All-Sufficient Merit

Many times, we achieve things by our merit: we may earn a promotion or position because of our qualifications, or we might deserve respect and recognition in some circles because of our accomplishments. But what do we bring to the table when it comes to our salvation?

That’s the question we’re answering when we sing “All-Sufficient Merit,” a modern hymn that we’ve sung together in both services the last couple months. This song is saturated with Scripture, and those first words may sound familiar - we sing them every Advent in the last verse of “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” by Charles Wesley. With all songs we sing when we’re gathered, we sing to the Lord with our hearts and our minds; so what are we singing in this song, and why?

Two thousand years ago, God “made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus – the perfect, spotless Lamb of God, the only One who could ever reach heaven on His own merit – became the once-for-all-time sacrifice to defeat our sin on the cross. It was nothing we could earn, but by God’s mercy, “for by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

This is why we sing of the all-sufficient merit of Jesus Christ. If we follow Him as Lord, we are saved – not by anything we can do, but by the sovereign grace of God through the atoning work of our Savior. And now when God looks on us as His redeemed, He doesn’t see our sin, but instead He sees the righteousness, the merit, given to us through the blood of Jesus. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!