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Answers Part 4: Is Jesus the Only Way to God?
June 22, 2014
Bo Weaver at The Bridge in Wilder, KY
Today in our Answers series we are addressing the question:
Is Jesus the only way to God?
While most people affirm the moral teachings of Christ, such as;
“love your neighbor as yourself,” “do unto others as you
would have them do unto you,” and the like.
Many are rankled by the exclusive claim that Jesus is the only
way to God.
In fact, not even all who call themselves Christians believe that
Jesus is the only way to God.
A study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public
Life found that 57 percent of so called evangelical American
Christians believe that many religions can lead to heaven,
a direct contradiction of the words of Jesus.
I believe one of the reasons many struggle with the idea of Jesus
being the only way to heaven is because we live in a pluralistic
society that values religious freedom.
Our constitution protects the rights of people to worship
according to the dictates of their own heart.
I was listening to an interview on the radio with a
Pakistani journalist who has spent time in the U.S.
She was asked; “What is the biggest difference between life
in Pakistan and life in the U.S.?”
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She said; “In the U.S. people are much more tolerant of
people of other religions.”
I’m grateful for the freedom of religion in this country.
I’m glad we are not told by our government who or how to
worship.
All religions in this country are guaranteed the same protection
under the law.
But equal protection under the law does not mean all
religions are equal in terms of truth.
I know that to some this sounds intolerant, or perhaps arrogant.
I know that it is the politically correct thing to affirm the
legitimacy of all religions and to see all religions as having a
piece of the puzzle of truth regarding faith.
Some like to cite the old fable that has been used down
through the centuries to illustrate their belief that all
religions have a valid piece of the puzzle.
As the story goes, four men blind from birth were led
to a room in which was kept an elephant.
They were each directed to a different part of the animal and
then asked to describe the elephant.
The first man felt the long tusk and declared that an
elephant is like a spear.
The second man felt the front leg of the beast and declared
an elephant to be like a tree.
The third placed his hand on the elephant’s mammoth
side and pronounced that an elephant is like a wall.
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The fourth man reached out his hand and took hold of the
elephant’s tail and said an elephant is like a brush.
The lesson by analogy, of course, is that the different religious
traditions of the world are all stumbling upon only one particular
aspect of ultimate reality.
Each view is right, though each view is incomplete in itself.
Only by taking all aspects of truth revealed in each faith can we
begin to have the complete picture of God.
This kind of thinking appeals to our pluralistic and p.c. obsessed
society.
We reason, “Aren’t all religions of the world fundamentally
the same, teaching a common ethic of the brotherhood of
man and the fatherhood of God?”
“Aren’t Christians just being narrow-minded when they
say Jesus is the only way to God?”
“Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we just accepted
all religious faith traditions as equally valid ways to God?”
That would be fine had not the founder of Christianity said;
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to
the Father except through Me.”
- John 14:6
If we are to reject the exclusive claims of Christ we then must
question every other thing Jesus said about God, about ethics,
about morality, about salvation.
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And what are we to make of this parable of the blind men
and the elephant?
Is it a valid analogy of the religions of the world?
Do all the religions have a part of the whole when it comes to
understanding how to have a relationship with God?
I like what one preacher said with regard to this story.
He said;
“It is a very clever parable but holds one truth that
I’m sure the author did not intend. Each one of these
men was blind and each was wrong.”
He goes on;
“Until God reveals Himself to us, we all grope around
in darkness vainly searching for some semblance of
truth. But, as long as we are blind, we remain in the
darkness and what seems true is complete error.”
You see, Christianity is a revealed religion, one in which the
Creator of the Universe came and disclosed Himself to man in the
person of Jesus.
Speaking of Jesus, John writes in John chapter 1.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
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And the light shines in the darkness…
- John 1:4-5
And in John chapter 8 and verse 12 Jesus said;
“I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall
not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
- John 8:12
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We no longer have to go about groping in the darkness in search
of truth.
Truth has come to us in the person of Jesus.
But of this notion that all religions are fundamentally the
same and only superficially different, let us consider a few
of the major world religions to see just how alike they are
- or are not.
 Buddhism
Whereas Christianity teaches that God is a personal being who
desires a relationship with mankind, Buddhism teaches that the
ideas of God or even personal identity are illusions.
In Buddhism salvation consists of freeing oneself from illusions of
selfhood, God, forgiveness and individual life hereafter by
detaching oneself from all desires.
In Buddhism the goal is to want nothing, desire nothing and
ultimately become nothing.
Such “salvation” comes only through an indeterminate number of
births, deaths and rebirths.
If that sounds similar to Hinduism it is because Gautama
Buddha was born a Hindu.
But Buddha rejected the teaching of the Vedas (religious
books of ancient India) and the caste system of Hinduism
before going out and starting a new religion that does not
even posit the notion of God.
