An Unpopular And Exclusive Claim

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Reading: John 14: 5-14

Reflection: It seems interesting to me that Jesus remains so popular today when what He believed and what He said is so universally rejected. It is common to come across people in our day who claim to believe that Jesus was a good man, a great teacher, and a wise prophet. These people will openly state that Jesus was one of the greatest men on earth, and that if we would simply live as Jesus lived, the world would be a better place.

Now, of course, I agree with these people...as far as they go. And yet, not only was Jesus much more than a great man, it is also obvious to me that these people don't really understand what Jesus believed. You see, in our scripture reading today Jesus states...in very direct terms...that there is only one way that anyone can ever gain salvation. That one way is to come to faith in the one man who alone was both a man and God. This is clear in two statements of Jesus. The first is that "...noone comes to the Father except through me." That is a completely exclusive claim. One can't gain salvation through any other person...and therefore through any other faith, than Christianity. The reason for this is because of the second statement where Jesus states that "...I am in the Father and the Father is in me..." That's another way of saying that Jesus is in fact God come to earth to save humanity.

So, Jesus is the only way of salvation because only He is the God of creation come to earth to rescue humanity. Christianity is the only faith that believes and presents this Jesus to the world. So, in a world that loves the idea of many roads to heaven, Jesus insists that all are lost apart from the Jesus presented by and through Christianity. So, why is Jesus so popular when what He taught is almost universally rejected. While there are many answers, one of them is that the Jesus of popular culture is not the Jesus of the bible. Jesus has been recreated in the modern mind and then this distorted idea has been embraced. So, as we enter the world as Christians today, let us not be deceived by the popular remake of Jesus. Let us hold to the Jesus of history, who insisted that He alone is the way, the truth and the life...and that no one comes to the Father except through Him.