"Don't settle for just any insurance when there's State Farm.” Perhaps you’ve seen this series of advertisements on television lately. One begins with QB Patrick Mahomes, sitting on a treatment table, nursing his sore muscles after the game, needing medical attention from an athletic trainer. Instead, in walks a different kind of trainer, the pop singer, Megan Trainor. The commercial uses humor to highlight that when it comes to insurance, you need an expert like State Farm, not just someone who shares a similar name. 

And so it is when it comes to our salvation. Not just any savior will do. 

This Advent season we’re reflecting on the ancient Christmas hymn found in Galatians 4:4-5, which forms the objective basis for the doctrine of justification by faith. These two verses tell us about the person and saving work of God in Christ. 

In the first line of our hymn, we saw that salvation was God’s idea, decided before the creation of the world, which He brought to fulfillment according to His perfect timing. God planned His saving work, and He worked His plan. 

The second line tells us what that plan was. God sent forth His very own Son. When the Bible calls Jesus the “Son of God,” it means that He is the Lord, the eternally existent Son, the second person of the Triune God. Like the angels announced to the shepherds, “For unto you is born this day a savior, who is the Christ, the LORD.” Therefore, when God sent forth His Son, He didn’t send a surrogate or a cheap replica. He came Himself.

The doctrine of justification by faith apart from works depends upon the identity of the One sent to save. The Eternal Son was the only one capable of accomplishing what we could not by our own effort. Only someone who is infinite God could bear the full penalty of sin for all humanity. Therefore, trust in Christ and Christ alone, the only one who can save.