The Exclusiveness of the Gospel, Part 1

It is absolutely critical that the world hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, that they not only hear it, but that they understand it accurately, that they believe it, that they embrace it for themselves because it is the only saving truth. It seems that more and more religious leaders are embracing a message that says there are many paths to God. Everyone's going to heaven. If you're spiritual and sincere, you'll make it.

And of course, a message like that, with no hard demands, is easy to swallow. But is that what the Bible teaches about salvation in Christ? Is there wiggle room for those who don't embrace him?

Can they find a place in heaven? In today's postmodern world, the exclusiveness of the gospel is more controversial and more attacked than ever. And it's critical to know why you believe that Christ is the only way to God and eternal life, and how to share those exclusive claims to a skeptical and relativistic world. For help in this area, stay here on Grace To You as John MacArthur continues his series, Delivered By God. Now with a lesson, here's John. When you do Bible exposition the way I do, you get into a book, you stay a long time. And so issues arise that have to be addressed and so sometimes we have to take a bit of a rabbit trail away from the main road in order to deal with an issue.

And this is a very, very pertinent issue. It would seem that everybody in evangelical Christianity, everybody who is truly a Christian would understand that the gospel is the heart of Christianity, that the gospel is found only in the Scripture, and that the gospel must be preached to the ends of the earth. I grew up understanding that. My theological education affirmed it. My years of studying the Bible has sealed that affirmation. The heart of the Christian faith is the gospel. The gospel is found in the New Testament.

The foundations of the gospel are found in the Old Testament. And the gospel must be preached to the ends of the earth if people are to be saved. That's essentially the Christian mission. That's what the church has believed.

That has compelled its life. That has been its mandate. Jesus said, go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in My name and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

He said it another way. He said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. That has been the church's mandate. True Christians have always believed that. The true church has always taught that. We have believed and been compelled by the fact that if people don't hear the gospel, they can't be saved.

And if they aren't saved, then they'll spend eternity in hell under the judgment of God. So it is absolutely critical that the world hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, that they not only hear it but that they understand it accurately, that they believe it, that they embrace it for themselves because it is the only saving truth. Compelled by this clear biblical mandate, Christians through the centuries have taken the saving message to the ends of the earth.

Generation after generation they have been engaged in doing this, preaching the gospel to every person on earth has been the goal of the church. I have told you many times that that's the only reason we're still here. We're already saved and sealed for eternity. There is no reason to leave us here except for this responsibility of evangelism. Now we believe, the Bible is very clear, that salvation comes through believing in Christ. Believing in Christ comes from hearing and understanding the gospel. Being able to hear and understand the gospel can only occur if somebody takes the message and somebody can only take the message if they're sent with it.

And that's what Romans 10 says. You're saved by believing in Christ, but you can't believe in Christ unless you hear about Christ. You can't hear about Christ unless somebody preaches and somebody's not going to preach unless they're sent. And that is our mandate and that has been the mission of the church since the church was born on Pentecost and Jesus said, you'll receive the Holy Spirit and you'll be witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth. Since the church was launched till today, uncounted millions of dollars in every currency on the map of the world and millions of hours of effort and work and millions of Christian people through the centuries have been spent and sacrificed to take the only message of salvation to the edges of the earth.

Translation work, rigorous, difficult, challenging work of taking a language that isn't even written and developing an alphabet and developing a way to write that language and then teaching the people to read their own language when they've never even seen it. And then giving them the Scriptures and the gospel and leading them to Christ, rigorous work that takes decades. And then printing materials in every language, preaching, teaching, evangelizing, that's what the church has been engaged in since its calling, since the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. An unrelenting effort to use every means available to reach people with the only message that can save them from eternal judgment and that's the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have greater means to take the gospel to the ends of the world than we've ever had. Technology, sophistication in the application of that technology to every imaginable medium of communication has given us greater power now than ever to bring the gospel to the end of the earth. And isn't it amazing that at this point in time, the enemy of men's souls, the enemy of God, the archrival of God, Satan himself, has cranked up his efforts to prevent this. He's done it in a couple of interesting ways. One is to make the church confused about what the gospel is.

And over the last fifteen years, this has been a battle that I've been engaged in with some others to try to make sure that Christian people understand what the gospel is. It doesn't do any good to have the technology. It doesn't do any good to have the opportunity.

It doesn't do any good to have the financial means. It doesn't do any good to have the manpower to take the message to the ends of the earth if you don't know what the message is. And so it's certainly a very wise strategy on the part of the enemy of men's souls to confuse the church about the message. And so, along with many others, I've been engaged in writing books to try to clarify for Christians, quote-unquote, what the gospel is because the church has become confused about the gospel. They're not really sure whether Jesus is Lord or not, whether He needs to be Lord or not. It doesn't seem to be important to the church anymore that people understand the true biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone, grace alone, and Christ alone. It doesn't seem to be important to some people that there's repentance of sin and that we preach repentance.

