You Must Look To Christ Alone!

Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation - Luke 2:28-30
Here we see a physical expression of a spiritual truth. As Simeon took up Christ in his arms and gazed upon him, so also must we lay hold of Christ and look to him and him alone for our salvation - as it were - through our eyes of faith.

I remember when I was desperately searching for the answer to the question echoed in Acts 16 by the Jailer at Philippi - What must I do to be saved?

Unlike Simeon, who set his eyes solely upon the Saviour, I thought surely there are a great many things I must do to present myself acceptable to the Lord. I tried to satisfy the laws requirements. I tried to increase in virtue and good character. I tried to present myself acceptable before a just and holy God. I tried, as Charles Finney says, “to build dams of sand across the current of my own corruption”. Just when I thought I’d stopped up one vile stream, the dam wall would burst and greater river of sin would spill forth. I would cry out to God for help - for help to overcome this one sin or another so that I might be saved. And there would be no answer. I was trying to save myself by keeping the righteous requirements of the law of God!

But the law of God can do only one thing. Kill a fallen man! Condemn him to die! And slowly but surely, like a man hanging on the cross with his life draining away, I found myself nailed to the rigid, inflexible law of God slowly dying to self - all hope and confidence in my flesh bleeding out and draining away.

I can’t tall you how many times I went to services where they would have an alter call, and go forward and say the “sinners prayer” as it is commonly called. Unlike Simeon who’s hope and confidence were in the Lord, I put my hope and confidence in going forward, in saying the sinners prayer, in the sincerity of how I prayed, in the plea bargains I would make with God, in the preacher preaching, in my many tears… I looked to so many things to save me - but no one ever told me to look to Christ! I never looked to Christ!

It is vitally important that this point is understood! You must look to Christ and Christ alone for salvation! He is the only one who can save you, and it is only through faith (a complete dependence upon, a complete trust) in Christ that you will be saved!