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175 and Counting: No other Name

The Lord’s Day Morning

March 18, 2012

“175 and Counting: No Other Name”

Acts 4:12

The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to open them with me to Acts chapter 4
verse 12, although we’re also going to look back at verse 11 because it’s very
important for the topic that we’re going to be looking at today.
We’ve been in a series called, “175 and Counting.”
I’ve had a number of you express appreciation for some of the topics
we’ve covered but also puzzle at the name of the series, “175 and Counting.”
It refers to the number of years the congregation has existed – 175
years. And the idea is to look at
very important issues for us as we go forward together, bearing witness to the
Lord Jesus Christ, living the Christian life, heralding the Gospel of the Word.
And so “175 and Counting” is the name of the series.

Now so far we’ve looked at a number of things together but I want to remind you
of two things in particular that we’ve thought about.
We have thought about what a Christian disciple is.
Now there are many Biblical ways that you can describe a disciple and
there are many important Biblical truths that are necessary to understand all
that goes into being a disciple, especially how one becomes a disciple because
we become a disciple of God through His own grace, through the Gospel, through
the work of Christ. But as Jesus
addresses the issue of “What do My disciples look like?” in Matthew chapter 7
verses 24 to 27, one of the things He makes clear to us there is that His
disciples hear and do what He teaches.
Now that’s actually very important for what we’re going to study today
because Jesus is saying this — His disciples believe what He teaches and they do
what He tells them to do. That’s one
of the hallmarks of real disciples of Jesus Christ.
They believe what He teaches and they do what He tells them to do.

Then, the last time we were together, we were thinking about what Jesus taught
about the Bible, what the Bible says about the Bible, especially the Bible’s
truth claims, because we live in a day and time where not only unbelievers but
some professing Christians call into question the authority, the infallibility,
the inspiration, and the inerrancy of Scripture.
And so we spent some time thinking about what the Bible claims about
itself, what Jesus taught about the Bible, and we said that disciples of Jesus
who hear what He teaches and believe it and do what He says will have a high
view of the Scripture because Jesus had a high view of the Scripture and He
wanted His disciples to have a high view of the Scripture too.
Both of those things will come to bear on the issue that we’re going to
look at today because today we’re going to tackle a very difficult issue —
universalism.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, “Why in the world would Ligon address
universalism?” because there has not been so much as a syllable uttered from
this pulpit in 175 years in favor of universalism and that is true and I thank
God for it. But you live in a
pluralistic culture which presents you with two problems.
One is, unbelievers look at you and if you believe that Jesus is the only
way of salvation, many of them say you are arrogant and hateful; you are
narrow-minded and bigoted to believe that Jesus is the only way.
How arrogant of you to think that the only way to God is the way you
think the only way to God is. And
that poses a challenge to Christian witness.
And very often fine Christians waffle in the face of that challenge.
Have you ever watched when the Larry King Live Show was running?
Have you ever watched the cavalcade of religious figures, many of whom
are Christians, many of whom are fine Christians, and Larry King will invariably
ask them what? “Do you believe that
Jesus is the only way of salvation?”
And most of them say what? They
waffle in their answer. Why do they
do that? Because they know that the
answer they are going to give if they are giving the Bible’s answer is going to
be offensive to the audience that is watching that program.
In other words, they are influenced by the way the culture perceived
their answer to that question and it makes them reticent to give the answer.
So that’s one problem – the problem of the world looking at Christians
who believe that Jesus is the only way of salvation and saying you are hateful
and you are arrogant to believe that.

The other problem comes from with inside Christianity because there are many
Christians who, because of that very phenomenon I’ve just described, have
decided that they are embarrassed about Christian teaching on this issue and
therefore they want to change Christianity from being exclusive to being
inclusive because they think that makes Christianity more loving.
In other words, they have accepted the critique of the world and they
have decided to create a kinder, gentler Christianity and so they have rejected
the teaching that Jesus is the only way of salvation in the name of being more
loving. But consequently, they have
undermined the foundation of the Christian faith which is Jesus Christ – who He
is, what He did, and why He came to do what He did.