In fact, some people think that's some kind of an intrusion into grace. There's a failure to understand the doctrine of substitution and imputation, that is the true understanding that our sins were imputed fully to a substitute who died in our place and that we contribute nothing to our salvation except faith in that substitute. And so here we are as an evangelical church confused about the message. And you hear, as I mentioned, the pastor of a very large evangelical church make a statement like the Reformation was overrated as to its importance. Well what the Reformation did was define the gospel. Not only do we not know what the gospel is largely, we're not even sure it's important to get it right.

That's a tragic thing. Here we are on the brink of really the greatest potential to spread the gospel at the ends of the earth and we're not sure what it is. And the church in the process has gotten shallower and shallower.

There are a number of reasons why. One of them is because churches have proliferated everywhere, honestly, that are being pastored by men who are unskilled, untrained and don't have the theological background to be able to define things biblically and with any depth. Another is that there's this concern not to offend anybody, make church fun and entertaining and so we create some kind of synthetic gospel that doesn't have enough truth in it to save anybody.

Now all of that is bad enough and we've tried to address that. But there's a new wave in the evangelical world that is at least as frightening, if not more frightening. And the new wave in the evangelical world is this. There are some people who are telling us it isn't necessary to even take the gospel to the ends of the earth. It's not necessary. People are being saved without it...without it.

Now this view has some labels. Let me just give you a little teaching here. This is a theology class for a few minutes.

You can handle it, I know. If I can understand it, you can understand it. What is the name for this, this idea that somebody can get saved, somebody can get into the Kingdom of God, somebody can go to heaven without the gospel? This is one name, natural theology. That is that man naturally can ascend to a knowledge of God, can ascend to a relationship to God, can ascend by his reason and his innate desire to do what's right to complying with God's will.

This is natural, that is to say opposite of supernatural. Supernatural theology says that God has to come down and save man. Natural theology says man can climb up to God. That's...he can approach God on the natural level. This is to say that man has the natural reasoning process and power to come to God to be saved without the Scripture. Advocates say mankind may discover the existence of God, he may discover the attributes of God, he may discover the nature of God by human reason apart from scriptural revelation. Man is capable of knowing God, knowing the truth about God and knowing God's will without the Bible.

His reason is sufficient. Now obviously to believe that, you could not have a Reformed view of depravity. You would have to believe that man has not only innate reasoning power but innate goodness to pursue that, to pursue righteousness.

So people who advocate this have a flawed view of man's depravity. But what they advocate is that man can make it to heaven without the Bible. He can make it to heaven without the gospel. So what's all the missionary fuss about?

You don't need repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul said, he had to preach in Acts 20. The lost do not need to hear the gospel. They don't need to have a Bible.

We don't need all this translation work. We don't need all these people sacrificing their lives in remote areas with small tribes of people to try to get them the Bible and the Word of God and the gospel that saves because they can be saved without it. Because Christ is not the issue, the gospel is not the issue, the Bible is not the issue, sincerity and goodness is the issue. And this is the natural theology idea that man by his natural powers, his reasoning powers and some innate goodness can ascend to the knowledge of God and the will of God and please God and earn salvation whether he ever sees a Bible or ever hears about Jesus Christ. This is somehow motivated by some human conception of fairness that's not fair somehow for somebody somewhere not to be able to be saved when they don't have immediate access to the gospel. Now this introduces us to sort of the evangelical side of this and there's a term that's being used today to describe it. It's called the wider mercy view which is a little easier to handle than the natural theology view.

The idea that man in his depraved condition can find God, find God's will, live a righteous life and please God is...that's impossible to prove by Scripture. So rather than posture yourself as a natural theologian, you'd rather be a supernatural theologian. So you come up with another title, the wider mercy view, that there is this wider latitude, there's this inclusive view in which the Lord is going to include everybody.

And what it essentially says is that people can be saved in any religion, the leading proponent of this wider mercy view. And I'll quote, he says this, when we approach the man of faith other than our own, somebody in another religion, it will be in a spirit of expectancy to find out how God has been speaking to him and what new understanding of the grace and love of God we may ourselves discover in this encounter. Our first task in approaching another people, another culture, another religion is to take off our shoes, the place we are approaching is holy. Else we find ourselves treading on men's dreams. More we may forget that God was here before our arrival.

Now that redefines missions pretty significantly. Instead of going into a tribe and saying these people are lost, these people are doomed in darkness. You walk in there and you say you're standing on holy ground because God has been there in the form of their paganism. He adds, God has more going on by way of redemption than what happened in first-century Palestine, end quote. I can't imagine a more disastrous belief than that.

