Is Jesus Christ Really the Only Way?

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The CENTRALITY of
C HRIST
IN CONTEMPORARY MISSIONS
OTHER TITLES IN THE EMS SERIES: No. 1 Scripture and Strategy: The Use of the Bible in Postmodern Church and Mission
David J. Hesselgrave
No. 2
Christianity and the Religions: A Biblical Theology of World Religions
Edward Rommen and Harold A. Netland, eds.
No. 3 No. 4
Spiritual Power and Missions: Raising the Issues
Edward Rommen, ed. (out of print)
Missiology and the Social Sciences: Contributions, Cautions, and the Conclusions
Edward Rommen and Gary Corwin, eds.
No. 5 No. 6
The Holy Spirit and Mission Dynamics
C. Douglas McConnell, ed.
Reaching the Resistant: Barriers and Bridges for Mission
J. Dudley Woodberry, ed.
No. 7
Teaching Them Obedience in All Things: Equipping for the Twenty-first Century
Edward J. Elliston, ed.
No. 8
Working Together with God to Shape the New Millennium: Opportunities and Limitations
Kenneth B. Mulholland and Gary Corwin, eds.
No. 9 No. 10
Caring for the Harvest Force in the New Millennium
Tom A. Steffen and F. Douglas Pennoyer, eds.
Between Past and Future: Evangelical Mission Entering the Twenty-first Century
Jonathan J. Bonk, ed.
No. 11
Christian Witness in Pluralistic Contexts in the Twenty-First Century
Enoch Wan, ed.
The CENTRALITY of
C HRIST
IN CONTEMPORARY MISSIONS Edited by Mike Barnett and Michael Pocock
Evangelical Missiological Society Series Number 12
Copyright © 2005 by Evangelical Missiological Society www.missiology.org/EMS
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording—without prior written permission of the publisher. The only exceptions are brief quotations in printed reviews.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
EMS Series No. 12 Cover design: Chris Kim, with original art by Nomrah Nala
Published by William Carey Library 1605 E. Elizabeth Street Pasadena, California 91104 www.WCLBooks.com William Carey Library is a Ministry of the U.S. Center for World Mission, Pasadena, California.
ISBN 0-87808-386-3
Printed in the United States of America
To the One whom God has highly exalted, whose name is above all names, the Lord Jesus Christ
Philippians 2:9, 11
Contents
Author Profiles Foreword Introduction Michael Pocock Mike Barnett 9 13 15
I. THE CENTRALITY OF CHRIST 1. Is Jesus Christ Really the Only Way? George Murray 2. The Uniqueness of Christ and Missions Patrick Cate 3. Christ Centered Epistemology: An Alternative to Modern and Postmodern Epistemologies Michael Pocock 4. The Relevance of Jesus as the Source of Salvation and Mission for the Twenty-First Century Global Context William J. Larkin 19 37
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CENTRALITY OF CHRIST IN CONTEMPORARY MISSIONS II. CHRIST IN CONTEMPORARY MISSIONS 5. Mission and Jesus in a Globalizing World: Globalization and the Pluralistic Jesus Harold Netland 6. Mission and Jesus in a Globalizing World: Mission as Retrieval Harold Netland 7. Jesus and the Pagan West: Missiological Reflections on Evangelism in Re-enchanted Europe Michael T. Cooper 8. WDJS—What Does Jesus Say . . . About Receptivity? Cecil Stalnaker III. MISSIOLOGICAL INSIGHTS 9. A Christocentric Understanding of Linguistic Diversity: Implications for Missions in a Pluralistic Era Samuel Larsen 10. Leadership and Teams in Missions—Jesus Style Mike Barnett 11. The Inescapable Christ: The Significance of E. Stanley Jones’ Christology for Twenty-first-Century Missiology John Moldovan 12. How Do They Think? Understanding and Teaching Religious Belief Systems for Twenty-first-Century Missions Norman Allison
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Author Profiles
Norman Allison served as a missionary with the Christian and Missionary Alliance in the Arab Middle East prior to teaching Anthropology in the School of World Missions at Toccoa Falls College, which he directed from 1976-2003. He studied at the American University of Beirut, and received the Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Georgia where he concentrated in Religious Belief Systems. He served as president of the EMS from 2001-2004. Mike Barnett and his wife, Cindy, served twelve years with the IMB. He was a church planter in North America, has a business background and continues to work in international business development. He currently serves as the Elmer V. Thompson Professor of Missionary Church Planting at Columbia Biblical Seminary and School of Missions. Mike earned a Ph.D. in Church History from Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He has published on leadership and teams and creative access platforms in missions and is currently vice president for the Southeast Region of EMS. Patrick Cate and his wife, Mary Ann, served in Iran from 1974 to 1979 and Egypt from 1984 to 1989. Pat served as the new personnel director from 1980 to 1984 and later assumed the presidency of Christar in September of 1989. Pat has a Ph.D. in Islamics from Hartford Seminary
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Michael T. Cooper served for thirteen years as a missionary in Central and Eastern Europe, and currently researches the revival of pre-Christian European religions in Western Europe and North America. He is assistant Professor of Biblical Studies and Christian Ministries at Trinity International University. He is published in Mission Studies, Christian Education Journal, Global Missiology and Common Ground Journal and has presented papers on Paganism at various academic venues. William J. Larkin is Professor of New Testament and Greek at Columbia Biblical Seminary and School of Missions. He received his Ph.D. in 1975 from University of Durham, England. He wrote Culture and Biblical Hermeneutics: Interpreting and Applying the Authoritative Word in a Relativistic Age (1988) and Acts for the IVP New Testament Commentary Series (1995). He co-edited Mission in the New Testament: An Evangelical Approach (1998). He has published numerous articles or essays on biblical-theological subjects related to missions. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and has taught in Zimbabwe, Portugal, Korea, and Germany. Samuel Larsen is Academic Dean and Samuel Patterson Professor of Missions and Evangelism at Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) in Jackson, Mississippi, where he has taught since 1998, after receiving his Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies from Trinity International University. Sam is also Vice President for International Doctoral Programs at RTS. His areas of special interest include globalization and intercultural education. He is a retired Navy Chaplain and also has a decade of service in Kenya and Australia, first under World Presbyterian Missions and later under Mission to the World. Sam and his wife, Louise, have three grown children and nine grandchildren.