 In Hinduism, on the other hand, there are some 330
million different gods that are venerated.
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For the Hindu, karma – the moral law of cause–and–effect
is a life defining concept.
According to the law of karma life carries its moral bills; sins of
past lives are paid for in the cyclical pattern of death and rebirth
until all dues are paid in full.
So, in Hinduism, one is paying in the present life for sins of
unknown past lives.
Hence, life is lived out paying back a debt that one cannot know
in total but that must be paid back in total.
Only after some unknown numbers of reincarnations can a person
hope at last to achieve salvation, called Moksha, which is
liberation from the soul and endless cycle of death and rebirth.
Illus. While perhaps not typical, I heard the following story
that illustrates how the issue of karma plays out in
Hinduism.
A man and woman from India met and fell in love and wanted to
get married.
Because they were from different castes, the parents from either
side would not approve of the marriage.
But they were in love and so married anyway.
After they were married the woman took a job in another city.
At first she would come home on the weekends, but in time the
weekend visits became less frequent.
The man appealed to his wife to quit her job and come back
home.
She refused.
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Suspecting that something was wrong, the man took the train to
the city where his wife was living.
When he got there she confessed that she had fallen in love with
another man.
The man was heartbroken.
After pleading with her to reconsider, the man finally accepted
that she was not coming home.
He said, “I have but one request.”
“Please let me lay my head on your lap like I used to do.”
The woman consented, but before the man laid his head on her
lap he excused himself to use the restroom.
When he returned he laid his head on his wife’s lap and in a few
minutes seemed to drift off to sleep.
Only he wasn’t asleep.
The man had taken powerful barbiturates and had in fact died.
Following this the woman was racked with guilt.
She couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about her poor husband.
She decided to go to an astrologer to see if he might be able to
provide some solution.
After doing an astrological reading based on the birthdates of
both she and her deceased husband, the astrologer told her that
in a former life her husband had raped her, also in a former life,
and that his death was the result of the law of karma.
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This was somehow to absolve this woman of guilt.
The law of karma, paying in your present life for sins committed
in a previous life.
The Bible, on the other hand says, “It is appointed unto man
once to die.”
And instead of paying for sin through an endless cycle of
deaths and rebirths, the Bible teaches that Jesus was
offered once for all a sacrifice for sin.
 In Hinduism you pay.
 In Buddhism you pay.
 In Islam you hope your good deeds outweigh your bad
deeds – and even then you can’t be sure of salvation.
 In Christianity someone has already paid for your sins, that
someone is Jesus Christ.
Or as Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 5:17, 20
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old
things have passed away; behold, all things have become
new.
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For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that
we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
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All religions are not the same.
The religions of the world are not all different aspects of the
whole.
There are major differences, major contradictions between the
different religions of the world.
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The law of non-contradiction states that two
contradictory statements cannot at the same time and
in the same sense both be true.
If Buddhism claims that there is no personal god and
Christianity claims that there is a personal God, both can’t be
right.
If Hinduism claims that salvation is achieved only through a
series of deaths and rebirths and Christianity says it is appointed
unto man once to die and that salvation is by grace through faith
in Jesus Christ, they can’t both be right.
If Islam states emphatically that Allah has no sons and the
Bible claims that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, according to
the law of non-contradiction they cannot both be right.
It may be politically correct to say all religions are the same, but
it defies both the laws of logic as well as the Bible to say that
they are.
Some like to say that it doesn’t matter what you believe,
so long as you are sincere in your belief.
You can believe sincerely that taking strychnine will cure
you of your cold.
But you will be sincerely dead.
The Bible says it does matter what you believe.
The Bible says that believing in Jesus we can be saved.
Of all the religions of the world, Christianity stands alone as
completely unique.
Let me tell you why.
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God is perfect.
Men and women are imperfect.
As a result, mankind can only create imperfect religions.
That means that all man-created religions are imperfect and have
common characteristics.
This makes the one religion created by God unique,
because it has characteristics only God could give it.
Such as:
 In Christianity salvation is a free gift given to us
by God.
In all other religions you achieve salvation either through
your works or by paying for your sins.
 In no other religion does the leader of that
religion die so that his followers may be saved.
 Of all world religions only Christianity offers
absolute assurance of heaven and eternal life.
1 John 5:11-13
And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal
life, and this life is in His Son. 12 He who has the Son has
life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have
life. 13 These things I have written to you who believe in the
name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have
eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the
name of the Son of God.
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You can know you are going to heaven when you die because
salvation is not earned – it is received.
Let me tell you why it could be no other way.
All sin is ultimately against God.
You may sin against another person, but the sin you commit
against them is only a sin because God, the great Law Giver calls
it a sin.
