Here’s the second of four posts to help us respond to objections friends raise to our faith. Today, `How can there be only one truth, how can Jesus be the only way? And what about those who have never heard your gospel? And if I’m a basically good person, that will surely be enough for your God?`
We’re a pluralistic society, with many sincerely-held beliefs. How can there be only one truth, how can Jesus be the only way? Aren’t all religions true?
Sincerity’s not the issue: we can all be sincerely mistaken. If you were afraid you had cancer you might go to the doctor, and when they ask why you haven’t come sooner you might say, `But a year ago I asked one of the nicest, sincerest people I know, and they told me I needn’t worry… ` The doctor may reply: Your friend may be sincere, but you really are in danger of dying of cancer. Some diagnoses are either true or false; some cures will save you and others won’t; we need to know which are which…
In the end, some things are either true or false. Either God is personal (as in Islam and Christian faith), or he isn’t (as in Buddhism). Either Christ’s death is the centre of everything, because it has paid for our sins and saved us from hell – or it hasn’t (and our Muslim friends will tell us something very different about how we avoid hell). Either Christ’s resurrection was the most triumphant moment in history (Christian faith), or (as for Hinduism) it would have been pointless; or (Islam) it didn’t happen at all.
Jesus himself either was, or was not, just what he claimed to be – the unique I AM, the Creator, the only way to God (eg John 8:58, 14:6). No other major religious teacher has ever made this incredible claim – and it matters enormously! (To Muslims, for example, it would be the most terrible blasphemy.) Was Jesus right, or wrong?
All religions cannot be 100% true or complete, because they contradict each other. There may be many good insights in each, but the most vital question is how we can be right with God, eternally. (So if Islam is right and we Christians are wrong, we’re in trouble!) And if human efforts or rituals can make us right with God, Christ’s agonizing death was unnecessary. So we can’t have Christ’s cross and the other religions too; we have, unavoidably, to choose.
Practically, it’s either true or false that we can’t get right with God by anything that we do – meaning, our sins can only be taken away if God himself rescues us by paying for them, and we then reach out to him and receive that unearned forgiveness for ourselves. Jesus’ gospel stands alone in daring to say this.
In the end it comes down to facts; and this is where Christian faith is so strong. No other religious teacher has risen from the dead! Since God did that, since Christ’s resurrection is a historical fact (see our Foundations 2-5 post), then we’re dealing with something unique; only Jesus frees us from sin and death.
(EXTRA: We can of course argue that the differences between religions don’t matter – but that’s not saying all religions are the same, it’s saying all religions are wrong as they stand, and my personal selection of their teachings is more truthful than any of them. But that’s a huge gamble of faith in my own judgment! Tim Keller, in his superb The Reason for God, tells of a student who argued that the doctrines dividing the faiths aren’t what matter, because (he said) all religions believe in the same God, an all-loving Spirit in the universe. Keller observed that in that case Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all, in different ways, mistaken! So the student himself actually had quite a definite doctrine about God, but one different from all these religions; that is, he was saying he was right where Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were all wrong – quite a step of faith.)
But what about those who have never heard your gospel? Are all those who don’t follow Jesus consigned to hell?
The most important thing to say about this is that we trust God. He is our Father, utterly just and also utterly loving; we trust them to his care!
But there are many things we aren’t sure about (as is the case in science too); and we aren’t embarrassed about that! Some Christians say that those who haven’t heard the gospel are without salvation. Others believe that Christ’s death can cover them too, if they’ve turned to what they’ve been shown of God for mercy, in repentance and faith. (Just as Abraham was saved, though he never knew Christ by name.)
But the practical issue is, what about those who have heard, like you and me?
(EXTRA: Bible Christians disagree about this, and that’s okay! Ch6 of D A Carson’s masterly study of contemporary pluralism, The Gagging of God, sets out in depth the view that those who have not actually responded to the gospel are all heading for a lost eternity. And maybe he is right.