Author Profiles
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John Moldovan is Assistant Dean for Evangelism and Missions at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also teaches from the George W. Bottoms Chair of Missions and directs the MA Missiology. He served as Associate Professor of Missions and Evangelism at the Criswell College in Dallas, Texas from 1989 to 2003. John endured harsh persecution in Romania and was forced into exile for his ministry by the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. His understanding of suffering offers a unique perspective on missions. George W. Murray has been President of Columbia International University since January 2000. Previous to this he was the Executive Director of The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM). He and his wife, Annette, also served as missionary church planters in Italy for thirteen years. He received his D.Miss from Trinity International University. Harold Netland is Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Intercultural Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has lived much of his life in Japan, teaching at Tokyo Christian University. Previous publications include Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth (Eerdmans,1991) and Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith and Mission (InterVarsity, 2001). Michael Pocock is Senior Professor of Missions and Chairman of the Department of World Missions and Intercultural Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He served for sixteen years with The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), beginning in Venezuela and continuing in mobilization for the organization. He has served as President of EMS and is currently vice president for the South Central Region of EMS. Books include: Cultural Change and Your Church (Baker, 2002) and The Changing Face of World Missions (Baker, 2005).
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Cecil Stalnaker serves with Greater Europe Mission and as Associate Professor of Missions and Evangelism at Tyndale Theological Seminary, located near Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Additionally, he is a visiting professor at the Theological Biblical Academy in Krapina, Croatia. He received his doctoral education from the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit in Heverlee/Leuven, Belgium. Prior to teaching at Tyndale he ministered with his wife and two children in Frenchspeaking Belgium at the Institut Biblique Belge and in church planting.
Foreword
The Centrality of Christ in Contemporary Missions: Was there really any doubt? Jesus claimed he was indispensable for salvation saying: “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) That same Christ sent his disciples into the world by his own authority, calling on them to teach those who followed them to do everything he had commanded them to do. (Matt. 28: 18-20). The Apostle Paul understood his own mission centered on the proclamation of Christ as the Son of God, even though he clearly understood the Trinitarian reality that God the Father, and the Spirit of holiness and power were the basis of his ministry (Romans 1:1-7). Jump 1700 years ahead to the fathers of the modern, Protestant, mission movement. The Moravians were Christcentered if they were nothing else. After the Thirty Years War in Germany, they were tired of the dissentions wracking the church, and wished only to base their spiritual life and health on a relationship with Christ and personal piety rather than doctrinal formulations. They were not entirely balanced in this, but their emphasis became the “inextinguishable blaze” that ignited the modern evangelical missionary movement. Their contagious passion for Christ was passed from Zinzendorf, to Wesley and on to William Carey. It enjoyed the full appreciation of Great Awakening preachers and missionaries like Whitefield, Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards. Fredrik Franson, who founded some fourteen mission agencies in Europe and North America in the late 19th Century, including what would become the Evangelical Alliance Mission, promoted as his life ambition: “Constant, Conscious, 13
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Communion with Christ.” This was the echo of Scandinavian pietism, and of the Moravians. It was still the heartbeat of the evangelical missionary movement. Contemporary Evangelicals maintain that Christ is still the center of their mission and message. But will Christ be explicitly proclaimed as the indispensable Center when faced with an increasingly pluralistic world? A world where exclusive claims of any kind are unwelcome? What will be the impact of multiple world religions and new spiritualities on the evangelical heartlands? As globalization brings the majority of North American believers, and many elsewhere, into contact with those of radically different faiths, might their outspoken commitment to Christ degenerate into a more general faith in God, with few specific claims about the specific content of their faith? What would be the