Christ and Other Gods Part 1: How Can We Say that Christ is the Only Way?

“This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” Acts 4:11-12

Peter, the same man who had denied Christ three times out of weakness of faith, boldly declares to the high-priest family questioning him while he was imprisoned that Christ is Lord and our only hope. He had just healed a crippled man and converted thousands of people from a crowd after sharing the gospel. They could not deny that his faith was true and that he did these works by some miracle, but they did not want him spreading the news of salvation through Christ alone (Acts 4:16-17). The world is often confused and offended by Christianity because of its remarkable inclusiveness, calling for people to “come as you are” (Matthew 11:28; Romans 5:8; Isaiah 55:1), and at the same time being perhaps the most exclusive religion since only those who come to trust in Christ Jesus will be cleansed from their sin and provided with the gift of eternal life in heaven (Romans 6:23; Romans 10:9; Matthew 7:13). Believing in a God by another name, trusting in some sort of spiritual authority, or just trying to be a good person, are all false paths that will lead a person further and further away from the truth. Why do we believe it is true that Christ is the only hope? And why is it so important that we believe this? This article is the first part of a series that will be addressing the Christian doctrine that Christ is the only way to salvation and eternal life.

Before understanding why we believe this, it is important to understand the popular opinion of the world. The truth is that many people believe Christ was a real and living person on earth (even secular history cannot deny His existence), and many people do not have a problem with believing in Jesus as well as many other gods, or believing that a separate yet “similar” spiritual power will get you to the same path that leads to Christ’s heaven. The website for the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) (“Unitarian” meaning they believe God is one person and rejecting the trinity, and “Universalist” meaning that all mankind will go to heaven) explain their beliefs about god:

“Unitarian Universalists have many ways of naming what is sacred. Some believe in a God; some don’t believe in a God. Some believe in a sacred force at work in the world, and call it ‘love,’ ‘mystery,’ ‘source of all’ or ‘spirit of life.’ We are thousands of individuals of all ages, each influenced by our cultures and life experiences to understand ‘the ground of our being’ in our own way. Unitarian Universalists are agnostic, theist, atheist, and everything in between” (UUA).

This large association is much less religious than it is humanist; promoting humans above the divine so that even if we have a god, it can be whoever we want it to be. There is no clear distinction of evil or goodness. To this we must then ask the question - why believe in anything at all? What is the purpose of existing in life when it does not depend on any solid definition but on the fickleness of my preferences and desires that changes just about every week? What we call sacred is actually a self-created reality. How is this any different than a fairy tale? Many people call the Christian faith a story that we grow out of, but really it is the only faith that accurately depicts reality, and the only faith that can uphold any claim of being absolute. When we put on the lens that Christ gives us in His teachings from the bible to see ourselves and the world, we see that it is the only lens that shows life as it truly is: calling out what is good and evil, which is much more clear than the world would comfortably like to believe. I will share 3 major parts of this lens as revealed by God through the scriptures, but please note that it is far from an exhaustive list to explain the gospel - the bible takes care of that.

1. Sin Separates Us from Holiness

A popular evangelist named Ray Comfort often asks the people he meets if they think they are a good person. They almost always say yes, but when Comfort tests them with the 10 commandments from the old testament, he finds that they have broken all of them at some point in their life. Why is it that we believe things such as murder, rape, stealing, lying, are wrong? What is stopping me from doing whatever I want, like stealing from my neighbor, besides peoples’ opinions about it being wrong? How can they say it is wrong? God has already created the standard of what is right and wrong, and He has written it on the hearts of all people to influence our conscience (Romans 2:15). The thing is, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” so there is not a person who has kept God’s law entirely, and there is not a person who is perfect. Even the greatest Buddhist monks, the pope, and church pastors, have all made mistakes in their lives and continue to do so. If someone were to say, “I never make mistakes,” we call that arrogance rather than truth because we recognize that it is not part of the human condition (1 John 1:8). We have no hope of reaching some “enlightenment” or truly understanding what goodness is when we trust our imperfect thoughts and strength to work and work and cross our fingers that it is enough to be considered good and get a foot in the doorway of heaven. Because we sin, we are not holy, which is defined as separate, that is, completely separate from all uncleanness because of having perfect goodness and righteousness.

