How can we be Saved?

A while back, I was at a party, and someone asked me what I did. So I said, 'I work for a church' – which always makes people uncomfortable. So he asked, 'So are you some kind of counsellor?' (which is how people try to 'cope' with you). So I said, 'No, my job is to tell people about Jesus' – which made him look even more uncomfortable. But I cracked on and said, 'A big part of what I do is to give people the chance to hear about Jesus' claim to be God, and make up their minds about him.' And quick as a flash he said, 'But you're not saying that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and the rest are all wrong, are you?' And to keep things all smiles, all I needed to say was, 'No, I'm not saying that!' But I actually said, 'Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.' And he couldn't get away from me fast enough, because I'd committed the cardinal sin in our culture of saying there's only one way to God. And that's today's topic in this series on our church's articles of faith. We're up to Article 18, which says:

Of obtaining eternal Salvation only by the Name of ChristThey also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect [in other words, religion] which he professes, so that [in other words, so long as] he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For holy Scripture does set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.

So there are two classic things people say. One is: 'Surely, if you're a sincere member of any religion, you'll be OK with God' – which is what Article 18 calls 'being diligent about your own Law or Sect'. And the other is: 'Surely, even if you don't follow any religion but just try to live a good life, you'll be OK with God' – which is what Article 18 calls 'living according to the light of Nature' – in other words, according to conscience and common decency. But to both those classic things which people say, Article 18 says, 'No, that's wrong.' And it says: the only way to be saved – in other words, brought back into relationship with God – is through Jesus.

So where does that come from in the Bible? Well, above all, it comes from the Lord Jesus himself. So please turn to John 14.1-6 to see that. This is the record of Jesus teaching his disciples on the Thursday night before the Friday he died on the cross. He'd been telling them he was about to go away. And Jesus knew that meant going to the cross, then rising from the dead and returning to his Father in heaven. But the disciples didn't understand any of that yet. All they knew was that Jesus was talking about leaving them, and it left them deeply troubled. So look down to John 14.1-2, where Jesus says to them:

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. [So notice in passing the way Jesus understands himself to be equal with God his Father, and worthy of being trusted in, alongside his Father.] In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

So 'my Father's house' means heaven – which is a lovely reminder that when a believer dies, it's a going-home – to be with their Father and Christian family in heaven. So when a good Christian friend of mine died, in the last day of his life all he said, under his breath, was, 'Soon home…. Soon home…' And in verse 2, Jesus says,

I go to prepare a place for you

By which he meant, 'I'm going to the cross to pay for your place in heaven – in other words, to pay for the forgiveness you need to come back into relationship with God my Father – starting now and lasting into heaven. So read on to verses 3-4: Jesus says,

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.

But at this point, they didn't know what he was talking about. So, verses 5-6:

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

So Jesus has been talking about the way into relationship with God – starting now and lasting into heaven. And here he says, 'I am the way. And no-one comes into relationship with God my Father except through me.' And people find that offensive, and say it's narrow and bigoted and (another cardinal sin in our culture) 'non-inclusive'. But if we accept Jesus' authority as God the Son, we've got to accept what he says here. (And, of course, we need to say that he will include anyone and everyone – whatever they've done, whoever they are – if they ask his forgiveness and accept him as Lord of their lives.) Now what Jesus doesn't say here is how his death on the cross can save us. So next let's look at Mark 10.45, where Jesus says:

For even the Son of Man [which was one way Jesus described himself] came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So Article 18 says salvation is only through Jesus. And there are three ingredients to salvation. Ingredient no.1 is the problem you're in, that you need saving from. Ingredient no.2 is the way you're rescued. And ingredient no.3 is the result. So, for example, if you get swept out to sea, the problem is: you're going to drown; the way you're rescued is a lifeboat; and the result is that you're back on dry land, still breathing. So let's think through those three ingredients here, where Jesus said he came,

to give his life as a ransom for many.

So, ingredient no.1: What's the problem we're in? Well, the Bible's answer is that we've turned away from God and basically said to him, 'I don't want you ruling my life; I want to live it my own way.' And that attitude is what the Bible calls sin, and that attitude – and all the wrong actions it leads to – is utterly offensive to God and brings us under his condemnation. And like a hostage, we can't get ourselves out of that – there's nothing we can do to make up for our sin.