impact of this shift on the evangelical missionary movement? The Evangelical Missiological Society exists to encourage reflection on the missionary task by both professional missiologists and thoughtful practitioners. The society is concerned to make the biblical gospel clear through appropriate contextualization, while avoiding the enervating effects of syncretism. That is the concern expressed in this volume. It is only as we evaluate our message and methods by the degree to which they reflect and lead to Christ that we can remain true to the One who calls and sends us. I gratefully acknowledge the contribution of all the writers of these chapters, but am particularly indebted to Mike Barnett of Columbia International University for assuming the challenge of editing this volume. He was willing to take on what I could not do, and he was helped by the encouragement of his institution and the technical assistance of Greg Goebel and Judith Kimsey. It is appropriate that a colleague like Mike should collaborate on this particular work as part of a school whose motto is: “To know Him, and to make Him known.” Michael Pocock Dallas Theological Seminary June 2005
Introduction
He was a sophomore in mid-semester, spring 2001 at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. His Dad had driven down from Dallas during a rare visit to the U.S. from his base of missions service abroad. Both of them cherished these occasional visits. They offered a brief opportunity for updating and de-briefing the progress of the lives of the father, son, and family usually over a slightly rushed meal at a favorite restaurant of the student’s choosing. The son was the product of a committed Christian family. He was an MK—‘missionary kid’—baptized in a Baptist church at the age of nine years and raised in a community of believers. His teenage years overseas had introduced him to a bigger, more interesting if complex world. And now in the midst of undergraduate studies, he had questions. His honest and nervous inquiries hit his father square in the gut. “How can we be sure, Dad, that we are right when we say the only way to salvation is through Jesus Christ?” “What makes us think that we have the only correct understanding of truth?” “Doesn’t God love and care for a faithful Muslim or Buddhist in the same way he would a Christian?” “Why is it that we Christians often seem to live lives that are less ‘Christian’ than non-believers?” “Couldn’t Jesus have merely been a great man, a famous prophet, a respected moral teacher?” These are questions for today’s world. The young generations of our ‘post-everything’ world are immersed in an atmosphere of universal, politically correct toleration and plurality. This defies a faith based on biblical absolutes and denies a Messiah, Savior, Lord and God projected as the only way to salvation, fulfillment, and eternity. These questions are totally
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relevant to the task of being on mission with God among all peoples through the church. This volume of the annual EMS series offers answers to these questions and more. Is Jesus really the only way? What is unique about Christ and missions? How can a new understanding of Jesus Christ bridge the gap between modern positivism and post-modern relativism? What difference can Jesus make as the source of salvation in our twenty-first-century missions task? Where does Jesus Christ fit into this globalizing world? Can a fresh encounter with Christ transform the nominal Christian world of Europe and the West? How do people receive Jesus and what are the implications for evangelism and discipleship? Can we learn from the model of Jesus how to be more effective missions workers? The answers lie in the clear and relevant communication of the centrality of Jesus Christ. The EMS series is truly a labor of love, a remarkable effort of volunteers from missions faculties and fields. It was a privilege to serve with co-worker, friend, and fellow editor Michael Pocock. Thank you to the society and its leadership for continuing this series. Praise God for such a talented group of contributors and authors! I want to personally thank Aaron Burt and my wife Cindy for their able proof-reading of the chapters. Thanks also to Columbia International University, especially library director JoAnn Rhodes and my dean, Junias Venugopal, for facilitating this project. Special thanks go to Judith Kimsey, my former student, a gifted writer and proof editor. And most of all to my former student and co-worker Greg Goebel who served as the assistant editor of this volume. Our desire is that through this volume readers from around the world might learn how to better answer the heartfelt questions of their sons and daughters for the benefit of future generations and the glory of God until Jesus comes again. Mike Barnett Columbia Biblical Seminary and School of Missions June 2005
I. THE CENTRALITY OF CHRIST
Chapter One
Is Jesus Christ Really the Only Way? George W. Murray
This chapter is adapted from a chapel message delivered at Columbia International University on October 10, 2004.
