The biblical insistence upon man’s salvation being secured exclusively through the finished work of Christ remains a major objection that many have about Christianity. In this present day of religious pluralism, the idea of the exclusivity of Christ is met with increased hostility. It is a narrowness many simply cannot abide. The principle reason for their objection is always the same. Their conclusions are reached as a result of their personal logic and reasoning and, to them, it simply doesn’t seem right that there should be but one way to heaven. And, if that way is Christ and Christ alone, then what about all the multitudes who have never heard of Christ? How could a loving God possibly consign multitudes to perdition for not believing in Someone they’ve never even heard of? Where is the fairness in that? Man’s problem is he has more confidence in his own logic and reasoning than he has in the revelation God has given in His Word. What one accepts as authority is ever the problem. Never mind the fact that the same man’s flawed reasoning has often failed him in the past. He seems yet incorrigible about self-reliance by making himself the authority rather than God.
The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ remain the centerpiece of all human history. It was not merely an important event; it was THE important event, and God will not allow man to bypass it whether from ignorance or willful rejection. To admit or entertain other ways of approaching God apart from Christ not only depreciates the death of Christ, it effectively dismisses it.
In writing to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul declared that he did not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness comes by the law, Christ is dead in vain. If salvation and acceptance before God can be achieved in other ways, apart from personal faith in the substitutionary death of Christ, then, really, Christ need not have bothered. God need not have sent the Son to die for the world since other ways to God would be available. The agony of crucifixion, its intendent cruelty and all it contained, plus the spiritual separation between the Father and the Son, was simply unnecessary. Despite man’s insistence upon his flawed logic, the Scriptures remind us in 1st Timothy 2, “There is one God and one Mediator, between God and men, the Man, Christ Jesus.”
And, additionally, what was meant by Christ Himself when He uttered that very narrow statement, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man comes unto the Father, but by Me,”? If you dismiss those words of Christ as simply untrue, what else did He say that was also untrue? And, when the Apostle Peter stated that “neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved”? No doubt his fellow Jews, in Acts 4, had as much problem believing what Peter said about Jesus as do people today. We must be warned, however, the criterion for truth is not determined by who believes it or who doesn’t, neither by how many do or do not. Truth is what God says it is and is not what man wants it to be.
CC-06-09
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