Big Questions … Living Answers
"Is Jesus Really the Only Way? Isn't That Offensive?"
The
- On the Red Sea Crossing - Moses leading the
Israelites out of bondage in
"Wet Lands Trampled in Labor Strike" (Pursuing
Environmentalists Killed)
- On David's Defeat Of Goliath:
"Hate Crime Kills Beloved Champion" (Psychologists Call For
Stricter Rock Launching Control Laws)
- On the birth of Christ:
"Hotels Full, Animals Left Homeless To Make Room For Tourists"
(Animal Rights Activists Enraged By Insensitive Couple)
It's an interesting age we live in. The Gospel of peace and hope is often now portrayed as bigoted, narrow minded, even hate speech when shared. The Christian faith has been accused and in most minds convicted of the most serious crime of our age - intolerance. The accusation is leveled not primarily because of the stand on particular moral issues (though those are considered horrible enough) but because of its claim to know the truth -THE truth - because of it's claim that Jesus is the ONLY way to God - to heaven.
Remember Charles Templeton, the former preaching partner of Billy Graham in the 1940's I referred to last week? Long after his decision to reject his faith in Christ he wrote this: "It is an insufferable position for the bible to claim that besides Jesus there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. Christians are a small minority in the world. Approximately four out of every five people on the face of the earth believe in gods other than the Christian God. The more than five billion people who live on earth revere or worship more than three hundred gods. . . Are we to believe that only Christians are right?"
I am reminded of when the Pope visited
But the most recent attack was by Oprah Winfrey. In the past year, she has attacked Christianity several times on her show and on her webcast to millions with Echart Toll. Here is a sample of an exchange with her audience on her show recently.
You Tube -
Jesus' own words
Matthew 7:13-14 - "You can enter
God's kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is
broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose the easy way. But the
gateway to life is small, and the road is narrow, and only a few ever find
it."
John 3:3 -"Jesus
replied, ‘I assure you, unless you are born again, you can never see the
John 14:6 - Jesus said, "I
am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father
except through Me."
The apostles understood Jesus clearly - Acts 4:12 - "There is salvation in no one
else! There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on
to save them."
Even in the early church, in the Greek culture, Christians were martyred not because they believed in God or in Jesus, but because they believed He was the only God, that Jesus was the only way. There is much we have in common with the early church in this cultural climate.
So what do we make of this claim, this objection? Is Jesus the only way to salvation?
I. Jesus Brings Us
Truth
Well, let's consider for a moment the nature of truth itself. Truth, by nature, is exclusive. In other words, if something is true or it corresponds with reality, then what is contrary to it is false. Truth excludes its opposite. Jesus made truth claims that we just looked at. The question is are they true? Do they correspond with reality?
You see, the real issue is why should I believe that Jesus was telling the truth? On the one hand, you can say that the resurrection of Jesus established Him as being the Son of God. If that's true, then all other faith systems cannot be true, because they each assert something contrary to His claims. And the historical record concerning his resurrection is extremely compelling.
On the other hand, you can approach the issue by looking at four fundamental questions that every religion seeks to answer: Origin, meaning, morality and destiny. I believe that only Jesus provides answers that correspond to reality or truth.
How others fail:
Buddhism - Buddhism is technically nontheistic. It claims that there is no ultimate god. Yet it asserts a system of morality that is absolute. That is not coherent. From where does an absolute moral law come from if there is no god?
Hinduism - consider the idea of reincarnation. If every birth is a rebirth, and every life pays for the previous life, then what were you paying for in your first birth? incoherence. Even Ghandi admitted there was great incoherence in these faiths.
But in contrast, only Jesus provides answers to all four big questions in a way that is coherent, that corresponds with reality.
We are distinct from God, created by Him. This explains our origin. We were created in His image, so this accounts for our moral compass, reference point - that we humans actually experience. Morality is rooted in an eternal, holy, omnipotent God. Christianity says we have all rejected God's divine will, rebelled. It says that man has tried from the beginning to set himself up as the measure of all things. This rebellion corresponds to reality - our actual experience. Next, Christianity teaches that we find meaning in worship. The Bible teaches us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and then to love our neighbor as ourselves. Meaning is found outside ourselves, outside of selfishness. This corresponds with reality - with the human experience. Finally, the question of destiny is based upon the death and resurrection of Jesus. His death provided for our forgiveness and His resurrection proved He was the Son of God and that God accepted His sacrifice. That opened the door for those who trust in Him to be saved, to have a right relationship with God. That gives us hope in this life and in life everlasting. It corresponds with reality, with the human experience.
Now, some people say that you can find truth in all religions, and therefore, all religions are equally valid. After all, some say, all religions say basically the same thing, in just a different way. My answer to that is that you can find elements of truth in probably every religion, but that does not make their claims equally valid.
Remember the old poem about the blind men and the elephant? Each man could feel only a small part of the elephant and each one had a different perspective.
- To one man an elephant was like a tree.
- To another, it was like a snake.
- To another it was like a rock.
But the truth is that an elephant is not any one of these. An elephant is an elephant. And it takes someone who can see the whole picture to know that. Jesus was the One who gave us the big picture on God and our relationship with Him.
Jesus said to Philip, "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father"(John 14:9). Jesus does not just give us a bit of truth but The Truth. So while there may be aspects of truth elsewhere, the sum total of truth is in Jesus. He said, I am the way, the truth and the life. The gospel of John begins with this testimony of Jesus, "In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and He was God. He was in the beginning with God. . . grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ" (John 1:1,2,17)
And that brings up the next point. Jesus brought us truth, but He also brought us grace - something unique to Christianity.