Thomas asked, “How can we know the way to heaven?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6 NIV). Is Jesus Christ really the only way of salvation for the whole world? And if so, isn’t that rather narrow? Yes, it is. Doesn’t that sound exclusive? Yes, it does. When I was a college student I went on a summer mission trip to a place near Chicago. We rented an old Methodist tabernacle with a sawdust floor and wooden benches that seated about one thousand people. For thirty straight nights, we preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As a team, we rented a little cottage that was very basic. In place of a kitchen it had a hotplate and a sink in the back room. For breakfast we ate bread and jam and drank instant tea and coffee. At night we had cheese and crackers and soup. In order to have one decent meal a day, we went to a restaurant on the edge of the campground and bought a home-cooked lunch. The first day we sat 19
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at a big table, and a young lady approached us and said, “Hi, my name is Sandy, and I’m your server. Are you new here?” I said “Yes.” She continued, “What are you all doing here this summer?” I replied, “We’ve come here to tell people about Jesus,” to which she raised her eyebrows quizzically. That exchange began a very interesting series of conversations, since we ate there every day. One day after lunch, Sandy asked, “Can I talk to you for a minute? I’ve been telling my friends about some of the stuff you’ve told me about God and Jesus, and I was wondering if we can come to your cottage one night and ask you some questions.” I said, “Sure.” And so twelve of them came to our little front porch and began to ask questions. I will never forget a question Sandy asked. Looking straight at me she said, “George Murray, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation for the whole world?” I said, “Yes.” She replied, “Well if that is true, then what about the fact that hundreds of millions of people living right now have never once heard about Jesus Christ? What’s going to happen to them when they die?” What do you say to a question like that? Sandy did not ask me about people who don’t believe in Jesus, she asked me about people who don’t know there is a Jesus to believe in. What will happen to them when they die? I said, “Sandy, what I think and what you think about that question may be right or may be wrong. But what God’s Word says is always right. Based on passages like John 3:18, Romans 1-3 and other Old and New Testament passages, I believe that any man or woman, boy or girl, living anywhere in the world who is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, and who can make a moral choice, if that person dies without putting his or her faith in Jesus Christ, that person will spend eternity in the fires of an everlasting hell.” And the minute I said that, Sandy exploded. I can still hear her voice as it screamed out across the summer night, “But that’s not fair!”
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Many sincere Christians have come to the same conclusion as Sandy. Here is how they reason: “I agree with Sandy. As a believer in Christ I have lived next to the same neighbors for years. I’ve befriended them and shared my testimony with them. I’ve told them what Jesus means to me. I’ve given them literature. I’ve taken them to church for the Christmas program; the message was very clear. They know the way; in fact they have a Bible in their home, but they have repeatedly rejected the Gospel message. And, I believe that if my neighbors died tonight they would be separated from God forever. But, what about people who have never heard of Jesus, who have never met a Christian, who have never seen a church? What about people for whom the Bible is an unknown book, and the cross is an unknown symbol? What about people who have no Christmas and Easter on their calendars, and who, while we wait for Christ’s second coming, have never heard of His first coming? Will they be separated from God when they die? That’s not fair!” So the question hangs in the air, broods in our minds, and stirs our hearts as we think of a world of over six billion people. Here is the question: “How can Jesus Christ claim to be the only way of salvation for the whole world?” The answer is two-fold: 1) because of who Jesus is, and 2) because of what Jesus did. In order to understand these two things, let’s put them in the form of two questions. First question: Who is Jesus Christ? Second question: What did Jesus Christ do? The Person of Jesus Christ Let’s look at our first question: Who is Jesus Christ? Answer: Jesus Christ is God! Not just like God, not just the way to God, not just the greatest person who ever lived. He is God Almighty himself. By asserting this, we are in no way denying or diminishing the reality or necessity of Christ’s humanity. Jesus was fully human and fully divine, as clearly articulated, not only in the pages of Scripture, but in the Nicene, Calcedo-
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nian, and Athanasian creeds. As we look at Christ’s astounding claim in John 14:6, we must realize that Jesus can say what he does because of who he is. Jesus is God, the second person of the trinity, co-eternal and co-equal with the Father and with the Spirit. Some say, “I believe Jesus Christ was a good man and a worthy example, but I certainly don’t believe he was God.” This statement is a contradiction in terms. You cannot logically affirm it because Jesus himself openly and repeatedly claimed to be God. So, the alternatives have always been three: he is a liar, knowing that he is not God, yet claiming to be; he is crazy, thinking that he is God even though he is not; or, he is exactly who he claims to be.1 Listen to God’s Word and let the cumulative effect of biblical evidence wash over your soul in a fresh recognition of who it is that we say we believe and follow. God’s Word teaches Christ’s eternal pre-existence. There was never a time when Jesus Christ was not. There was never a time when Jesus Christ was not God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1). The Bible teaches Christ’s virgin birth. “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Lk 1:34-35). The Bible teaches his sinless life: Isaiah, John, Paul, Peter, all under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, make categorical statements about the fact that Jesus Christ never sinned in thought, word, or deed (Is 53:9; Jn 7:18; 2 Co 5:21; 1 Pt 3:18). God’s Word teaches Christ’s vicarious death, meaning that he, the guiltless one, died for us, the guilty ones. God’s Word teaches his bodily resurrection. Jesus’ enemies said, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days,” and John notes that “the temple he had spoken of was his body” (Jn 2:18-20). The Bible teaches Christ’s glo-
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rious ascension. Right in the middle of his letter to Timothy, Paul bursts out in a doxology about Jesus when he exclaims, “Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory” (1 Ti 3:16). The record of Scripture is clear. Jesus Christ is God. Jesus healed the sick and caused the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak. Jesus touched and cleansed the lepers. Jesus restored sight to the blind. The man born blind said to the Pharisees, “Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (Jn 9:32-33). Jesus forgave sins. Four faith-filled faces on a rooftop looked down at the man that they had just lowered on a mat in front of Jesus. Jesus said to the man, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” And the cold-hearted, theologically correct Pharisees murmured among themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins....” He said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home” (Lk 5:20-25). And the man got up and went home! Jesus Christ raised the dead. In Luke 7, the Bible presents that awful scene of a widow whose only young adult son had died. The funeral was over and the procession was making its way to the cemetery. As they came out of the city gate Jesus was coming the other way. He stopped them, scandalized the people by putting his hand on the casket of the dead person, and then spoke to the young man. Christ raised him up and gave him back to his mother, and the end of that story records these words: “And all the people said, ‘God has come to his people’” (v. 16).
