! But it’s quite easy to gloss over his active obedience, his perfect life. There is truly no hope without it.

It’s commonly understood among Protestants that we’re not saved by our works. This is correct! But have we considered our salvation does hinge on the works of someone else?

We are saved by works—just not ours. We’re saved by Christ’s work on our behalf. His righteous life, substitutionary death, victorious resurrection, and glorious intercession—that is the basis of our salvation.

We are saved by grace through faith. God saves us by his sovereign grace as we believe in the perfect work of Jesus Christ for sinners. That is unique, different, and counterintuitive to every other major world religion. Christianity is fundamentally a religion of grace for sinners, not works.

Yes, someone had to do the work—there was just no way we humans were going to pull that off. The Bible makes it clear that “no one does good, no not one” (Rom. 3:10). We had to rely on God himself to do the work for us. There was no meeting halfway. It’s not as if God did 99% of the salvific work and we did 1%. As Jonathon Edwards famously wrote, “The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.” Salvation—or, regeneration, specifically—is a monergistic work of God, meaning it’s wholly his work. We were completely passive in being made alive by God the Holy Spirit. We played no active role.

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