II. Jesus Brings Us
Grace
A Comedian by the name of Quentin Crisp once said, "When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'" His humor is actually a sad analysis of the depth of sectarian strife in that land. The ugliness amongst Christians brings some people to say the world would be a much better place if we would stop arguing over doctrine and focus on living at peace with each other. John Lennon believed this and wrote the song “Imagine” partly to argue for a world without religion.
After all, there are moral Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians. So isn't how a person lives and treats his neighbor more important than what he believes about God? Well, how a person lives is very important. In fact, how a person lives is a reflection of what they believe. But this question assumes that morality, being good, is what life is all about.
You see, Jesus did not come into this world primarily to make bad people good. He said Himself in Luke 19:10 - "I, the Son of Man, have come to seek and to save those who are lost." This is in deep contrast to what Oprah Winfrey and Echart Toll are teaching. They explicitly teach that the death of Jesus is meaningless, and that Jesus came to show us how to be human the right way. But Jesus said he came into this world to make dead people alive - people who were dead to God alive to Him again. It is a Christian teaching - that no matter how well we live, we cannot live up to the standard of a perfect and holy God. All other religions miss this. The most important truth is not that we learn to be moral, but that we learn to know and accept the grace of God. If we get that, it is the strongest thing to compel us to be good. The love of Christ compels.
Romans 3:21-28 – “But
now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the
requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the
prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.
And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone
has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with
undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ
Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus
as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that
Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God
was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times
past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this
present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is
fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they
believe in Jesus. Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted
by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based
on faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the
law.”
People will often object, "Ghandi lived a more moral life than most Christians. Why should he be sent to hell just because he wasn't a follower of Jesus?" That's a tough question. It's tough because it's true that Ghandi was more virtuous than many Christians.
First of all, God does not send anyone to hell. A person chooses to respond to God or not to.
We know this - that anyone who makes it to heaven will be there because of the grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ - not because they were good. So if a person rejects God's grace offered in Jesus, is that person good or bad? What really makes a person good or bad?
In the Bible, there is a pattern that is followed. It
is obvious in the New Testament, but it is also present in the Old Testament.
The pattern is redemption, righteousness and worship. You see it for
instance in the Exodus. God freed His people and led them out of
And in Christ, that pattern is true. You cannot be righteous until you are redeemed. You cannot be good until God buys you back in Christ and makes you clean. Before redemption, all your "good" deeds are like filthy rags. God said in Isaiah 64:6 - "We are all infected and impure with sin. When we proudly display our righteous deeds, we find they are but filthy rags." You see, our problem is not with knowing what is right and wrong so much as it is with wanting to do right over wrong and being able to do right. Redemption gives us the "want to." If we were to try to be righteous or good on our own, we are essentially saying, "I don't need God for this."
So what about Ghandi or anyone else who rejected Christ but led a "good" life? Well, were they really good? By human standards perhaps - relatively speaking - yes. But they rejected their need for God's redemption, forgiveness.
This is hard for us humans. We have this sense of fairness we want satisfied. It's a classic objection. You hear it every time there is a prison conversion of a terrible criminal. We heard it when David Berkowitz - Son of Sam made a confession of faith. We heard it when Jeffrey Dahmer became a believer in prison. We heard it when Ted Bundy did the same. People everywhere said, "there's no way they are going to heaven." "Certainly God will save Ghandi before them." "If they are going to be in heaven, I don't want to be there." Or, "Where's the fairness in this?"
We want God to grade on a scale don't we? Because on a scale, I might look ok. I'm not a Hitler, or a Bundy, so I'm pretty good - right? Wrong. That would compromise God's holiness. God would have to ignore sin - our sin - if he did that. God isn't comparing us to other humans. He is comparing us to Himself. And we all fall woefully short. But He knows that, and He offers us redemption, and he offers us righteousness - both in Jesus. And then He calls us to worship Him - to be in His presence. He can make us good. He can make us what we cannot make ourselves. The symbol of Christianity is the cross, not the scales.
The question is not whether I am a Ted Bundy or a Ghandi. The question is not whether I am a Hitler or a Mother Theresa. The question is whether I have come to the realization that I, like everyone else, have fallen short of God's standard, and that therefore, apart from God's mercy and grace in Jesus I have no possibility of being with Him in heaven.
Ironically and sadly, if I have lived a life where I think I have been good enough to get to heaven, then people like Bundy and Dahmer have found the ultimate truth to which my own arrogance and pride have blinded me. That I need Jesus.
All other religions fail at this point. That we cannot be good without redemption.
Living Answer – Larry Strong
Conclusion:
But why, if Jesus is the truth, do so many people reject Him? If
Christianity is true, shouldn't it triumph in our world? Or to ask it a
different way, why is Buddhism or Hinduism so popular in
The Christian faith is an intolerant faith in some ways. It makes exclusive claims to truth. It is narrow. But if it is true, then Christ's message is the most loving and hopeful we will ever hear. Theologian R.C. Sproul once wrote, "Moses could mediate the Law. Mohammed could brandish a sword. Buddha could give good counsel. Confucius could offer wise sayings. But none of these men was qualified to offer an atonement for the sins of the world. Jesus alone is qualified."
Let me put it this way. Oprah Winfrey, along with millions of people, says “Jesus can’t possibly be the only way. That is absurd. All roads lead to God.” I say that is the incredibly arrogant belief and not Christian belief. Why? Oprah’s view presumes that God somehow owes us an unlimited number of ways to be right with Him and get to heaven. Now that is arrogant. Christianity says, “How amazing – that God would provide a way! We don’t deserve it, but God provided a way back to him, and that came at great cost to him. It cost him his only Son. What is amazing is that there is even one way to God!”