It’s possible to give a right answer but leave a wrong impression. That was driven home to me one day as I overheard a conversation between a Christian and a woman who would have described herself as spiritual but not religious.
She said to the Christian, “So, what about all the Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists in the world? Are you saying they’re all going to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus?” The Christian replied, “Well, Christ said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me,’ so that settles it.”
Did he answer accurately?
Are people who don’t believe in Christ going to hell? Well, according to the
Bible, yes. But he didn’t answer adequately. He reinforced this woman’s
view that the God of the Bible is horrendously narrow-minded and bigoted – He
doesn’t care how well you live or how much you love, all He cares about is that
you believe the right thing. No matter how good you are, if you fail your
theology exam and pick the wrong religion, He throws you into hell, and no
matter how bad you are, if you believe the right thing you go to heaven.
That sounds cruel and petty.
It sounds like God is the captain of a cruise ship who threatens to throw the
passengers overboard unless they accept a lifebelt from him. But that isn’t the
biblical picture. An illustration that is more in keeping with the teaching of
the Bible is that we are the crew of an enemy ship that has been attacking this
captain’s ship; our ship has gone down and we are drowning. The captain throws
the lifebelt out to us. Rejecting the lifebelt doesn’t put us in danger,
it keeps us in danger. The lifebelt isn’t the problem, it’s the answer.
So it is with Christ.
Accepting Him isn’t some arbitrary hoop that God makes us jump through. He is
the only answer to the problem we have. Let’s look at the problem and then
we’ll see how Jesus is the only possible answer.
The problem
The problem we face is that we
have sinned against God. Because God is righteous, sin must be dealt with. God
can’t turn a blind eye to our guilt. God’s law flows from His nature, and thus
cannot be set aside. The penalty for sin must be paid and God wrath against it
must be expressed.
We have broken God’s law, and
we can’t unbreak it. Even if we could live a perfect life from now till the day
we die, we are only doing what is demanded for the whole of our lives. Keeping
the law in the future doesn’t deal with our breaking of it in the past.
Back in the early 16th
century, Martin Luther realised the problem. He was a man who had devoted his
life to the service of God in an effort to placate Him by his religious
devotions. But he said there was a phrase from the Bible “that had stood in my
way”. He said, “I hated that word, ‘the righteousness of God’.” He realised
that God’s righteousness left the guilty with no hope of earning God’s
acceptance. All we could ever deserve was His wrath and judgment.
The answer
Our situation is completely
hopeless…unless there is someone who is able and willing to stand in our place,
to act as our representative, and bear the judgment for us. If there is someone
like that, then there would be a way of salvation. And that is why Jesus is the
only way. He was eternally one with God, and He became one with us – coming
into the human family so that He could act on our behalf and bear the sin of
the world. That’s what He did on the cross. He paid the penalty in full, and
proved it by His resurrection, and now there is a way that a righteous God can
accept sinners without compromising His righteousness. God can’t accept me on
the basis of the life I have lived, but He can accept me on the basis of the
death Christ died. Through repentance and faith in Christ, I am united to Him,
and God accepts what Christ did to be in my place, and I go free.
Greg Koukl put it like this:
Mankind faces a singular
problem. People are broken and the world is broken because our friendship with
God has been broken, ruined by human rebellion. Humans, you and I – are guilty,
enslaved, lost, dead. All of us. Everyone. Everywhere. The guilt must be
punished, the debt must be paid, the slave must be purchased. Promising better
conduct in the future will not mend the crimes of the past. No, a rescuer must
ransom the slaves, a kindred brother must pay the family debt, a substitute must
shoulder the guilt. There is no other way of escape. This is why Jesus of
Nazareth is the only way to God, the only possible source of rescue. He is the
only one who solved the problem. No other man did this. No other person could.
Not Mohammed. Not the Buddha. Not Krishna. Not anyone else. Only Jesus of
Nazareth could save the world. Without him we are crushed under our
overwhelming debt. Without him, every single one of us would have to pay for
our own crimes, and that would take eternity.[1]
People aren’t going to hell
because God is annoyed they picked the wrong religion. People are going to hell
because they are guilty of breaking His law. Religion offers no answer for our
guilt. Christ is the answer – He is the Saviour. If that Saviour is refused, then
there is no other option but that we remain in our danger.
God has thrown a lifebelt out
to a perishing world. While people think they can swim to safety themselves,
they will reject Christ. Once they realise they are helpless, they will see He
is the only hope.
[1]
Gregory Koukl, The Story of Reality, How the World Began, How it Ends, and
Everything Important that Happens in Between, Zondervan, 2017, p. 132.
