Is Jesus the Only Way to God?
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
ohn 3:16 - 18; Romans 3:21 - 24; 5:6 - 9; Eph. 2:8, 9
January 22, 2012
David C. Wright

          Here are a few of the questions you submitted on today’s topic.  “Does God really withhold salvation from faith members of other religions?  Is Jesus the only way to heaven, or merely the best?  What happens to those who never learned of Jesus?  If God loves all people, why do only Christians go to heaven?  I have a problem believing that just because someone has a different religion- Buddhist, Jewish, Shamanism- that they will not be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven.  My God is a forgiving God who accepts all who believe in Him according to their own faith.”
          These questions are not only asked by Christians, but the issue of Jesus as the only way to God is a tremendous stumbling block for many non-believers, too.  In a culture that prizes tolerance above all other virtues, it seems intolerant, arrogant, and bigoted for Christians to assert that their belief is the only true religion.  Is that really what we believe?  And, even if we do, what happens to those who have different beliefs?
          This is a difficult question, so I’m dedicating two sermons to it.  In this first sermon, I’m going to remind us of how we Christians believe that salvation happens, including the role of Jesus Christ in accomplishing our salvation.  Then, with that background, we’ll talk next week about those who don’t share our belief.
          In the course I taught last Fall on “How to Share Your Faith,” I used a three-minute video to overview the basic gospel message.  It does a great job of doing that, so I’m going to share that video with you right now, and then expand on it in the rest of the sermon.  By the way, when the narrator of the video draws things inside the circles, they are stick-figure people!  (The video, by James Choung, can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCVcSiUUMhY)
          That’s a pretty good overview, but let’s flesh it out a little bit.  In the first circle, we are reminded that we are “Designed for Good.”  God intended life on this planet to be one characterized by justice, love, and community.  Our relationship with our Creator was an open one, where we discovered the purposes for which we were created.  But all of us have turned away from God, believing that we can somehow fashion our own destiny apart from our Creator.  This leads to a world that was “Damaged by Evil.”  And evil leads to distorted relationships with one another, with our Creator, and with the planet itself.  It’s the reason that we’re in the mess we’re in.
          The Bible refers to this as sin.  In the first chapters of his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul is building a case against all humanity.  He concludes that God’s own people, the Jews, as well as pagan idol-worshiping Gentiles are all in the same boat when it comes to sin!  Listen to these words from Romans 3.
          21  But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets,
          22  the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction,
          23  since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;
          (Romans 3:21-23)
          Our difficulty is that the sin problem is not only pervasive- found in each one of us as well as embedded in our institutions and cultures- sin is also very stubborn.  In 1900, a Congregationalist minister by the name of John Alexander Dowie established the city of Zion, IL, just north of Chicago.  In an attempt to create a utopian society, he simply outlawed sin!  That’s right.  All sin became illegal.  Of course, it didn’t work.  People still sinned.  You can’t stop sin with a few laws.  If Rev. Dowie had studied his Bible a little more carefully, he would have noticed that attempts to outlaw sin in the Old Testament were a complete failure.  You can’t create good people by legal means.
          And while education, therapy, and self-help programs can all be helpful, none of them has the power to change human hearts and eliminate sin either. This past Thursday I participated in a funeral for Rev. Dick Hutcheson, the man who first encouraged me to go into ordained ministry and who served as a mentor for me for 30 years.  I think I told you before that I invited Dick to preach at my installation at Fairfield Presbyterian Church, the church I served before coming here.  He preached a fine sermon from one of Paul’s letters to Timothy.  He talked with the congregation about my gifts for ministry and encouraged them to support my leadership.  I thought things were going pretty well.  Then he said, “But you need to know that Dave is a sinner!”  He said that pretty emphatically and then seemed to spend an awfully long time developing that point.  In fact, the pastor who gave the charge to the congregation later in the service, picked up on his observation, as she charged the congregation to give their full support to “Dave, who is a sinner.”  It became the theme of my installation service!  Not quite what I had in mind, but Dick was wise to say it.  Unlike some of his more liberal colleagues, Dick took human sinfulness very seriously.  He knew that all of us, preachers included, are shot through with sin, and it is bound to affect our ministry at one point or another.  If a congregation doesn’t understand that, it will inevitably be disappointed!  Persistent sin is the predicament for all of us, according to the Bible.
          But the good news is that God loved us too much to leave us in this predicament.  God intervened.
          16  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
          17  "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16,17)
          God loved us so much that he sent his Son.  That’s what all the hoopla at Christmas is about.  We celebrate the fact that God, our Creator, actually entered human history in the form of a little baby named Jesus.  And that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the power of sin over us has been broken and we find forgiveness of our sins.  In Romans 5, Paul describes it like this,
          6  For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
          7  Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.
          8  But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)
          In some mysterious way, when Jesus died on the cross, he took the sins of each one of us upon himself, restoring the relationship between God and humanity, and breaking the power of sin and evil over us.  This is grace.
          A man died and found himself at the gate of heaven where an angel told him about what was needed to gain entry to heaven.  “It is based on ‘points’ earned during your life on earth,” stated the angel.  “You need 100 points to get in.  Tell me some of the good things you have done, and I’ll add up the points.”
          “Let’s see,” replied the man.  “I was married for 52 years and was always faithful to my wife!”
          “Very good!” said the angel.  “That’s three points.  What else?”
          “Uh, I attended church every Sunday without fail, even when preacher was boring.”
          “Good.  Another point.  What else?”
          “Oh, I gave 10% of my income to the church, even during recessions!”
          “Wonderful.  That’s another point.  What else?”
          The man paused.  “I think I’m in trouble,” he said.  “At this rate I’ll never get into heaven except by the grace of God!”
          “Good answer,” replied the angel.  “Come on in!”
          You see, it’s all about grace!  Through Jesus Christ, God did for us what we could not do for ourselves.  As Paul writes in Ephesians 2,
          8  For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—
          9  not the result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph. 2:8,9)
          Our salvation is a gift from God.  There is nothing we can do to impress God with our goodness.  Atoning for our sin is simply beyond our capability.  But God did it for us and offers it freely to us as a gift.  We then can choose to respond to that gift, by acknowledging our sin, accepting God’s gift of grace, and offering ourselves to be part of God’s work in restoring the planet.
          The movie, “Saving Private Ryan,” opens with Army Rangers heroically taking Omaha Beach on D-Day during WWII.  After landing in France, a group of these Rangers, headed by Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks), receives orders to go deep into enemy territory to locate and rescue a certain Private Ryan.  Along the way they encounter skirmish after skirmish and many lose their lives.
          When they finally get to the town where Private Ryan is holed up, he refuses to go with them!  He says there is a big battle coming and his fellow soldiers need his help to survive.  So the Rangers offer to stay and fight with him.  And they do.
          It is gory and it is hard and almost all the Rangers die, including Capt. Miller.  As Miller sits dying by the road, Private       Ryan comes over to see how he can help.  Miller whispers something to him.  “Earn this,” he says, referring to all of those who gave their lives so Private Ryan could be saved.
          I’m told that’s where the movie breaks with reality, that an Army Ranger would never say, “earn this.”  You see, the Ranger motto has always been “Sua Sponte,” “I chose this,” I volunteered for this.  If Miller were really a Ranger he would have said, “Sua Sponte.”  In other words, “This is free.  You don’t owe me a thing.  I give up my life for you willingly.”
          When you picture Jesus hanging on the cross for you, he is not saying, “Earn this,” but rather “Sua Sponte.”  “I offer my life freely for you.  You can do nothing to earn it.  Just accept it knowing that I love you.”

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