My last two blogs have been about deadly mistakes that people make about Christ and the Christian faith. Your response has been encouraging and gratifying – including catching a couple mistakes in grammar (which I have since corrected!). One reader even offered suggestions for additional deadly mistakes! So, today’s blog is about those suggestions. Here we go: yet two more deadly mistakes about Christ and the Christian faith.
E. “I just have to be a good person and I’ll go to heaven.” This is a very common sentiment, partly because most people consider themselves to be good people, and therefore think they will go to heaven. It also allows them to accept people of other religions (or none) who are nice or do good works. After all, if you like your neighbors, you don’t want to believe (let alone tell them) they are lost!
Unfortunately, this sentiment about “being good” as the criterion for heaven, is sadly mistaken. The first problem with this idea is that the Bible teaches that no one is righteous apart from Christ. Jesus himself said, “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). And in Romans 3:20,23 we read, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. . . For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Our attempts at justifying ourselves all fail: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6).
When God commands us to do something or forbids something, we call that the Law. The Law cannot save us; it can only condemn us by showing where we sin, by our doing wrong or by our failing to do what is required. We cannot follow the Law perfectly, as Jesus commanded. So, “being good” is impossible. Recognizing our inability to save ourselves, we throw ourselves on God’s mercy in the Gospel, the good news, that Christ has provided full forgiveness through faith in him. By faith, his righteousness is given to us: “For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10).
Now, doing good works, or acting in ways that bless others is a good thing. As Jesus himself taught, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Good works are what a Christian does to obey God’s commandments and love others. They are a fruit of faith (and a proof of faith – James 2:18 – “I will show you my faith by my works.“). It’s even good for a non-believer to do good works to alleviate suffering, help the needy, and bring harmony to society, but those actions do not bring salvation. They are acts of moral righteousness, which affect this world, but not eternity.
For the final statement on the relationship between faith and works, how we are saved, we read Ephesians 2:8-10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Therefore, we see that good works are desirable, but they do not save us.
F. “There are many paths to heaven/salvation and Jesus is just one of those ways.” Like the previous mistake, this one is an attempt to broaden the criteria for the people to be saved. It’s hard to imagine that most of the people in the world will be condemned for eternity. Opening heaven to everybody sounds so accepting and inclusive. Why punish everybody born to families or cultures that don’t believe in Jesus? It sounds so welcoming and tolerant to say there are many paths, and so narrow-minded and biased to insist on one path.
There are at least two major problems with this statement. First, the many so-called paths are inherently contradictory; to follow one path is to be at odds with many others. Although many paths include some truths, (such as the Golden Rule taught by both Jesus and Buddha), such agreement does not mean agreement in core doctrines, nor in the destiny of the different believers. Hinduism believes in many hundreds of gods and multiple ways of salvation. Jews and Christians have much in common, but belief in the deity of Christ is required of Christians but forbidden in Judaism. The Koran teaches that the Christian Trinity consists of Father, Jesus, and Mary, contrary to what the Bible teaches. Mormonism teaches that the Father was once a man, and good Mormons will also become gods. Nature worshipers replace the worship of the Creator with the creation: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:22-23).
Even the various visions of heaven vary greatly: In Christianity, the focus is on God’s glory, and the blessedness of the saints before his throne, with the saints possessing glorified bodies, but them neither marrying nor giving in marriage; Islam teaches sensual rewards for the faithful, with each man being attended to by 72 virgins; while Buddhists look forward to ceasing to exist individually and being absorbed like a drop of water flows into the ocean. Then there are the Hindus, being reincarnated until they finally escape the physical “wheel of life.” While most “paths” prescribe works in agreement with their founder’s teachings, Christianity is based on faith in Jesus Christ and what he accomplished. For Christians, Jesus is True God; this one belief separates our faith from every other one.
The other major problems with the “many paths” idea, is that the authoritative Scripture of the Christian faith, the Bible, excludes any other path than its own. There is therefore no compromise with any other path than Jesus Christ. The fact that there is only one God is the beginning of Christian beliefs: Deuteronomy 6:4 proclaims, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” This is also affirmed in Isaiah 4:55, “I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God.”
The exclusivity of Christ as the way to salvation is proclaimed by who he is (the Son of God) and what he did for us (lived a sinless life, and died a death to pay for our sins, then rose again as the first fruits of those will rise and live forever). In John 11:25-26, we read Jesus’ promise, “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.'”
Passages like these proclaim Jesus as the way to salvation; and other passages show that the claim is exclusive to Christ. In John 14:6, Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus also said he is the door to life, and warned, “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:14). Then in Acts 4:12, the Apostle Peter insists: “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.”
Finally, there is the warning to those who attempt to combine other religions with the true faith in Christ. Paul warns us in 2 Corinthians 6:14-16, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial [the devil]? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” The answer to these questions is, “None.”
From a comparison of the different religions, and a full knowledge of Christ’s claim to be the only way to the Father, we can see that the idea of “many ways to heaven or God” is fatally flawed. It has no basis in reality, and only serves to lead people astray. Believing it is just another deadly mistake.
Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.
Read: Matthew 28:16-20. (Meditate on its meaning for this blog.)