As I said this morning in worship, I left out 2 pages from my sermon that dealt with challenges I saw for Christianity and the other religions as we consider their truth claims. This is not the end-all of the discussion, but I wanted to start the discussion with some objections and some biblical answers to them. Please feel free to post your comments.
It seems to me that any ‘works-based’ faith (which I consider to be Judiasm, Islam, Hinduism, etc . . . - these religions rely on our good deeds to get us to heaven or enlightenment or whatever, and where they run into trouble is if they get pressed to define, how many good works is enough. I mean, you either have to be perfect in all that you do – which we would probably all agree is impossible. Or someone would have to help us to understand, how good you do have to be. Pretty good? Very good? More good than bad? Is the percentage 51% good enough or do we need a passing grade like a 70 or something? What’s the percentage? How good do we have to be before a pure and perfect God decides to turn his head and let us come on in. That’s the question that any works-based system always has to answer. And I’ve never heard a good answer for that.
Now Christianity is not a works-based system because the Christian answer for that question is that no one is ever good enough. That God is perfect and for him to sort of blink, while we sneak in would not be an act of justice or righteousness. Well, the guy was a bully and he had an affair, but he was very generous to the community. Let’s let him in . . . Randy, Paula, Simon, what do you guys say? No, that would be an arbitrary God, who just set aside the demands of justice in order to help everybody out. So here there is no justice. God just sets it aside when he wants to.
But in Christianity, Romans 3:23 tells us “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God . . .
God can still be just because none of us is worthy to be with Him in eternity . . . but that’s not the end of the story or else we’d all fall short and no one would have a chance. We need God’s love and mercy here. And we find it in the second half of the sentence in Romans 3:24 . . . 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
We’re not eternally separated from God by the bad stuff we do, because Jesus has paid the price on our behalf. He has redeemed all of us freely by His grace.
God became human, lived a perfect life, and accordingly had the ability to pay the tab for us. When my family goes out to eat and my kids want to pay the tab . . . they always fall short. “Here’s our 18 cents Dad, we’ll pay this one!” I have to tell them that the bill is $35 and that their 18 cents just doesn’t cover it. “Why don’t you guys, let mommy or daddy pay the rest.”
That’s how it is with God. God is pure and holy and just, we are not - so God, the only one who could pay the difference, did so through the giving of His son . . . John 3:16 for God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believed in Him would not perish but have eternal life. Jesus didn’t say “just Christians” or “westerners” or “Americans”. Jesus paid the price for whosoever would believe. So God is just and yet, God is still loving. That’s the historically Christian way of thinking. Faith makes eternal life available to all and that’s why Christianity is not a works-based system. It is a faith based system. We gain righteousness by faith
But then our faith-based system has a challenge too, don’t we. If salvation is only available to all who believe, then we have to worry about the tribe in Africa that has never heard the name Jesus or the Jews of the Old Testament for instance who had never heard of Jesus. How can they believe in Jesus and trust in His payment for their sins, if they’ve never even heard of the guy?
Let me first say that Christians throughout the centuries have answered this in different ways. Some Christians say that people who don’t make it to heaven were predestined not to make it anyway. Others say “Let’s get out there and make sure the people who haven’t heard about Jesus do get to hear about Jesus so they can be saved.”
Here are some thoughts I have about how the scriptures help us answer this challenge.
In Romans 4, Paul turns to that very question and he answers it in this way . . .3What does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. 4Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. 5However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.
I think Paul is saying here that salvation has always been by faith (and here, He’s not talking about belief in God – even the devil believes there is a God.) He says Abraham trusted God and God credited it to Him as righteousness. It has always been by faith that people are saved. For those who have been exposed to the person of Jesus Christ, we understand how it works. But for those who have never heard the name Jesus . . . Paul himself, reminds us in Romans 1:20 . . .
“For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. “
Everybody can see God in His creation. We all have access to Him through prevenient or common Grace, as John Wesley called it. The tribe in Ghana or wherever, has the same access to God that all of us have. If they respond to it in faith, I believe the scriptures teach that it will be reckoned to them as righteousness just like it was to Abraham, whether or not they have ever heard the name of Jesus.
There’s more to say, but those are just some initial thoughts. What are your thoughts?
