Hot Topics 4: Exclusivity of the Christian Faith
Notes
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Welcome
Welcome
Welcome to our Family Worship service at Eastern Hills this morning, whether you are in the room or online. I’m Bill Connors, and it’s a joy to be gathered together to worship the Lord this morning. We had quite a gathering in celebration yesterday as we got to rejoice with Bryce and Khyrstyn Seiler as they were married, and it was such a blessing! I’m going to jump right in on what I need to talk about this morning, and I promise that I won’t keep you as late as last week today!
Announcements
Announcements
Business Meeting & Master Plan (No children’s stuff, no youth stuff)
Purpose & Vision:
Purpose: The Eastern Hills Baptist Church Family exists to connect people to Jesus and to each other.
Vision: The EHBC family will connect people to Jesus and to each other by sharing the Gospel, cultivating relationships, and serving others so that God is glorified.
Clarity:
3 phases. Only looking at all 3 in concept right now. Phase 1 is the only one we’re going to be actually doing at the moment. It includes: architectural design, specifications, engineering, and planning; new furnaces and refrigerated air throughout the building (not new in MH); any necessary upgrades to our utilities to support the needs of the entire plan; redoing the south drainage ditch to make it more attractive and safe; upgrading the lighting in the sanctuary including stage lighting and (hopefully) a video wall instead of a projector (in lieu of a wall, we might do a better projector, depending on cost); the tensile shading structure over the south half of the courtyard.
Our early estimates project that this might cost $2.8M including the plans and such. The plans would include taking Phases 2 and 3 to design/development stage to adequately prepare for utility needs for those phases.
Remember that this entire thing is in CONCEPT phase right now. All of the details are subject to change as we get into the next steps (surveying, utilities, etc.). We may discover that certain ideas must change because of things we don’t know about at this point. The vote tonight will be to adopt the Master Plan as the future concept of the building, not as set-in-stone design drawings.
We will also vote tonight on setting aside $86,000 for Simons Architecture to do the necessary work as I’ve just outlined it.
And we will also hear about and vote on engaging a Lifeway subsidiary called Auxano to help us with a church assessment and capital funds campaign to raise the funds to pay off the cost of phase 1 through pledges and other giving. Auxano’s cost, spread out over I believe 7 months, is $49,000.
Just wanting to be up front and clear on what’s coming tonight, and ask you to please plan to be here if at all possible.
AAEO ($6,021). Supports church plants and other missionaries throughout North America.
Opening
Opening
Fourth of five weeks in this series. Questions so far: “Why are people so often hurt by the church?” “Are faith and science in conflict with one another?” “Is abortion wrong?” Our last two questions in this series are going to be ones that have been asked of Christianity for a very long time. I pray that these last two weeks of the series are a help to your faith if you’re a believer, and that they are a help to those who are still considering Christianity. I’ll give you today’s question in a bit. First, let’s look at our focal passage this morning.
1 “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also. 4 You know the way to where I am going.” 5 “Lord,” Thomas said, “we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
PRAYER (pray for Ukraine, pray for CBA Alameda Baptist Church & her Pastor Ken Clair)
Let’s use our imaginations for a moment: Imagine that a gigantic meteor came hurtling through space, got sucked into Earth’s gravity, and impacted our little planet in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It was really hot because of falling through the atmosphere at a gazillion miles per hour, so it created a bunch of steam that changed weather patterns throughout the world, but it was also a really strange chemical makeup, so that the precipitation that came from the steam was toxic—lethal—if you drank water that was contaminated by it, and because of the changes to weather, nearly all of the fresh water sources in the world were tainted by this toxic chemical. And so let’s pretend that there was only one source of water… an underground spring... in the entire state of New Mexico that was safe to drink for the time being. I know, it’s a stretch and highly improbable, but stay with me for the sake of the illustration.
If we were looking for water, what would we want? Would we want someone to tell us the truth: that all the other water in the state was bad news and would kill us? Or that, you know, whatever water you feel is right for you is the water you should drink... There’s no “right” water at all, or maybe there’s like a “best” water, but all other waters have the idea of water in them, so all waters lead to thirst quenching?
