Is the Exclusivity of Christ Unjust?

How many times have you heard someone make an argument against Christianity by saying, ìItís just not fair to say that Christ is the only way.î And the argument is a pretty simple one from those who oppose us.

It goes really like this. You say you are a Christian. Well, I thought that Christians were supposed to be humble. If you were humble, you would not continue to suggest that Christianity has got it right and others have got it wrong. So how would you respond to that objection to Christianity?

Weíre hearing it more and more, and itís important to be prepared to give a reason why we believe Jesus is the only way. Alistair Begg is our teacher today. Heís pastor of Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and a longtime friend of this ministry.

Letís join him now as he addresses the audience at the 2010 Ligonier Ministries National Conference. We are called as believers to affirm what the Bible makes clear. And in order to trace a line through the challenge of this particular talk, I want us to think in terms of its content and then secondly, its context, and then thirdly, what it means to make contact in our culture concerning it. First of all, we read our Bibles and discover straightforwardly that it speaks of there being one way to God through Jesus. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me. There is little problem in contemporary America with the first half of that verse.

You could sell a lot of t-shirts to a lot of people provided the second half of the verse does not appear on the t-shirt. No one comes to the Father but by me. There is only one way. The Bible also affirms that there is only one mediator. There is only one mediator between man and God, and that mediator, says Paul to Timothy, is the man Christ Jesus. And thirdly, in Peter's proclamation, after the healing of the man at the gate beautiful, there is only one name in which salvation is to be found. And so, if we're going to take seriously the instruction of the Bible, if we're going to live as believing Christian people, we accept the fact that Jesus' name is above every name and that all of history is moving towards a day when at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

You know, just to hear myself say that and just to think about the context out of which we have come today in terms of our contemporary journalistic world and the world of arts and science is to realize how profoundly revolutionary such a notion is. One way through Jesus, one mediator in Jesus, and one name, the name of Jesus. Now Peter when he makes that statement as we've read it in Acts 4 is responding to the inquiry of the religious establishment and he does so in a way that is direct, it is unequivocal, and it is at the same time unapologetic. He is not, in his words, offering some kind of academic or abstract proposition. He is not suggesting that what he is affirming is up for debate. It is there so that other opinions may be offered and his opinion may be altered on the strength of such offerings. No, his statement is direct, it is unequivocal, and it is unapologetic.

It was in his day and it is in our own day politically incorrect. But it was not logically incorrect. It may not have been that which people wanted to hear, certainly not the religious establishment, certainly not the Roman authorities. But the statement made by Peter was a logical deduction from the facts as he found them. In many ways his statement is the great fulfillment of the promise of Jesus to his apostles that when the Spirit of God was poured out upon them, then they would be brought into truth in a way that they had never quite fathomed it before. And somewhere in this period of time post-resurrection and now post-Pentecost, as all of the pieces of the jigsaw have fallen into place for Peter, he is able to make this straightforward affirmation. And he, along with his colleagues, has come to the clear conviction concerning the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus and the affirmation that there is no other Savior than Jesus because there is no other person who is qualified to save.

That is actually what he is affirming. And that is to affirm the content of Scripture. It is a reminder to us that the Christian claim starts from an entirely different place than any other claim by any other religious entity in our world today. It is a reminder to us that the Christian claim also challenges the notions that begin simply with man's rationale. And it is a reminder to us of the fact that what we are affirming when we make these claims is the affirmation of the fact that God himself has come and taken the initiative in reaching down to us. Says Bruce Milne in his most helpful book, Know the Truth, there is no road from man's intellectual and moral perception to a genuine knowledge of God. The only way to knowledge of God is for God to freely place himself within the range of our perception and renew our fallen understanding. Hence, if we are to know God and have any adequate basis for our Christian understanding and experience, revelation is indispensable.

And it is out of that conviction and out of the reality of that experience that Peter and the rest of the apostles make these straightforward affirmations. Let us then think of the context. First of all, the context in which the Gospel was proclaimed in the days of Scripture itself and then in terms of our own context. Let's not be so naive as to think that when this message was proclaimed it was somehow absorbable by the contemporary culture of Peter's day. It was, as the Bible reminds us, offensive to the Jew and it was absolute foolishness to the Gentile. To the mind of the intellect it was regarded as a ridiculous notion and to the monotheistic mind of the Jew it was regarded as something of a blasphemy. And within a relatively short period of time, Christians were under pressure to capitulate to the notion that Jesus was maybe something more than a man but he was not quite God. Or to succumb to the idea that Jesus might be seen as perhaps just one of the greatest of the angels. And the writer to the Hebrews knocks that notion on the head fairly straightforwardly as he writes the prologue to that most Old Testament of New Testament books. If the early Christians had been prepared to have Jesus simply included in the Roman pantheon of the time, then they would have managed to avoid persecution.