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Jesus walked on and calmed the stormy seas. He changed water into wine. He miraculously multiplied food to feed five thousand, then another group of four thousand. He cast out demons. Those demons recognized Christ’s deity. “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” (Mk 1:24). And I am always struck by that instructive verse in Mark’s Gospel where we read that Jesus “would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was” (Mk 1:34). (italics added) The enemies of Jesus recognized his deity. Why did Jesus’ enemies seek to put him to death, and eventually succeed in doing so? It was not because of his scathing denunciation of their hypocrisy, as withering and convicting as that was. It was not because of the miracles he performed. It was not because he cast out demons; They were doing that also. There was one reason alone that they put him to death: his claim to be God. John 10:32 records that “Jesus said to them, ‘I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?’” Now look at their answer: “We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (10:33). They were right. Jesus did claim to be God. He said, “I and my Father are one” (Jn 10:30). Jesus said, “He who has seen me, has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). John 5:18 says that his enemies wanted to kill him because Jesus “called God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” Why does this verse say his enemies wanted to kill him? It was because he called God his own Father. The Greek word idion means “unique, peculiar, in a way that nothing else is.” And so, when Jesus says that God is his idion patera, he is identifying himself with God as no one else can. They knew exactly what he meant, and that is why they tried to kill him. Furthermore, we read in John 8:58, “‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘Before Abraham was born, I am!’” I remember the first time I read this verse in the Roman Catholic Bible.
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It reads, “Jesus answered, Amen, Amen, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” I wondered how the Catholic scholars decided to use the expression “Amen, Amen.” It is because that is what the Greek says. “Amen” means “it is true.” And Jesus uses that word here twice. “I tell you the truth. I tell you the truth,” he says deliberately and repeatedly. In fact, Jesus is the only person in the Bible who ever used the double “amen.” And Jesus always chose this double expression just before he said something that he knew his listeners would not believe. For example, in John 3 Jesus says: “Nicodemus, you’re not going to believe this, but it’s true! It’s true! Amen! Amen! Except a man is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God!” “What?” Nicodemus said, “Can a man enter into his mother’s womb and be born again?” And Jesus could have responded: “I knew you were going to say that, Nicodemus. That’s why I started my declaration with the words, ‘It’s true! It’s true!’” And again in John 13:21 Jesus says: “Gentlemen, my closest colleagues who have walked intimately with me for these last three years, you who are sitting here with me at this holy meal before I go to the cross, you’re not going to believe this, but it’s true! It’s true! Amen! Amen! I say to you, one of you is going to betray me.” And we read that his disciples looked at each other, doubting of whom he spoke. Jesus uses this double expression again in John 8:58. In effect he says: “You’re not going to believe this, but it’s true! It’s true! Amen, Amen. Before Abraham was born, I am!” Jesus could have said “Before Abraham was born, I was,” and he would have been correct. Instead he says, “Before Abraham was born, I am.” Quite apart from the fact that he is doubtless identifying himself with the Jehovah “I Am” who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, Jesus is also deliberately making a literal statement. How can that be? It cannot be, if Jesus is not God. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Speaking of his
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omnipresence we mean that God is everywhere at the same time. But most of the time when we talk about the Lord’s omnipresence, we restrict that truth to the concept of space. But it is also true that God is omnipresent in time. And so when we talk about the Lord in terms of time, it is not only accurate to say that he is, that he was, and that he will be, but it is also accurate to say that he is is and that he is was and that he is will be! All that he was, he still is; all that he will be, he already is. Why? Because he is God! Moses affirms this in Psalm 90:2 when he says, “From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.” This is also affirmed in Isaiah 57:15, where the Lord is called “the high and lofty one…who inhabits eternity.” Jesus’ audience in John 8 knew exactly what he was claiming, so we read in verse 59, “At this, they picked up stones to stone him.” Jesus openly received worship as God. When Cornelius tried to worship Peter, the apostle refused to let him do it since he was only a mortal man (Ac 10:25, 26). When the people of Lystra wanted to worship Paul and Barnabas, the apostles refused to let them do it, claiming they were mere men and urging the people to “turn to the living God” (Ac 14:15). When the apostle John fell down to worship at the feet of the angel through whom the amazing visions of the book of the Revelation had been given, the angel refused his worship, telling him to “worship God” (Rev 22:8). Here is the point I am making: Peter refused the worship of people; Paul refused the worship of people; the angel in the book of the Revelation refused the worship of people. On the other hand, Jesus Christ never, ever refused the worship of people because he knew that they were recognizing him for exactly who he was. Whether it was the Samaritan man cured of leprosy, or the man born blind, or Mary of Bethany, or Thomas in the Upper Room, or the disciples on the floorboards of their boat, Jesus never said to them, “Don’t do that! Get up!” Instead, he let them worship because they were recognizing him for who he is. Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus is God!