But there is an alternative view. Abraham never knew Jesus’ name, nor had he heard of the cross. Nor did Job – indeed he wasn’t even part of Israel; nor was Melchizedek or Jethro. But Scripture presents them as righteous people of God: because of their repentance and faith in what God had revealed to them, the cross evidently covered them too. It seems at least possible that people today who have never heard the gospel could be in the same situation (isn’t this the point of Acts 17:30?): God judges them by how they responded in repentance and faith to the light he’s given them thus far. (The glory of God demands that they be brought the whole story, of course. But that isn’t about whether they go to heaven or hell; our motivation here is God’s glory – Christ has died for us, and everyone must hear about that wonderful act of love and worship him!)
So does this destroy missionary vision? Certainly not. To repeat, our primary motivation for world mission is the glory of God. Christ died on the cross for us, and yet in so many places he is not yet worshipped; and if we love Jesus we must ask how we can tell everybody in farflung parts of China, in Teheran and Riyadh, among the Siberian tribes, in Paris and Brussels. Nor in taking this position are we being `interfaith`; the new testament is clear that there’s only one true gospel in this world, the gospel of the cross; and while in God’s grace the cross may possibly cover people who have never heard about it, still if they are in heaven, they are there only because of the cross. We can’t believe what the Bible says about the cross and still believe in any other religion, or that anyone will be saved simply by being a good Muslim or good Hindu. Nevertheless, the possibility does exist that if they respond in repentance and faith to as much as they have seen from God, the cross covers them, and they go to heaven just as Abraham did and just as we do.
We can’t be sure of this, so the most loving thing we can do may well be best to live (and give!) as if Carson and many others are right, and the unevangelized must all be reached before they head into a lost eternity. But if friends ask what we think about this, it’s by no means certain from the Bible that those who have never heard the gospel all go to hell. Ultimately the God we know is utterly just and utterly loving, and we can trust them to his care.)
But surely if I’m a basically good person, that will be enough for your God?
If it were so easy, whyever did Christ die? Watch him go through the agony of Gethsemane, and then the utter desolation in which he cried out on Calvary. Why, if we could so easily be acceptable to God without all that?
But this is missing some absolutely basic things about God, and us, and about where we stand before God. If we want to understand reality, we must grasp God’s infinite, white-hot, majestically pure holiness. Once we do, we’ll see that before him `all our good deeds`, our `basic good`-ness, `are like filthy rags’, as he says in the Bible (Isaiah 64:6). It’s true; even at our best our goodness tends to be flawed, eg by pride, by self-righteousness. So some of us may be better than others, but none of us are good enough to live in the presence of God’s holiness (see Isaiah 33:14). There is a fatal barrier; each of us has sins that have a penalty, sins that exclude us from the relationship with God that we need. But he is the source of life; to be cut off from him like that means, ultimately, death at every level (Romans 6:23)…
Only Jesus’ gospel dares face this radical truth about our situation. Because only Jesus offers us solution: in Jesus, God himself came down, became human, and died, to pay that penalty for our sins. And now that is done, the barrier is gone; and he offers to forgive us and put his life, his own radically holy presence, within us, so that we’re ‘born again’ in repentance and faith into a new, supernatural existence. (Something much more glorious than being `basically good`!…)
So this question gives us the chance to spell out to our friends – and saying this should mean that for two minutes we have some attention! – why we actually aren’t `religious`! We aren’t trying to be good or obey God in order that we might perhaps be accepted and forgiven by him; that is human religion, and it doesn’t work! It just leaves people struggling guiltily; it can never give the joyful certainty of settled relationship with a God who has already, once for all, done all we need! Rather, we’re in a relationship where we seek now to please him just because first he’s loved, and accepted, and freely forgiven us (time to point to 1 John 4:19, and Romans 5:10?) – something wonderful we could not earn, and don’t have to! (And that is something we really want to share!)
