Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Charles Spurgeon
The Great Need for Christ
If a person doesn’t realize that their sins have separated them from a Holy God (Isaiah 59:2), then they won’t run to the cross for saving through the Savior’s work at Calvary. Until a person sees their need for the Savior, they won’t see the need for being forgiven and cleansed. A person must first realize that all they have earned is eternal death, but God extends the offer of eternal life in Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:23). The greatest need we have is to repent and trust in the Savior. We all have a great need for the Great Savior.
The Great Need for His Strength
Jesus once told the disciples that they could do nothing without Him (John 15:5). That’s a fact, and nothing doesn’t mean a little something. This explains why Paul wrote, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13), meaning we can do nothing outside of Christ in our own strength. What we do by sheer human effort is not enough because Christians are in a spiritual battle with a powerful enemy force; therefore, we need to “put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:11-12).
The Great Sufficiency of Christ
If all you have is Christ, then you have all you need. People around the world are martyred every day for their faith. They lose their job, their home, their family, and sometimes they lose their life, but they believe their sufficiency rests in Christ. Paul prayed three times to have his painful “thorn in the flesh,” whatever it was, taken away, but God answered him, “’My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor. 12:9). Paul learned the sufficiency of Christ in his greatest weakness.
The Greatness of Christ
We know that Jude was “a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James” (Jude 1:1), but Jude wrote that he was first of all a servant of Jesus Christ before he was his brother, showing the preeminence of Jesus’ divinity and as the fulfillment of the long-prophesied Messiah, which is why Jude gave praise “to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 1:25). Jesus is the turning point of human history because history is His-story!
Conclusion
Eventually, all people will believe in Jesus Christ, but for many it will be too late (Rev. 20:12-15). We must repent, humble ourselves before God, trust in Christ today, and voluntarily bow our knee. Every knee will bow one way or the other, but this word cannot be broken: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11).