We’d want the real thing, the true thing, the thing that was going to actually save us. And we would want that exclusively, rejecting every other water source. And not only that, but we would want to tell other people about the only source of this saving water, because we know that without it, they’re toast. Only the people who drink the right water will survive.
Today’s question is: “Why is Christianity so exclusive?” The problem with this question is that when it is asked, it often is being asked with two meanings, which are the same question from different vantage points. The first meaning of our question today would be best put in another way: “How can Christianity claim that there is only one way to God?” The second meaning of the question would be best put as: “Why do Christians believe that ONLY people who think like them will go to heaven?”
Both of these questions are basically the same with one slight tweak: The first is saying that the location of salvation (Jesus) is exclusive; the second is saying that the application of salvation (who can be saved) is exclusive. We will address both positions this morning.
1) Christianity is EXCLUSIVE because Jesus claimed to be and is the only Savior.
1) Christianity is EXCLUSIVE because Jesus claimed to be and is the only Savior.
This is the answer to the first question. Yes, Christianity is absolutely exclusive as far as salvation is concerned. I realize that my illustration at the beginning is far-fetched, and no illustration like that can ever be perfect as it relates to salvation. However, forgive its shortcomings for a moment. If there was only one source of pure water in the state, that would be a necessarily exclusive thing. There would not be water anywhere else in NM that was safe to drink.
As far as logic goes, this makes perfect sense. It’s called the law of the excluded middle. It says that if A is true, then the opposite of A must be false. For example, if it is true that I am physically here at this moment, it cannot also be true that I am not physically here at this moment. The two statements are called mutually exclusive. Both cannot be true at the same time.
And Jesus made a claim in our focal passage that was this kind of thing:
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Jesus said that He is THE way. He is THE truth. He is THE life. He said that NO ONE comes to the Father except through Him. These aren’t subjective (or “preference”) claims. Jesus didn’t claim to be A way to be saved. He claimed that He is THE way to be saved ( a “moral” claim). He said that NO ONE comes to the Father except through Him. According to the law of the excluded middle, if it is true that Jesus is THE way to be saved, then there necessarily cannot be OTHER ways to be saved. If it is true that NO ONE comes to the Father except through Jesus, then it cannot be true that someone or anyone comes to the Father by any means other than Jesus. Does this make sense?
So the question isn’t whether or not we LIKE the idea that Jesus is the only means of salvation. The question is whether or not that claim is TRUE. He made an objective claim about the nature of reality, and He didn’t only make it once. The claim is made several times in Scripture.
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. 14 How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.
The gate of salvation and life is narrow, exclusive: there is just one narrow gate and road that follows it.
5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time.
There is only one God, and only one mediator between God and man: the man Jesus. Peter put a very fine point on this in Acts 4:
10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified and whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing here before you healthy. 11 This Jesus is the stone rejected by you builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”
The Scriptural witness is that faith in Jesus is the only way to be saved. That claim is either true or it’s false. Jesus is either the Savior or He’s not. He’s either the way, the truth, the life, the gate, the mediator, the cornerstone, or He’s not. There is no possibility for a middle ground. Christianity is exclusive in the location of salvation, because it claims that there is one and only one way to be saved: trusting in what Jesus did when He died on the cross, taking the punishment for your sins in your place, and thus surrendering yourself to Him as Lord.
But is it right for Christianity to claim to be the only way to God? What about all the other world religions? Aren’t they all kind of the way to get to God? How can one religion have the market cornered on truth? These are fair questions. The answer is simple. Every (and I do mean every) religious belief, even atheism, claims that reality is a particular way. They all make objective, moral claims about God and salvation and life. And those claims are mutually exclusive because of what Jesus said about Himself, the things we have already looked at. Christianity has the market cornered on truth because it is the only faith that is, in fact, based on the objective truth. All others are not.
