One Way Jesus - Really? Ok! How?

One Way - Jesus - Really? Ok! How?

The Christian claim is this: God can transform the world through people - people who are in a relationship with this heavenly Father. Jesus Christ is the only way to God the Father. Unless people come to God the Father through Jesus Christ, they cannot know forgiveness or find the reconciliation which is the starting point of knowing God.

How can any thinking person hold that view in today's multicultural society? Is it not simply intolerant narrow-minded parochialism?

Those making this extreme-sounding claim sometimes quote the Apostle Peter, who stood before a crowd and said

But more often, they will quote Jesus himself who very early on in his teaching said:

and later on Jesus said:

It seems a very exclusive and narrow way! Is God exclusive or narrow?

Interestingly, in the Old Testament, it is clear that God's heart was not just for his chosen people, the Jews, but also for all the nations around. Read the prophetic books of the Old Testament. That's what you'll see.

When Jesus came, he said:

God wants everyone to be saved, Peter said in his letter

A Muddle Of Beliefs

Some think that different religions are just the same basic spiritual feelings, set in different cultural contexts. But while people may consider that all religions lead to God, the objective evidence does not support this!

Will we give respect to a religion based on human sacrifice, or mass suicide as we would to, say, Zen Buddhism? Both Hitler and Jesus claimed to hear what God was saying. Do we give them equal treatment?

Animism, the oldest and most primitive religion in the world, still practiced widely in Africa, and Indonesia, and many other parts, is a religion based on keeping the evil spirits away from you. It makes no claim to bring you closer to God.

Confucianism doesn't even have the idea of a transcendent God - the Confucian goal is the removal of selfishness. No bad thing! but no road to a Father-God is ever claimed by a Confucianist.

The fundamentals of Christianity state that God is perfect and selfless, that man has chosen not to be, we have broken the relationship with Him and with each other.God's justice recognises that whenever we do wrong, there will be inevitable consequences. God's love sends Jesus, who not only carries those consequences for us, but also pours his life into us, and forgives us. We are set free from guilt and fear of death and punishment, and we are invited back into relationship with the Father God.

Buddhist's say that you don't even need to believe that God exist, that evil is an illusion. Buddhism says that our problem is not one of evil, but ignorance. We just don't know enough yet. If you ask a Buddhist whether this is the way to the Father God, you'll get a blank look in return.

Hinduism says that God is not a father but an impersonal force that lives throughout creation. So we are all gods in one sense, since Hinduism does not recognise the need of each man and woman to be forgiven and freed from the guilt and power of sin - it talks only of karmic balance, and fulfilment. They claim no way to come to Father God - but if you work hard, then you can become a kind of mini-god yourself.

Islam explicitly rejects Jesus Christ as the Son of God, dismisses the claim that Jesus Christ is the ultimate revelation of God. Islam replaces Jesus Christ as God's ultimate revelation, with Mohammed. Jesus never promoted the truth by violence. Mohammed did.

Judaism recognises that justice must be just. So there is a system and a long history of animal sacrifices within Judaism, illustrating two things - the transfer of the consequences of sin onto another, and the washing of ones life with the lifeblood of another. But while the metaphor is retained, the actual reality of that it pointed to, Jesus on the cross, is rejected.

But we have to understand that Jesus did not come to start a religion. He didn't come to start Christianity. He absolutely will not, at the end of time, say, "Ok, Christians on the right, everybody else on the left".

My Way, Your Way, The Way

If God loves us, and is trying to show himself to us, then surely this muddle of different beliefs cannot be the way?

And we say - no. It is not. Jesus Christ came into the world to be the one and only way.

The Bible's unique statement is that the death of Jesus is the only way we can be saved from the consequences of our wrong choices, and placed back into relationship with God.

So I put it bluntly to you that millions of men and women around the world are following a religion or an ethic which can never bring them to God. Because only through Jesus Christ can men and women be saved forever.

Now this conclusion seems harsh. But it's not. There is only one way to boil an egg. That's not harsh. It's just that necessarily, there is only one way.

So let's look closer - what do we mean by - 'through Jesus Christ'. What exactly does a man or woman have to believe. How can believing some apparently arbitrary fact make the difference between heaven and hell, when the end finally comes?

This most popular song sums up the human condition. We want to feel we've done it ourselves. We need to know we've pulled ourselves up by our bootlaces. I want to be the rags to riches success story. We want to be independent and capable. We have to have some pride in what we've done. And that is where the problem lies.

Because although men and women can do magnificent things, heroic things, loyal and lovely things, creative and sensitive things, however hard we try, we cannot ever work our way up to a perfect God in a perfect heaven.

The Heart Of The Matter

This is the heart of the matter. If your religion, whatever it is called, promises you that by trying hard, you can better yourself, until you reach karma, or nirvana, or heaven, or the next life, or whatever, if it is telling you to build your own ladder and then climb by your own efforts, it is hindering you rather than helping you.

(You may be able to appear to do quite well on that score, but maybe you were lucky enough to be born with a nice character! Tough on us folk, born scratchy and disagreeable!)

Only the good news of Jesus Christ plainly says that only when we give up, and admit to God, that we can never be good enough without His help, only then is there hope.

Indeed however hard I try, I seem to fail. The closer I look at my life, the clearer I see that so much of what I do is motivated by my own selfishness, and desire to be loved by others.

And yet deep within me, I do want to be good. And I do want to find the way to God and to heaven.

Every religion or creed (including those bits of Christianity) that says 'You can make it on your own' leads men and women further away from humility, and further into pride.

The fact is that we need God to pick us up, to freely forgive us, to bring us, through no merit of our own, into relationship with him. Not because he owes us. Not because we earned it. But because he wants to.

Abraham didn't know about Jesus Christ, but he knew that he couldn't be good enough for God, just by trying hard. So the Bible tells us he put his trust in God's forgiving nature. He accepted by faith God's promise to make him good.

And for every man or woman, whether a Animist in Africa, a Buddhist in Beijing, a Confucianist in Cardiff, for every individual of whatever religion (or none), there a moment of understanding of something absolutely perfect and good, and along with that, a sense of unworthiness.

In that moment, each individual can either let pride squash that fleeting feeling, fall back onto self-sufficiency, and insist on doing it their way. Or that individual can humble herself and say 'I don't know much about you, but I sense that I am not what I should be, or what I could be. Please, somehow, make me that. I can only rely on you.'

And That Is Enough.

Enough to bring that man or woman, be they Muslim, or Tao, or Hindu, or whatever, into the area of God's grace. How do I know that - well it happened to Abraham - he wasn't a Christian! He never went to church.

This may seem small, but that single decision to turn away from self-sufficiency, and to turn towards God in childlike dependence, is a fundamental shift in attitude.

It is that shift that ultimately will deliver that person into the Father's presence.

It's not exclusive or arbitrary or unfair. This way of Jesus Christ is open to all, whether or not they have ever heard his name.

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