So, ingredient no.2: What's the way we're rescued? And the answer is: we're rescued by God forgiving us our sin instead of condemning us. But that begs the question: how can he do that, without appearing to say, 'Sin doesn't matter'? You see, imagine there's a file, kept in heaven, of the whole lifetime's sin of each one of us – past and future. So that file contains what God should hold against us in the end. And if he doesn't – if he just takes that file and parks it somewhere – then what he's saying is that sin doesn't matter and that he's happy to compromise justice. But he can't possibly do that. So he had to make a way for us to be forgiven justly. And that way was for his sinless Son to become human, so that he could substitute for us on the cross, and take responsibility for our sins (owning everything 'in our file' himself) and face the condemnation and separation from God which we deserve – so that we could be forgiven our sins, while justice was also done on our sins. That's what Jesus meant when he said he'd come,

to give his life as a ransom for many.

It was to pay the price of our forgiveness, to set us free from the judgement we were hostage to.

And then ingredient no.3: What's the result of the rescue? Well, Jesus died, rose again and returned to his Father in heaven. And if we now turn to Jesus and say, 'Please forgive me for living my own way; I now want you to be Lord of my life (as you should have been all along)', the result is that: he'll forgive and accept us, whatever we've done in the past; he'll send his Spirit into our lives to help us turn from sin and live for him in the present; and in the future, beyond this life, he'll raise us into heaven where we'll finally be free of sin. So that's salvation according to Jesus.

So now let's come back to those two classic things people say. And the first is: 'Surely if you're a sincere member of any religion, you'll be OK with God.' Well, Jesus clearly says 'No' to that – 'No-one comes to the Father except through me.' And one reason people find that offensive is that they think that all religions are basically the same – just slightly different paths up the same mountain. But you can only think that if you don't really know anything about the various religions.

I taught in Kenya one year, and one day, early on, my class said, 'Sir, how do you white people tell one another apart?' And I said, 'What do you mean?' And they said, 'Well, you all look the same.' And I said, 'Funny you should say that, because that's what they would probably say about you.' And they couldn't believe it – they fell about laughing. And they formed a line of one boy from each different tribe in the school and said, 'Look, George is Luo – he's really black.' 'Julius is Kamba – he's brown.' 'Mutemi is Kalenjin – he's orange.' And so on. And soon I could tell black faces apart as clearly as white ones. To say, 'All black people look the same,' is actually to say, 'I don't really know any black people.' And to say, 'All religions are basically the same' is to say, 'I don't really know anything about them, either.' But take the trouble to look into them and you find they're not just slightly different – they're totally different. In fact, they contradict each other – especially when it comes to those three ingredients of salvation.

So take Buddhism, for example. Salvation ingredient no.1 is: What's the problem we're in? And the Buddha said your basic problem is dissatisfaction – because of what you lack or suffer. And that's caused by your desire for things and for happiness. Then salvation ingredient no.2 is: What's the way we're rescued? And the Buddha said the solution to dissatisfaction is to stop desiring anything – because then you can't be disappointed. So the solution is to change how you see reality ('enlightenment'). And then ingredient no.3: What's the result? And the Buddha's answer was Nirvana – which is a state where you no longer desire anything and are completely detached from everything.

And the point is: that's totally different from the gospel. You're not just talking about a different path, but a different mountain – even a different mountain range! Because Buddhism as the Buddha taught it doesn't even mention a personal God. And the problem isn't a broken relationship with God – where we need God to save us. The problem is dissatisfaction – which we can save ourselves from by changing how we see things.

So if you're chatting to someone of another religion, and they say, 'Look, we basically believe the same thing, don't we?' then get talking about those three ingredients of salvation – and compare and contrast their religion with the gospel. And what you'll find is that they contradict one another. So, for example, the gospel says Jesus was God-become-man and died on the cross to save us. Whereas Islam says he was not God-become-man and did not die on the cross. (Islam denies that central fact of history.) The gospel says Jesus is the Christ – in other words, the Saviour promised by the Old Testament. Whereas Judaism says he was not. So by the law of non-contradiction, either the gospel and the various world religions are all false, or one of them is true. The one thing they can't be is all true.

Now we're not saying that everything the world religions say is false. Some true things are said in all of them – especially in the two most closely related to the Bible – namely, Judaism and Islam. Both of those say that there's one God, who's our Creator and Judge, and so on. So some true things are said in the world religions. But overall, each one gives a false picture of God and of salvation – which is why they won't save anyone in them, however sincere those people may be. So when people say, 'Surely if you're a sincere member of any religion, you'll be OK with God', the answer is, 'No, that's not true.'

