One Way

I am troubled when I hear discussion about many ways to God, or about churches embracing "Chrislam", some combination of Christian and Islamic beliefs.  

Doesn't it seem unspeakably cruel that God would send His Son to endure what Jesus had to endure if it wasn't really necessary?  Not just the indignities of the Son of God leaving glory to be born in the form of a helpless human baby with all of the restrictions that entails, from having had an existence of being everywhere at once and knowing everything there is to know to experiencing being only in one place at one time and having to learn everything from scratch, but also the rejection from His own people, and finally the horrific agonies of the whole process of the crucifixion!  Any earthly father in any civilized society would have been arrested and condemned and most thoroughly punished for putting a son through even a fraction of those pains unnecessarily!

And then, you have to think that Jesus was either a gullible sucker or had a huge martyr complex to submit to this plan if it wasn't necessary, if there were any other ways.  Why on earth go through any of what we read in Philippians 2 if there were going to be multiple other ways to God?  The Message puts it this way:  "When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human!  Having become human, he stayed human.  It was an incredibly humbling process.  He didn't claim special privileges.  Instead he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death - and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion."

Jesus said of Himself, "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6)  Not "one of the ways", but "THE way."  He told Nicodemus who searched Him out at night, seeking truth, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God...No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven:  the Son of Man.  As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life" (John 3:3, 13-15).  "In Him".  Not in any other way that seems reasonable to those who don't want to believe in Him.

When Paul and Silas were miraculously released from prison and the confounded keeper of the prison asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?", Paul told him, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved..." (Acts 16:25-31).   Romans 10:9 tells us, "...if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." 

So, to be "born again" or "saved", what must one believe?  Briefly, that Jesus is the Son of God, that He was born into this world through a virgin, that He lived a sinless life so that He could be the perfect sinless sacrifice for us, bearing the sins and the effects of sin belonging to every one of us, that He defeated death and the devil to share His victory with anyone who would receive it.  

The almost-too-good-to-be-true message is that He took all of our sins and all of the punishment we deserved and offers us freely complete forgiveness, records expunged, slates wiped completely clean!  No other religion offers anything remotely as sweet.

"Oh, what a Savior!  Isn't He wonderful?"  (Yup.  I just had to bring a song into it again.  It's "O Come to the Altar" by Elevation Worship.)

I encourage you to stick with the One who is "THE way, THE truth and THE life".