The objective claim of Islam: that salvation is something that is earned and deserved by the faithful of Allah; cannot be true at the same time as Christianity: that salvation is only available as a gift of God’s grace through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Only one can be true. The objective claim of the Baha’i faith: that all religions are equal and lead to salvation as long as we are sincere; cannot be true at the same time as Christianity: that there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved. The objective claim of atheism: that there is no God and matter is all that there is; cannot be true at the same time as Christianity: that the Creator God not only exists, but came in the flesh as the man Jesus, who died to be the mediator of our salvation.
Either reality is one way or it is not that way. Either Christianity is true, or it is not. The incredible thing is that Christianity is the world’s most verifiable faith, because our trust in the things that Jesus said about Himself comes from the things that Jesus did: He said He would die, and He died. He said that He would rise, and He rose.
31 Then he began to teach them that it was necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and rise after three days.
We have reliable eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ life, miracles, crucifixion, death, burial, empty tomb, and resurrected appearances in Scripture. Paul even said that the Christian faith is worthless, and Christians to be pitied above everyone if the resurrection is not true:
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say, “There is no resurrection of the dead”? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith. 15 Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified wrongly about God that he raised up Christ—whom he did not raise up, if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. 18 Those, then, who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. 19 If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.
So to argue that Christianity somehow should be rejected because it’s too judgmental, that it’s spiritually narcissistic to claim to be the only way, is to look at it wrong. Salvation isn’t based on our opinions. Salvation is based on what is true about how we are saved. Saying that Jesus is the only way of salvation isn’t arrogant. If Christianity is true, it’s actually loving and gracious to hold onto its exclusivity, because to let go of it and fall into inclusivism (all roads lead to God) or relativism (truth is whatever you think or feel is true for you) is to lie, because Jesus is the only way.
Like the water in the opening illustration: we wouldn’t think someone arrogant if they pointed us to the only safe water. We wouldn’t say that we can find our own safe water, thank you very much. We wouldn’t argue with them that they should be more accepting of other people’s ideas about where to get safe water. We would evaluate the statement objectively: either this is the exclusive place to get safe water, or it isn’t.
And we should make the same kind of evaluation about Christianity. Either Jesus is the living water, or He isn’t. Either He is the Savior and the only way to be saved, or He isn’t a way to be saved at all—He’s just a crazy man who thought He was God and the only way to the Father, or an evil man who just wanted to deceive everyone by saying He was the way to be saved for some horrible reason. But you can’t choose both. It’s one or the other, all or nothing. Who is Jesus—Savior or not?
So Christianity says that salvation is exclusive in its location, and we say this unapologetically. However, that brings us to our second question, which would argue that Christianity is actually exclusive like a membership-based club is, that only the in people can get in, and everyone else is out.
2) Christianity is NOT EXCLUSIVE because the Gospel is for EVERYONE.
2) Christianity is NOT EXCLUSIVE because the Gospel is for EVERYONE.
In my water illustration, I ended it with the idea that only the people who drink the safe water would survive, and so we would want to tell people about where to get the right water. This is because, while the water would be very exclusive in its location, it actually would not be exclusive in its application. Everyone who drinks the safe water will have their thirst quenched and will not die from the tainted water.
People look at the claims of Christianity and act like we’re some kind of club. Either you’re in or you’re out, and only the cool kids are “in.” And so they say that Christianity is exclusive in application: only the “in” people are saved. Well, that’s kind of true, but not in the way it sounds. The fact is that Christianity holds that salvation is NOT EXCLUSIVE in its application. Anyone can come to Christ and be saved. However, it does retain it’s exclusivity in location: anyone who would be saved needs Jesus.
Notice what Jesus said in our focal verse:
1 “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also.
He said to believe in Him, and He would go and prepare a place for those who believe. He promised to receive those who believe in Him, so that they (we) will be where He would be (His Father’s house). This is an incredible promise, and and it’s a promise that’s made to anyone who would surrender to Christ as Savior and Lord in faith.