God has more going on by way of redemption than what happened in first-century Palestine. What does that say? That says that the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was just one thing in the midst of many, rather than the single greatest event in all redemptive history. That depreciates Christ, that depreciates His incarnation, His virgin birth, His incarnation, His sinless life, His substitutionary death, His bodily resurrection, His ascension, His intercession, His Second Coming, everything if Christ is just one among many.

This is a...you say, this is confusing. Well yes, I think I know what you're thinking, not because I'm omniscient, but because you probably think like I do. And what you're thinking is how can people believe this? How can they believe this when the Bible says salvation is in Christ alone, right? John 14, 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes under the Father but by Me.

Pretty clear. Acts 4, 12, neither is there salvation in any other, there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. We know that. Jesus says in John 7, because you believe not in Me, you'll die in your sins and where I go you'll never come. Believing in Jesus to anybody who reads the New Testament is the only way to be saved. There's no other Savior. There's only one Mediator, says Paul and Timothy, there's only one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, only one Mediator.

How do they deal with this? Some of these people talk about Jesus every time they're on the television, every time they get up and speak. What are they talking about? What are they saying to say Jesus is the only Savior, Jesus is the only Savior? And then to say that Muslims and Buddhists and animists and who knows what all over the place are all going to be in the body of Christ and they're all going to be in the Kingdom and all going to be in heaven, how does that work?

And here is the answer to that. They're saying the work of Christ is the only basis of salvation. But it's not necessary to know that. You didn't know that God was a Trinity, you didn't know God had revealed Himself in Christ, you didn't know Christ lived, died, rose again, you don't know anything about that. But Christ is still going to be your Savior, He still will have paid the price for your sins so that they would say He is the only Savior but He has atoned for and paid the price for the sins of people who will never know about a Bible and will never know about Jesus Christ.

They will still directly benefit from His work on the cross without ever knowing it. You ask, how could this get into evangelicalism? How could we succumb to this?

How could we buy into this? How could pastors be saying, ah, the Reformation doesn't really matter and now maybe we really need to redefine missions all together all over the world, but that's exactly what's happening. Well all of that to say we have a major problem. And, you know, the way to address this is simply go to the Scriptures, right?

I mean, I'm not going to give you my opinion, my opinion isn't worth anything. But what does the Bible have to say about this? Do we have a biblical case for the exclusivism? Do we have a biblical case for the fact that if you don't know the gospel and if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you aren't going to heaven?

The answer to that is yes. And we have a biblical case for the fact that natural theology isn't going to get anybody anywhere. And we also have a biblical case that God's mercy is extremely narrow. In fact, if you're looking for the word narrow, you're going to find it in Matthew 7.

It is a...what kind of gate?...narrow gate. So this is a narrow mercy and a supernatural theology. And that's what I want to show you from Scripture.

Now where are we going to start? Well we're going to start by a general reference, so just sit there, don't get into your Bible right now, just listen for a minute. This is a general reference to Genesis 3, but I don't want you to go there cause you'll be looking for verses and I'm not going to refer, I'm only going to do it in a general way. Genesis 3, you know what happened in Genesis 3, right?

Genesis 1 and 2 is creation, Genesis 3 is the fall of man. Man is created in the image of God and then God creates a partner, Eve, so you have Adam and Eve and they're in a condition of perfection. They have perfect bodies, perfect minds, therefore they have perfect reason, okay? They live in a perfect environment that is not at all skewed and they have a perfect relationship with the Creator. So this is perfection, okay?

We're in the Garden in a perfect environment. They have perfect minds capable of perfect understanding, capable of perfect reason, capable of perfect conclusions. Still Adam and Eve in the state of perfection could not on their own understand why they were created. They could understand that they were created and could understand that something more powerful than them created them and something with an immense mind, some being that loved beauty and loved order and loved design and had power and gave life and all of that. But they couldn't know why they were created. They couldn't know what they were to do, what they were not to do, how they were to do it unless there was somebody who told them.

They wouldn't know how to respond to their environment, how to function in the Garden. So God said to them, you can eat everything, otherwise they wouldn't have known that. And He said, don't eat that, if you do, you'll die. And He said, this is your wife, have babies.

And He said, name those animals. That's why they were walking and talking with God in the Garden, because God was giving them special revelation about how they were to relate to Him and how they were to relate to their world. Natural theologians should be shocked to discover that Adam couldn't know divine truth by his perfect reason. He couldn't by his own reason, his own perfect intellect, he couldn't have come to know that he was not to eat this and to eat this, that he was to name the animals, etc., etc., that he was to tend the Garden. God had to tell him all of that.

Robert Morey says, Adam was not created to be the origin of truth, justice, morals, meaning and beauty. The Creator walked with man in the Garden, these daily sessions were special revelation. And God told man why He created him and what he was to do in the Garden. He revealed to man what he could and couldn't eat. In other words, God was the origin and source of truth, justice, morals, meaning and beauty. And man's responsibility was to receive what God revealed. Man was not the origin but the receiver of truth. And it's true, Adam and Eve would have known something about God but they wouldn't have known what God wanted from them if He hadn't told them.