Is Jesus Christ Really the Only Way? Jesus Christ and the Cross
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The second question is: What did Jesus Christ do? Answer: Jesus Christ died on Calvary’s cross for the sins of the whole world. This is why Jesus came. This is what Jesus did. This is why Jesus can claim to be the only way of salvation for the whole world. So how many people in the world know about the salvation that only Christ can offer? If we study the welldocumented statistics published annually in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, we can conclude in broad general terms that nine out of every ten people in the world are lost, outside of personal faith in Jesus Christ; two out of every three people in the world have never heard a clear explanation of the gospel; and one out of every three people in the world are still in the "unreached" category, with no near neighbor to tell them the message of the gospel.2 Statistics like these make it difficult for some people to accept the fact that Jesus is the only way. These are people like the sincere woman I met in Italy, where my wife and I served as church-planting missionaries for thirteen years. One summer we decided to take a student team to one of the 31,000 cities and towns in Italy where there is still no gospel witness. We chose a city the size of Columbia, South Carolina (which has over 500 Christian churches), where there was not even one local body of believers. We did door-to-door literature distribution for ten days and covered the entire city, inviting people to a conference in a prominent downtown location. We were very excited. About 400,000 people had been contacted, but on the first night only five people came. On the second night, again, five people came. But the third night, after we had prayed together and asked the Lord to bring out the people whom we had contacted, we went out into the meeting room and there were over twenty people in attendance. We were thrilled! That night, the Italian evangelist who was working with us gave a compelling gospel message about the cross of Jesus Christ.
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Afterward, a beautiful woman stood up with tears in her eyes and said, “That was one of the most beautiful and compelling descriptions of the life and death of Jesus Christ I have ever heard.” The minute I heard her say that, my heart welled up, and I thought “Praise the Lord! The breakthrough has come!” But then she said, “Ma, caro signore (But, dear sir), I beg of you, please do not insist that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation for the whole world.” As we continued to talk, we discovered that she and those who came with her were adherents of the Baha’i faith – a split off of Islam that teaches that Baha'u'llah is one of a series of divine manifestations that includes Jesus, Mohammed, Zoroaster, and the Buddha. The Baha’i faith teaches that the differences in the world’s religions are simply divine manifestations of one universal faith and brotherhood. For Baha’i adherents, Jesus is one way, but not the only way. Yet, Jesus’ statement in John 14:6 is clear and categorical: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” When Jesus said this, it was not an expression of bigotry; it was a declaration of deity. Look at Peter’s words in Acts 4:12. Peter, the man who denied the Lord, was standing before the people who had crucified Jesus and now had the power to do the same thing to him. Yet, filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter declared clearly and categorically, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” These words of Peter’s have been forever preserved for us in God’s Holy Word. They were true then; they are true now. There is no other name. Buddha? No. Confucius? No. Mohammed? No. Baha'u'llah? No. Joseph Smith? No. Charles Taze Russell? No. Mary Baker Eddy? No. Sun Myung Moon? No. There is no other name! Look at what Jesus says about himself in John 10:7-9 “I am the gate [door] for the sheep…whoever enters through me will be saved.” There is no other way, no other name, no other door.
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How can Jesus Christ claim to be the only way of salvation for the whole world? It is because of who Jesus is and because of what Jesus did. I want to strongly emphasize that at this point it is important to see the indispensable connection between who Jesus is and what Jesus did and how these two things form the foundation for his exclusive claim. Hebrews 9:26 says, “But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.” This verse is referring to what Jesus did through his death on the cross, and it says that that mighty act happened “at the end of the ages.” The Greek expression is sunteleia ton aionon. In Greek literature, this expression describes the tallest peak of the tallest mountain in a range of mountains. So, when the writer to the Hebrews, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, chooses this Greek expression, which the New English Bible translates “the climax of history” and Barclay’s translates “the consummation of history,” God’s Word is telling us that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was the highpoint of human history. All of history past looks forward to that event. All of history future looks back to that event. That is why John Bowring wrote: “In the cross of Christ I glory/Towering o’er the wrecks of time/All the light of sacred story/Gathers round its head sublime.”3 Every time you and I take the bread and drink the cup, we are celebrating the crucifixion of Christ, the most important fact in human history. John the Baptist spoke of Jesus with the sweeping statement, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29). Centuries earlier, Isaiah prophesied, “We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Is 53:6). 1 John 2:2, speaking of Jesus Christ, says, “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.” This is an amazing statement regardless of your personal view of the extent of Christ’s atonement!