This is why after David committed adultery with Bathsheba and
then tried to cover it up by having her husband killed, he said in
Psalm 51:
Psalm 51
Have mercy upon me, O God,
According to Your lovingkindness;
According to the multitude of Your tender mercies,
Blot out my transgressions.
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Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions,
And my sin is always before me.
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Against You, You only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in Your sight—
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All sin is ultimately against God and so therefore must be
forgiven by God.
But who can pay for sin?
Sin is often portrayed in the Bible as a debt, and indeed it is a
debt to God.
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If you were in debt for a million dollars – I couldn’t help you
because I have my own debt.
It’s not a million dollars – but it is enough to preclude me from
paying your debt.
When it came to paying the debt of sin owed by the entire human
race, God needed someone from the human race who owed Him
no debt.
There was no one – until God Himself entered into the human
race in the person of Jesus.
Jesus was born without original sin and then lived a sinless life.
At the end of His life He went to the cross where He was made sin
with the sin of the whole world.
God then judged sin in Jesus.
Jesus paid the debt by dying, for as the Bible says the wages of
sin is death.
This is why when Jesus hung on the cross He cried, “It is
finished.”
In the Greek this is the word tetelestai, which means, “Paid in
full.”
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That only God could both forgive the entire human race is
illustrated by something that happened during WW II.
Simon Wiesenthal and his wife lost 89 relatives in Hitler’s
death camps.
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Following the war, Wiesenthal wrote a book called
Sunflower, about his experiences in Hitler’s concentration
camps.
The title for the book came from walking past a row of
graves where German soldiers lay buried.
Each grave was adorned with a single Sunflower.
Seeing this made Wiesenthal envious because he knew he
would likely end up in a mass grave in a pile of Jewish
bodies – with no sunflower, which he saw as a connection
to life, to mark his grave.
In his book, Wiesenthal tells about how one day he was
yanked out of a work detail and taken up a back stairway to a
dark hospital room.
A nurse led him into the room, then left him alone with a figure
wrapped in white, lying on a bed. The figure was a badly
wounded German soldier, whose entire face was covered with
bandages. His name was Karl.
With a trembling voice, the German made a kind of confession to
Wiesenthal. He told how he had been brought up in a Nazi family,
the fighting he had experienced on the Russian front, and the
brutal measures his S.S. unit had taken against Jews. And then
he told of a terrible atrocity.
All the Jews in a town were herded into a wooden building that
was then set on fire. Karl had taken an active part in the crime.
Several times Wiesenthal tried to leave the room, but each time
the ghost-like figure would reach out and beg him to stay.
Finally, after 2 hours, Karl told Wiesenthal why he had been
summoned. The soldier had asked a nurse if any Jews still
existed. If so, he wanted one brought to his room so he could
clear his conscience. He then said to Wiesenthal -”I am left here
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with my guilt. “I do not know who you are, I know only that you
are a Jew and that is enough. “I know that what I am asking is
almost too much for you. “But without your answer I cannot die
in peace.” Karl asked for forgiveness for all the Jews he had
killed. He asked for forgiveness, from a man who might soon die.
Wiesenthal sat in silence for some time. He stared at the man’s
bandaged face. At last, without saying a word, he stood up and
left the room. He left the soldier in torment, unforgiven.
Had Simon Wiesenthal done the best he could? He himself
seemed dissatisfied with his action. He went over it with his
companions. They all assured him that he had done the right
thing, but still he was not sure.
Following the war he visited the dead soldier’s mother.
In his book in which he reported this incident, he asked more
than 50 rabbis, Christian theologians, and secular philosophers to
comment on it.
“What would YOU have done?” is the question he posed.
Out of the many people he asked, the vast majority said he had
done right in leaving the soldier unforgiven. Only a handful said
he had done wrong.
The reason many said Wiesenthal did the right thing is because
we cannot forgive sins committed against anyone but
ourselves.
It was outside of Wiesenthal’s authority to forgive sins committed
against an entire village, or even one person other than himself.
But since all sin is ultimately against God, God can both punish all
sin, as well as forgive all sin.
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And since the justice of God demanded that sin be punished, God
Himself entered this world in the person of Jesus and paid the
penalty for sin.
When Jesus died, He died for all sin committed by all people.
And so, while the way to God is exclusively through Jesus, the
door to faith in Christ has been thrown open wide and the
invitation extended to whosoever all.
Rather than being exclusive – the salvation provided by Jesus is
inclusive.
As Paul makes it clear in Romans chapter 9:9-13, the Gospel
of Jesus Christ is anything but exclusive, but is inclusive of
all who believe.
Romans 10:11-13
For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not
be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew
and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call
upon Him. 13 For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord
shall be saved.”
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You can be born Jewish; born Buddhist; born a Muslim; born
Hindu, but by trusting Jesus Christ you can be born again and be
made a child of God.
Close with Good-O-Meter video
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