Notice what Paul wrote about how inclusive the Christian faith is in the couple of verses immediately before what he wrote immediately before what we read earlier in 1 Timothy 2:
3 This is good, and it pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
God wants everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (which is Jesus). That doesn’t sound exclusive to me. It sounds pretty inclusive. God wants everyone to be saved. Not only that, but He doesn’t want anyone to perish in hell:
8 Dear friends, don’t overlook this one fact: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. 9 The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
He doesn’t want any to perish, but wants all to come to repentance. This doesn’t sound exclusive either. It sounds inclusive. Paul also said to the people of Athens that the offer of salvation in Christ was for everyone
30 “Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
He calls all people everywhere to repent: again, not exclusive in application, but very exclusive in location (repentance, judgment coming through Jesus). And finally, one last passage showing that salvation is available to any who trust Christ:
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
God loved world, giving His Son so that everyone who believes will be saved. Anyone who believes is not condemned. Definitely not exclusive. But this brings up one last point for us to consider. The problem with the perspective of Christianity being a perspective of being “in” or “out,” misses the point of the Gospel. The Bible tells us that everyone, yes everyone, is lost. Everyone is “out.” No one deserves to be “in.” That’s what verse 18 gets at. Our DEFAULT is “out” because of our sin. And that default is common to all of us. The message of the Gospel is not that those who are “in” are better than those who are “out.” The message of the Gospel is that it’s a miraculous work of God that ANYONE is ever “in!”
22 The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. 23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
And so, since we have the truth of the Gospel, the hope of salvation through Jesus Christ: it is our calling, our loving responsibility, to tell others about what God has done for them in Christ, that they might hear the Gospel, be drawn by the power of the Spirit, believe in Jesus, and be saved.
Sadly, we have to acknowledge that there are some who are arrogant about the salvation that we have received by the grace of God. Similarly, I suppose that in my water illustration, there are those who would not want to tell anyone about the safe water, because as long as they are safe, that’s all that matters. And as long as we can keep people out, we should. How sad would that be—to have the means of saving someone and refusing to offer it, just to keep it to yourself?
Do you see what I’m getting at? How sad is it that we have the message of eternal life, and are filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit for proclaiming it, and we don’t? How sad would it be for someone to come into this building, in need of finding the living water, only to be rejected and not told because they aren’t “in” like we are? Church, we are called to share the truth about Jesus, the only means of salvation for everyone! Jesus died for all of us. Every person in this room, and every person not in this room. Will we invite people to come and drink of the living water?
Closing
Closing
To close, my prayer is that we not shy away from the accusation that Christianity is exclusive, as if we have to be embarrassed by it. Of course it’s exclusive. There’s no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved: only Jesus—the way, the truth, the life, and the source of living water. But it’s also inclusive: all who would come in humble, repentant faith may come, and surrender their lives to Jesus as Savior and Lord.
Would you respond in faith today if you’ve never trusted in Jesus to save you? Believe that He died for you so you could be forgiven, and that He rose again so that you can live forever with Him as He promised. And if that’s you, or if you have questions about salvation or the Gospel, come and share that with us this morning. Joe will be down here with me, as well Barb and Noreen. We want to pray with you and for you, and celebrate the work that God is doing in your life this morning. If you’re online and have questions or are surrendering to Jesus today, please send me an email so I can celebrate with you and get you some resources to help you. My email address is bill@ehbc.org.
This church is a family that believes the Gospel and wants to share the hope that Jesus has given us. If you are already a follower of Jesus, and you believe that this is a family that you can be a part of, can grow in your faith, and can serve in, we would like to talk with you about church membership. Come and share that with us, and we’ll set an appointment to sit down and talk about the church, talk about your testimony of faith, and answer any questions that you have. If you’re in the Albuquerque area and want to talk about church membership, please send me an email.
If you just need prayer this morning, feel free to come and pray at the steps if you’d like, or to come and pray with one of us, as God leads.
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
We’re celebrating a staffing milestone with a party on April 10 at 5:30 in Miller Hall! Shanna Hale has served as our church secretary for 30 years (as of April 1), and we are going to hold a reception in her honor that night. Plan to come and celebrate with her, and if you can bless her with gifts or cards, please plan to do that as well.
Bible reading: Psalm 75 today
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”