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There are two questions that every thinking Christian should ask when contemplating the cross and what Jesus did there. The first question is: How could one person die for all people? At times I have sought to explain the biblical truth of the vicarious substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ by reaching back into history and telling of different people who were arrested, tried and condemned to death for crimes of which they were guilty. Just before the execution took place, an innocent person would step forward and offer to die in the place of the guilty person. The innocent person’s offer was accepted and the guilty person went free. There is more than one illustration of that in history, and we rightly use a story like that to explain the idea of Christ’s substitutionary atonement. But, in such true life stories it is always one dying for one to be free. In the case of Jesus, it is one dying for all to be free. How can that be? It cannot be if Jesus is not God. As God, he is worth more than all human beings of all time. Allow me to illustrate this point of Christ’s infinite worth. During the Civil War, there were regular “cease fire” times, during which there would be prisoner of war exchanges. The established rules of prisoner of war exchange declared that one captain was worth sixty privates. The Bible demonstrates this “greater value” principle more than once. In 1 Chronicles 12:8-15, eleven men from the tribe of Gad defect to David in the wilderness of Ziglag. The text names them and says that they were outstanding soldiers. In fact, it says that the least of them was a match for one hundred and that the greatest of them was a match for one thousand. An even more interesting illustration of this “greater value” principle occurs in 2 Samuel 15-19. Earlier, Absalom had rebelled against his father, King David, who is called “the captain of Israel.” The battle is heating up in the forest of Ephraim, and David believes that he should lead the charge against his own son. All of his officers rise up in protest and say, “You must not go out; if we are forced to flee, they won't care
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about us. Even if half of us die, they won't care; but you are worth ten thousand of us” (18:3; italics added). In Hebrews 2:10, Jesus is called “the captain of our salvation.” One for sixty? No. One for one hundred? No. One for one thousand? No. One for ten thousand? No. One for all! How can that be? It cannot be if Jesus Christ is not God. But he, the one and only God, is worth more than all people of all time past, present, and future. All Is Paid There is a second question that every thinking Christian should ask when contemplating the cross and what Jesus did there. The question is: Did Jesus Christ pay the full penalty for sin? Romans 6:23 reads, “For the wages of sin is death . . .” and this awful truth is clearly taught in other Old and New Testament passages. When the Bible speaks about death, it does so in three ways. The first is physical death. What is physical death? Physical death is separation of the spirit from the body. James 2:26 reads, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” James uses physical death to illustrate a spiritual truth. Secondly, the Bible talks about spiritual death. What is spiritual death? Spiritual death is separation of the spirit from God. Ephesians 2:1-5 reads, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins” but God, “has made us alive with Christ.” This is not talking about physical death. It is talking about spiritual death—separation of the spirit from God. Every one of us was “stillborn” spiritually speaking. Spiritual death turns to life only when we reach out by faith and receive what Jesus Christ has provided for us on the cross. But there is a third way that the Bible talks about death, and that is eternal death. What is eternal death? Eternal death is eternal separation of the body and the spirit from God forever. The book of Revelation also calls it “the second death.”
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In Matthew 10:28, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Now we come back to the question: Did Jesus Christ pay the full penalty for sin? At this point we must not forget that Jesus is fully man and fully God. Did Jesus die physically? Yes. In John 19 the soldiers came to break Jesus’ legs to hasten the death process on the cross, but they did not have to do it because he was already dead. Did Jesus die spiritually? Yes. Matthew and Mark record Jesus’ words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34). Twice in the prophetic description of Christ’s death on the cross, Isaiah declared that it was a soul sacrifice, “He shall see the suffering of his soul…and be satisfied” (53:11). Did Jesus Christ die eternally? Yes. There are two answers to the question: How long did Jesus hang on the cross? Both are equally accurate. The first answer is six hours. The second answer: eternally! How can that be? It cannot be, if Jesus is not God. Because Jesus is God and because God is eternal, what he did in a moment of time-space history was an eternal act that paid the full penalty for sin. The cross of Christ is a fact of time and of eternity. That is why the book of Revelation reads in chapter 13, verse 8 that Jesus Christ is “the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.” Hebrews 10:12 states, “But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God.” Other translations use “forever” in place of “for all time.” Even before the first of our four children was born, my wife and I determined that we would have a time of daily devotions together. Some of the most wonderful times in our family were evening devotions. During those times, our kids asked some very difficult questions. One of those questions had to do with eternal death. One of our children asked, “Daddy, what is hell really like?” Over the years, I have thought a lot about
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that question, and I have come to the conclusion that probably the greatest description of hell that you can give anyone is to point them to what happened at the cross. J. I. Packer agrees when he writes,