But they didn't and they couldn't. The common greetings of the Roman world which affirmed the essential deity of Caesar as their leader and sovereign meant that as they walked in the thoroughfares with each other they would affirm on a daily basis that Caesar is Lord. And as Christians they took the opportunity to say no, that actually Jesus is Lord. They were beginning to understand that every knee would finally bow to Jesus.

And therefore there was a radical difference in the way in which they viewed the culture of their time. Thirdly, let's think in terms of contact. Anytime someone has a talk that has three words all beginning with the same letter, one of them will be a bit of a dud.

And we've come to my dud. Contact is not so good, but I did desperately want another C. An awareness of the content of the message, which I'm going to assume, an awareness of the context in which we are called to declare the message, does not automatically mean that any one of us is going to be particularly effective at doing so. In other words, we have to make contact. There are three factors I think that need to be addressed in making contact.

Not the X factor, but the A factor, the T factor, and the R factor. A being the arrogance factor, the arrogance factor. In a context where there is no truth, but only truths, no principles, but only preferences, we face the challenge of being regarded as arrogant for proclaiming Jesus. And the argument is a pretty simple one from those who oppose us.

It goes really like this. You say you are a Christian. Well, I thought that Christians were supposed to be humble. If you were humble, you would not continue to suggest that Christianity has got it right and others have got it wrong. This again, you see, is representative of the notion that somehow or another we're all together and that eventually when you go up the mountainside, you arrive at the same place that when everyone examines the elephant, the man from Hindustan, that they all get their own piece of the puzzle, but eventually it all works out. But you see, that's actually not true because the God who produced the Bible could not possibly be the God who produced the Koran or the Buddhist scriptures or the Hindu scriptures.

Because the portraits of God, Jesus, the afterlife offered in those sacred books are so contradictory that unless God is actually contradicting Himself, it is just not possible for that to be the case. This arrogance question needs to be addressed from two sides. This is the first side. What Chesterton refers to as the dislocation of humility. He writes and he says, we've reached a stage, and this is a while ago, where we have humility in the wrong place. A man, he says, was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth.

This has been exactly reversed. We are now on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe the multiplication table. We need to understand that truth is not a matter of pride or humility. It's a matter of fact.

It's not about pride or humility. It's a matter of fact. Peter Cottrell says Islam says that Jesus wasn't crucified. We say He was. Only one of us can be right. Judaism says that Jesus was not the Messiah. We say He was. Only one of us can be right.

Hinduism says that God has often been incarnate. We say only once and we can't both be right. But having said that, here's the second element in the arrogance factor. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of our affirmations are justifiably charged as arrogant. Not the truth itself, but the way that truth is conveyed.

The tone, the flavor can so easily be arrogant. Is it possible that some of us as Christians are guilty of ridiculing other religions, ridiculing the adherents of other religions? Snide in our comments, harsh in our judgments, disgraceful in our interpersonal relationships, negative in addressing the ism because actually we have no real contact with anyone who comes from that background. Afraid of any form of dialogue because we probably are unsure of what we believe.

It is only in light of the evil of idolatry and the finality of Christ that we are able to establish contact on the basis of authenticity and humility and integrity and sensitivity. T, the tolerance factor. One of the reasons for our silence is because we're afraid of being thought narrow or intolerant. And so what we need is a dictionary. We need to rescue tolerance from the mistaken notion that tolerance means accepting every viewpoint as equally true and valid. That's the new definition of tolerance but that's not tolerance in the Oxford English Dictionary. True tolerance involves treating with integrity and humility someone whose opinions I believe to be untrue and invalid. Tolerance is treating with integrity and humility somebody with whom I actually disagree. We hold entirely opposing views on something. And tolerance says this isn't going to be a basis for me no longer being able to talk with you or live beside you or travel with you on the train into work.

And sometimes it's helpful to think outside the Christian box and to put the argument in this way to our friends and neighbors. For example, a tolerant Buddhist is not one who accepts as true the Hindu belief in an eternal soul because that would require a Hindu, that would require a Buddhist, I'm sorry, to deny Buddhist doctrine of no soul. The Buddhist says there's no soul.

Hinduism says there is an eternal soul. Therefore, it's not tolerance that has the Buddhist rolling over and saying, no, I accept that in you. The tolerant Buddhist would be one who while rejecting the particular Hinduistic beliefs treats Hindus with kindness and with respect. Therefore, to be a tolerant Christian doesn't mean accepting contrary views as valid, but treating with grace and kindness those with whom you disagree.

And then finally, R, the relevance factor, the arrogance factor, the tolerance factor, the relevance factor. The uniqueness of Jesus is inescapable. Christianity is superior or it is totally irrelevant because Christianity makes affirmations that no other religion makes, not least of all the fact that it begins with God's disclosure or revelation of Himself. So for example, in the incarnation, the eternal son becomes flesh and dwells among us. That is something vastly different from the idea of reincarnation.