1. Our Fate Without Christ

Something must be done about all the wrongs in the world. Doing the wrong thing is not just about doing something that hurts another person, it is offensive and rebellious against God because He is the One who created the law and who made all things. We tend to categorize sins as “big” or “small,” like telling a lie compared to killing someone. However, the cost of all sin is the same because “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Just as we are unholy, God is holy. And since God is perfectly just and is the One who has made the standard of right and wrong, He will bring judgment on every deed we have done (2 Corinthians 5:10). We cannot erase our sin because we cannot take back what we have done, and the cost of sin is not simply a death we experience on earth but eternal suffering in “the lake of fire” (Revelations 21:8). One might say that their good deeds outweigh the bad. But God does not use a scale - His standard is perfection, which is one of the reasons why we can call Him holy. He is not so unjust as to let unlawful deeds pass by. The universalist belief that everyone will end up in heaven or a feel-good afterlife leads people to cling to a false hope that they do not need to worry about their life or their purpose. Sin is much more than committing unlawful actions with the body; it is grown and tended to in the heart. We have more problems than we are even aware of. As life goes on, our burden of sin grows heavier and heavier, affecting not only our eternal judgment but our life right here on earth. What hope is there for us in eternity?

1. Only Christ Can Free Us

God is not only holy and just, but He is also merciful, and He has provided a path that leads to eternal life and freedom from our sin. Our sins have to be paid for, requiring a sacrifice of life to pay the wages of death. But to pay for sin in full, it had to be a perfect sacrifice. Since Christ is God in the flesh of human beings, He could withstand every temptation of sin without giving in when He lived on earth, so His holiness did not diminish in any way (Hebrews 4:15). If He had been simply a man and not God Himself in the flesh, He would have given in to sin just like the rest of us (Ecclesiastes 7:20; Matthew 5:48). His death on the cross was the only sacrifice that could pay for the wages due for all our sin (Isaiah 53:5). To show that the price was completely paid, Jesus rose from the dead as a living man once again, so He can truly call Himself the “first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17-18). It is not possible for death to hold Him as it holds us (Acts 2:24), therefore He not only provides the payment that can free us from God’s just wrath due to our sin, but He also provides freedom from living for ourselves as slaves to our sinful desires. This freedom is living for a greater and everlasting purpose: Christ and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33; 2 Corinthians 5:15). The idea of “all roads lead to heaven” misses the point entirely. It is not about being in a happy place after we die to continue living for ourselves and making heaven another mess like earth is. It is about being with Christ in resurrected, perfect bodies so that we are free from all sin that acts as an obstacle to fully and truly seeing God and worshiping Him. Because Christ is holy and acts as our mediator, giving His holiness to us when He washed us of our sins, we can be in the presence of our holy and perfectly just God in heaven (1 John 3:2). It will not be Christ by any other name, so if you do not know Him, He will not allow you to enter in and be with Him (John 14:6; John 3:36).

A False Reality will Bring False Eternity

Theologian Robert Rothwell explains the significance of believing in the true God, saying:

“God clearly and truly reveals Himself, so we are not left to guess what He expects from us. Modern people often view themselves as ‘seekers’ doing their best to figure out God. Yet mere conjecture is a shaky foundation for one’s eternal destiny” (Rothwell).

Indeed, mere opinion will not deny the current and eternal reality, that we have sinned against a perfectly just and holy God and deserve His wrath and judgement of eternal death. A guess or preference that a different way, a path with a separate title that feels better to us, will provide the way of escape from this, does not make it true. If the Christian God is indeed who He says He is, the only Lord and the Creator of all things, then we can turn to nothing and no one else. It is not out of hatred or some sort of discrimination that we declare Christ is the only way to heaven. Rather, it is because we know this to be true and speak it out of love for others, desiring that they would escape the burden of their sin and eternal suffering to embrace Christ and all of the free forgiveness and joy He offers to those who trust Him.

Works Cited

“Existence of a Higher Power in Unitarian Universalism.” Unitarian Universalist Association, https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/higher-power, Accessed September 1, 2021.

Rothwell, Robert. “One Lord.” Ligonier Ministries, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/one-lord. Published April 25, 2013. Accessed September 1, 2021.

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