In Defense of the Faith: Question: One of the things I find most objectionable about Christians ...

Liberals Must Blame Christ Himself

Question: One of the things I find most objectionable about Christians is the insistence that their particular formula for finding God is the only way. Such a narrow view does violence to the sincere beliefs of millions of followers of other religions. With such intolerance from Christians, what hope is there for peace among politicians and military leaders?

Response: It is not by virtue of some formula they have invented that Christians insist that Jesus Christ is the only way. Christ himself said: “If ye believe not that I am [God the only Savior], ye shall die in your sins…[and] whither I go [heaven] ye cannot come….I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John:8:24I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.
See All..., 21; 14:6). So your quarrel is not with Christians but with Jesus Christ himself.

            It will do no good to suggest that Jesus didn’t really make these claims, for we have the testimony of eyewitnesses. Furthermore, what Jesus said agrees with centuries of declarations by Hebrew prophets who all testified with one voice (though most of them didn’t know one another) that only God could be the Savior of mankind and that in fact God himself would come to this earth through a virgin birth to pay the penalty that His own justice demanded for mankind’s sin. And the Bible is history’s most fully established document, with hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of times more reliable manuscripts than any other ancient literature.

Lunatic, Liar, or God Come as Man?

There is no doubt about what Jesus said. The question that no one can escape, therefore, is whether or not He was telling the truth. If He wasn’t, then there are only two other options: either He was a sincere egomaniac, so insane that He truly thought He was God come in the flesh and the only Savior of sinners, or else He was a deliberate deceiver who knew He was a fraud but who persisted in a masquerade so Machiavellian and clever that He deceived billions of people during the course of 20 centuries. In fact, neither of these two alternatives makes sense. He could only have been telling the truth.

            The problem with many critics is that, far from having carefully examined the claims of Christ and honestly rejected them, they have a deeply ingrained (but totally irrational) prejudice against moral absolutes that will not allow them to seriously consider Christ’s claims. They reject the very possibility that there may be only one way of salvation. They won’t allow God to have any moral and spiritual standards even though it is clear that the physical universe couldn’t function without precise direction. (The law of gravity, for example, is very narrow, with no exceptions. It operates whether one believes in it or not. And so it is with the laws of chemistry and physics.)

            Nor can the way to heaven be any less definite. And since it has been fully paid for and is offered freely by God’s grace to whoever will receive it, there is no valid basis for complaint by those who reject it. Furthermore, as His followers, Christians are obligated by duty and love and concern for the lost to remain true to Christ and to seek to persuade the lost that He is the only Savior of sinners.