But then let's come back to that other classic thing people say – which is, 'Surely, even if you don't follow any religion but just try to live a good life, you'll be OK with God.' Well, Article 18 includes the person who is 'diligent to frame his life according to… the light of Nature'. And 'the light of Nature' means what God has made known to us about himself through creation and conscience.

So even if you don't have a Bible and have never heard about Jesus – if you're the proverbial pygmy in deepest darkest Africa – the Bible says you still have two sources of knowledge of God. One is the creation around you. Because, whether you realise it subjectively or not, objectively, as you look at it, you're actually looking at God's handiwork and seeing all sorts of evidence of his existence, wisdom and power and so on. And then the other source of knowledge of God that everyone has is conscience – that sense of 'ought' and 'ought not' – that sense of moral obligation, that's built into us. And as C.S.Lewis argues in his book Mere Christianity, you can only have a sense of moral obligation to a person. And conscience is actually our sense of moral obligation to the God who made us.

Now all that makes some people optimistic that the pygmy in deepest darkest Africa can respond to creation and conscience in such a way that means they're going to be OK with God. But the Bible doesn't share that optimism. And we can see that in Romans 1.18 onwards. This is where the apostle Paul is explaining why every single person in the world needs to hear the gospel. And he begins like this, verses 18-19:

For the wrath [in other words, the judgement] of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

No time to read more of that. But Paul's point in Romans 1 is that the pygmies in deepest darkest Africa do not respond to creation and conscience by relating to God properly. Instead, verse 18, they "suppress the truth" – in other words, ignore the knowledge about God that is available to them, so as to live as they want (which is only what we all do, by nature). That means the pygmies in deepest darkest Africa are as liable to God's judgement as we are. So what they need is not for us to have false optimism that they'll be OK. What they need is for us to take them the gospel – as does everyone (near or far) who's not yet had the chance to hear it. Now that's begun to touch on the question, 'What about those who've never heard?' And the answer is, 'There may be some people who've never heard about Jesus. But there's no-one who's had no knowledge of God – because we all have creation and conscience. And God is able to judge everyone fairly on their response to the knowledge they did have, not the knowledge they didn't have.'

One question related to that one is: 'What about those who can't hear or understand about Jesus – who die in the womb or in infancy, or don't have the mental capacity, and so on?' And I think the answer is, 'God hasn't revealed that to us in the Bible, because the Bible is by definition addressed to those of us who can hear and understand. And for those who can't, we need to trust that God is just and loving, and will do the right thing.'

And then another related question is: 'What about believers before Jesus – like Abraham, Moses, David?' And the answer is, 'They believed in the same God we do – a God of justice and forgiveness – and they were really forgiven and accepted. What they didn't know was that the forgiveness they received depended on an event yet to happen – namely the cross – whereas for us, we know what paid for our forgiveness (and theirs) because we live this side of the cross'.

So to wrap this up: the two classic things people say are: 'Surely, if you're a sincere member of any religion, you'll be OK with God', and, 'Surely, even if you don't follow any religion but just try to live a good life, you'll be OK with God.' And it's offensive to say otherwise. So let me say two closing things to help us be faithful to the gospel.

The first is this. What people are really saying in those classic comments is that you can be saved without Jesus. In other words they're saying that the cross was unnecessary – that Jesus was wasting his time. And when you put it like that, it emboldens me to keep saying that people are not OK without him. Because I don't want to end up saying that Jesus died for nothing, that he needn't have bothered.

The other thing to say is that, yes, the negative needs saying – "No-one comes to the Father except through [Jesus]." But above all, people need to hear the positive – that through Jesus they can be completely forgiven and therefore sure where they stand with God. And that is unique: I've never met anyone of another religion, or any sincere person just trying to be good, who could say they were sure God accepts them. And I've found that to say I am sure – not because of what I've done, but because of what Jesus has done – has often been what's attracted them to the gospel.

So let me finish with this story. Someone from another religion once knocked on my door during an awareness week. And I said, 'Look, there's not much point in talking because you have nothing to offer me.' And he said, 'What do you mean?' So I said, 'Well, are you sure where you stand with God?' And he said, 'No, you can't be.' And I said, 'Well, as a Christian, I am. And I wouldn't swap that for anything else.' And do you know what he said? He said, 'Have you got time to tell me more? Because I've wanted to be sure all my life.'

Jesus is the only way – which I know can be deeply offensive. But that way leaves us forgiven and sure where we stand with God – and if that's what you're hungry for, it's deeply, deeply attractive.