The atonement, Christ on the cross, takes the sinner's place, bears our penalty, suffers what we deserve, dies our death. There is nothing like this in Islam or in Hinduism, nothing like this offered by Ramakrishna. And in the resurrection, there's no comparable claim made or one being made could ever be sustained on behalf of any of the great religious leaders of the world. And there isn't a single page of the New Testament that would have been written apart from the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, if Jesus had not risen from the dead, we probably would never have heard of Him. No, the relevance of our proclamation is found in the fact that although our world says, our culture says, there are just little stories to be enjoyed by little groups of people, everybody's little story for everybody's little group is equally limited.

There is no overarching story, no big panoramic perspective that can be thought to explain our existence. The Bible says, hang on a minute, the entire story is the story of our alienation and the wonder of God's reconciliation. A man alienated from his wife, parents from their children, employers from their employees, governments from their children, people, man alienated from himself, psychologically disengaged, lost. Is it unjust?

Is it unfair to say? Do you know there is someone who has come to deal with your alienation? Do you know that there is someone who has come and has himself taken all of your alienation in him? Do you know that the story that we have for you is not the story of a God on a deck chair somewhere, but it is the story of a God on a cross. No wonder that this message is of such interest to the Dalits of Northern India, to the despised, to those who are left out, to those who are last and least in the caste system of India. They have no interest in the smug Jesus of North America who makes you proud and happy and puts you in places where everything is perfect. What possible relevance does that have for them? But if you go and tell them that this Jesus was despised and rejected of men, he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and people hid their faces from him. They're all ears.

Who is this person? This is of tremendous relevance, and this, loved ones, is the message we proclaim. Either in Christ, God the Creator and the Redeemer came right into human life, or the gospels are a record of a lie. Church history proves that whenever the church has lost confidence in the truth and the relevance and the power of the gospel, it has lost its edge in urging men and women on Christ's behalf to be reconciled to God. The Archbishop of Canterbury some years ago was in a dialogue with Jane Fonda. The Archbishop of Canterbury said to her, Jesus is the Son of God, you know. To which Fonda replied, maybe He is for you, but He's not for me. To which the Archbishop replied, well, He either is or He isn't. Loved ones, He either is or He isn't. And since there are some children here, I'm going to give a children's conclusion from The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis.

So you can sit back and you can put your tray tables up and bring your seats into a full and upright and locked position. Jill runs into Aslam early in The Silver Chair. Aslam says to her, if you're thirsty, you may drink. They were the first words she'd heard since Scrub had spoken to her on the edge of the cliff for a second. She stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, if you're thirsty, come and drink. And of course, she remembered what Scrub had said about animals talking in that other world and realized that it was the lion speaking. Anyway, she'd seen its lips move this time and the voice was not like a man's. It was deeper, wilder and stronger, a sort of heavy golden voice.

It did not make her any less frightened than she'd been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way. Are you not thirsty, said the lion. I'm dying of thirst, said Jill. Then drink, said the lion. May I?

Could I? Would you mind going away while I do, said Jill. The lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. Will you promise not to do anything to me if I do come, said Jill. I make no promise, said the lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that without noticing it, she'd come a step nearer. Do you eat girls, she said. I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms, said the lion.

It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it. I daren't come and drink, said Jill. Then you will die of thirst, said the lion.

O dear, said Jill, coming another step nearer. I suppose I must go and look for another stream then. There is no other stream, said the lion. There is no other stream.

There is no other stream. Alistair Begg has been our teacher today here on Renewing Your Mind. We've shared a message from a Ligonier Ministries national conference that zeroed in on some of the tough questions Christians face. Alistair's message on the exclusivity of Christ answered one of the more emotionally provocative challenges raised by skeptics. I hope you found his answers to be helpful. As our nation and our world seems to run as fast as it can away from a biblical worldview, we need to be equipped to answer these objections.

Our resource offer today is a great place to start. It's Dr. R.C. Sproul's book, Everyone's a Theologian. This is no dry academic work.

R.C. makes complex subjects easy to understand as he surveys the basic truths of the Christian faith. Along the way, he reminds us of what God is like and what He has done for His people. When you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we will send you this 357-page book.

You can reach us by phone at 800-435-4343, or you can give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. And we are grateful for your generosity. Many of the trusted teachers we're hearing from this week on Renewing Your Mind, including Alistair Begg, are featured regularly on RefNet. That's our 24-hour internet radio station. You'll hear messages that will encourage you in your walk with Christ, and you can be confident that the content on RefNet will be biblically sound. You can begin listening right now when you go to RefNet.fm or when you download the free RefNet app and listen on the go. On our next program, we'll feature a message from Dr. Derek Thomas, and he'll answer the question, If God is Good, How Could He Command Holy War? I hope you'll join us Thursday for Renewing Your Mind.