We wouldn't even understand man's pre-fall condition. We wouldn't understand his fallen condition if it wasn't for Genesis 1, 2 and 3. Do you know, you can study the religions of the world, the philosophers of the world, the theologians of the world, none of them ever comes up with the right understanding of man's creation and man's depravity.

None of them, they don't ever because you can't get there from depraved reasoning. And remember this, when Satan got in the Garden, perfect man with a perfect mind, perfect understanding, perfect reasoning, in that condition, Satan comes in and what does he want Adam and Eve to distrust, their reason? He says to them, has God said? You can't trust God's Word. See what Satan always wants us to do is to distrust special revelation and trust a reason.

And Satan's leading Eve through this little scenario. Suddenly he says, you're not going to die, you can't believe God, God lies. God said that, you're going to die? Nah, you're not going to die. You're going to be like God.

He doesn't like that competition. Satan tempted man to trust his reason and reject revelation from the mouth of God. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur. Thanks for being with us. John is chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. He's titled our current study, Delivered by God. And now with the theme of deliverance in mind, we received some letters recently from a couple of people who are benefiting from Grace to You, and they are pursuing people in their lives who also need God's deliverance. And so John, you have those letters in front of you.

I'll let you take it from there. Well thanks, Phil. Yeah, these are wonderful, encouraging letters. The first one starts out, My husband and I love Jesus and follow your ministry. Your recent sermon series on homosexuality and the Bible has led me to send this note.

We own a flat in Chicago that we rent out. We always pray that the Lord will send us the right tenants. Three years ago we had an opening and we brought in some young people that we now realize are transgender. I reminded myself that we had prayed that God would bring us the people he wanted to be here. I looked for the good and for opportunities to be a light in their lives. My husband has spent hours giving them the gospel, telling them about the love of Jesus and our Heavenly Father. One of the tenants said he was abandoned by his father when he was two years old and never knew him.

His pain was apparent to us. I care deeply about these young people and pray that they can have peace knowing our Savior. There is so much opportunity out there. We must love these folks and tell them the truth.

It will not return empty. Thank you for your teaching, John. It is water in a dry and thirsty land. And they sign their name to that. That's the right attitude. There's no sense in heaping scorn on those kinds of sinners. We need to come to them with the offer of grace as well as acknowledging their sin.

There's another letter from Aaron. Being a Native American, it's not easy being a Christian. I grew up on a reservation, and we have many cultural influences, including witchcraft, shape shifters, and more. Sadly, one of my daughters recently told me she no longer believes that Jesus is the only way to heaven. She now embraces the religious traditions of our tribe and wants to become a medicine woman.

I feel brokenhearted about this, but I have faith that God will deal with her heart. I continue to talk to my children about Christianity and pray for them. In times of difficulty, what is needed is a strong reassurance of God's faithfulness and His love and care. Your teaching has provided that for me. Thank you, Pastor MacArthur, for your boldness. I listen to grace to you almost daily online.

It signs His name. Wow, can you imagine your daughter announcing she's going to become a medicine woman? That's not a case you get in counseling every day.

I don't think I've ever heard of it before, but that's a daughter, and that's the heartbreak of a father and a mother. But that's why we're here, to undergird people who are struggling with those kinds of issues, dealing with transgender people, and imagine a medicine woman. Grace to you is here for that very reason, to bring the Word of God to those folks who so desperately need it. The need for a faithful proclamation of the Word of God is perhaps greater than it's ever been.

We're thrilled for the privilege that God has given us to do that through the radio and through the internet. So join us in praying for the ministry and supporting it any way you can. Yes, do pray for us. And friend, it doesn't matter how dark the culture gets or how unpopular biblical truth becomes, the focus of Grace to You will always be preaching the unvarnished truth of God's Word. And if that kind of ministry resonates with you, express your support when you contact us today. You can send a gift at our website, gty.org, or call us toll-free, 855-GRACE, or mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Your financial gifts will make a real difference in the lives of the people we reach, and thank you especially for praying for Grace to You. It's really your most important ministry to us and to the people who we are reaching with biblical truth. Again, to make a donation, call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Now a quick reminder about the Grace to You sermon app. It gives you access to all of John's sermons, nearly 3500 total. Wherever you take your smartphone or your tablet, the sermon app, and much more, including all eight messages from John's current study, Delivered by God, all of that is available free of charge at gty.org. That's our website, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson encouraging you to come back tomorrow when John looks at why Christ, and Christ alone, is the only way to salvation and eternal life. Be here for John's study, Delivered by God, as he continues unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.