Some, then, face an eternity of rejected-ness. We cannot, of course, form any adequate notion of hell and no doubt that it is good for us that this is so, but perhaps the clearest notion we can form is that derived from contemplating the cross. Look at the cross, therefore, and you will see what form God’s judicial reaction to human sin will finally take. Jesus lost all the good that he had before the cross and all sense of his Father’s presence and love. He lost all sense of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. All enjoyment of God and created things, all ease and solace of friendship were taken from him. In their place was nothing but loneliness, pain, a killing sense of human malice and callousness and a horror of great spiritual darkness. The physical pain, though great, was yet only a small part of the story. Jesus’ chief sufferings were mental and spiritual and what was compressed into less than 400 minutes was an eternity of agony. 4 (italics added)
How could Jesus, one person, die for all people? It is because he is God. How could Jesus Christ pay the full penalty for sin? It is because he is God. The great Moravian missionary, Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf, captured these two truths when he wrote, “Lord, I believe were sinners more/Than sand upon the ocean shore/Thou hast for all a ransom paid/For all a full atonement made.”5 (italics added) One for all: He paid the full penalty for sin. That is why the missionary apostle Paul could write to the Romans, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (10:13). “Everyone” includes all people. This is not hyperbole; this is theology. It is because of who Jesus is, what Jesus did, and how those two things go together that Paul could say, “For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” (italics added) But Paul follows that sweeping statement with several critical and logical questions: “How, then, can they call
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on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” Paul did not simply ask these questions, he grappled with them and with their implications. Then he did something about it, committing his life to reaching the unreached. Practical Realities Remember Sandy, the waitress on the front porch in Chicago, the one who said, “That’s not fair!”? A week later at midnight, after we had all gone to bed, a knock came on the front door. I got up and found Sandy and four of her friends on the porch. “What’s up?” I asked. Sandy spoke for the group, saying, “After work tonight, instead of going home, we were going to downtown Chicago with some of our friends in their van. We waited and waited, but they never came. Then the phone rang, and we found out that on the way to pick us up they had a terrible accident, and the guy driving the van was killed. The other guy sitting in the front seat lost both of his legs. We just had to talk to somebody. Can we talk with you about it?” This time, Sandy did not ask me theoretical questions about people who live in far off places. She asked me about the boy in the van. She said, “Where is he right now, the one who died?” Then she asked, “What if I had been in the van when the accident happened and I had died, where would I be right now?” Suddenly, life and death, heaven and hell, and time and eternity were very real issues. Again, I shared with them from my Bible the simple message of the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit was obviously working in their hearts. I said, “I sense that you understand what I have been trying to share with you. I’d like to suggest that we pray. Just talk to God like you talk to each other—be very personal with him. If you don’t know what to say, I’ll help you.” So I led them in a simple prayer of confession and repentance and faith, urging them to thank Jesus personally for dying for them on the cross. Three
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of them prayed with me, and one of the three was Sandy, who was gloriously saved. I had a new believer’s Bible study each afternoon during that summer outreach and Sandy started coming and reading her Bible, and she just loved it. At the end of the last Bible study she took me aside and said, “I just graduated from high school and have been accepted at the university. But, I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to a Bible college.” Surprised, I asked, “Why do you want to go to a Bible college?” She answered, “I want to go to a Bible college to study God’s Word to prepare to be a missionary.” I replied, “A missionary? Why do you want to be a missionary?” She responded, “Because I still don’t think it’s fair!” But then she quickly added, “But, I’ve suddenly realized that it’s not God who is unfair, it’s us. God gave us all that we need for salvation when he gave his precious son Jesus to die on the cross. And God has given us, his children, everything we need to take that message to the ends of the earth. And, if there is anybody living anywhere right now who has never heard about Jesus, it’s for one reason and one reason alone, and that’s because we have failed to take that message to them!” Sandy went to the New Tribes Bible Institute in Wisconsin and graduated three years later. Today, Sandy and her husband Ron are the heads of a ministry that touches the lives of ten thousand teenagers a year with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the way. No one comes to the Father except through me.” How can he make such a claim? He can make this claim because of who he is and what he did and how those truths go together. One of the things I fear after considering all of this is that we will be orthodox and right in our understanding of Scripture but that it won’t make any difference in the way we live and in the way we reach out to lost and unreached people. If these things are really true, it should make all the difference in the world.
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Notes
1. McDowell, Josh. Evidence That Demands a Verdict. (San Bernardino, Cal.: Here’s Life Publishers, 1979), 103-109. See also Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. (New York: Collier Books, 1960), 55-56. 2. See the January editions of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research for the annual statistical analysis report. See also Winter, Ralph D. and Steven C. Hawthorne. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. (Pasadena, Cal.: William Carey Library, 1999), 509-511, 519. 3. Bowring, John. Hymns by John Bowring, 1825. 4. Packer, J.I. Knowing God. (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 175-176. 5. Zinzendorf, Nicolaus L. von. (1739) Trans. by John Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1740.
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The CENTRALITY of CHRIST IN CONTEMPORARY MISSIONS ISBN 0-87808-386-3 Evangelical Missiological Society Series, Number 12 Published By William Carey Library www.WCLBooks.com