And that is why I want to address this question today.
I want to address it from both of those directions.
Let me say them again so you’ll understand exactly what I’m trying to get
at today. I’m trying to get at the
issue first of non-Christians who view Christianity and our claims of the
exclusive way of salvation through Jesus Christ, they view those claims as mean
or hateful or bigoted and they view those claims as arrogant. “How dare you say
that everybody else is wrong and you’re right!
How could you be so dismissive and condescending and bigoted towards
other people who have a different point of view?”
So I want to address the question from that standpoint but I also want to
address it from the standpoint of Christians who are embarrassed by Christian
exclusivism, by the exclusive truth claims of Christ as the only way of
salvation, and so they opt for inclusivism, that there are many ways to God and
Jesus is one of those ways or a best way but just one of many ways to God.
So that’s what I want to do together today.
Before we look at the Scriptures and read them and consider this
important issue, let’s pray and ask for God’s help and blessing.

Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word and thank You that as we think through
a thorny and difficult issue, an issue that faces us all if we’re going to be
faithful to Jesus Christ in a pluralistic world, we pray that we would think
Your thoughts after You, that we would not make up our answers to this as we go
along but that we would go back to the sure foundation of Jesus and the
Scriptures. I pray this in Jesus’
name, amen.

This is the Word of God. Hear it.
Acts 4 verse 12. And just to
note, Peter is in the middle of a message as he says these words; he’s preaching
a sermon:

“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.”

Amen, and thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.
May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.

The issue of the exclusive Christian claim based on the teaching of Jesus and
the Bible that Jesus is the only way of salvation when it comes into contact
with a pluralistic culture that is relativistic and says, “All roads lead up the
mountain, all ways lead to heaven, every world religion has truth in it,
Christianity just as well as the others, and therefore we would be arrogant to
say that Jesus is the only way or that the Bible is the only way of salvation.”
That issue of the confrontation, the conflict between those two views is
regular for us in the culture today and it’s not just something happening out
there; it’s something happening in here.

Just within the last couple of years there was a death of a young person in our
community and that young person was from a non-Christian religion, but many of
our own young people were dear friends with that young man and they thought very
highly of him. He was an
intelligent, wonderful person, and it deeply disturbed many of our
Bible-believing Christian young people as they thought about the issue of what
was this young man, who was not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, not a
follower of the truth of the Gospel revealed in the Scripture, what was his
eternal destiny going to be? And
they wrestled with that, some of them even saying, “You know, I’m not sure I
want to go to heaven if he’s not going to be there.”
This is not an abstract question out there.
This is a question especially that presses on the younger generation of
this church because pluralism is dominant in our culture and the Christian
message sounds odd and even mean to many in the secular audience.
We need to understand how to respond to this in a way that is
God-honoring, that is Biblical, and most of all that is loyal to Jesus.

THE REACTION OF NON-CHRISTAINS

TO THE EXCLUSIVE TRUTH CLAIMS OF CHRIST

So I want to look at this question today from two perspectives.
First, from the perspective of the reaction of non-Christians to
exclusive truth claims of Christ, the Gospel, and Christianity.
There are many people who are offended by a Christian praying in the name
of Christ in public or by a Christian sharing the Gospel to someone else who is
from a non-Christian background or an unbelieving background because they view
that as an act of dominance, as an act of condescension, as an act of arrogance,
and ultimately a mean and even a hateful attitude.
So how does a Christian respond to that when someone says, “Do you
believe that Jesus is the only way of salvation?”
You’re sitting in a university classroom; there are all sorts of people
around you who don’t believe in Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation.
You, as a Christian, you’ve just been asked, “Do you believe in Jesus as
the only way of salvation?” When
you’re answering that question, “Yes,” and that’s the right answer, knowing that
you are offending some people who are around you, how are you supposed to take
that in? How do you process that?

One important thing for you to remember, my friends, is as believers, we believe
this not because we thought it up.
Not only have two thousand years of Christians believed it before us, but the
Bible teaches it, the apostles taught it, and Jesus Himself taught it.
The reason, ultimately, that we believe that Jesus is the only way of
salvation is because Jesus said He was the only way of salvation and we trust in
Him for salvation. Remember, let’s
go back to what Jesus said. “How do
you know one of My disciples? He
hears what I teach and he does what I say.”
So our believing that Jesus is the only way of salvation, far from being
from a stance of arrogance, is because we humbly accept what Jesus has claimed
about Himself. We humbly believe
what the Bible says from Genesis 1 to the last chapter of Revelation.
The whole Bible is one long argument against idolatry.
From Genesis 1:1 on, the Bible claims there is one true God and all other
gods are false gods. Did you notice
that was in the call to worship today?
It comes right out of Psalm 95.
That in a call to worship Israel would remind all the people gathering in
Jerusalem that the God that they were about to worship is the only true God and
that all other gods are false gods.
That has been taught from the very first chapter of Genesis all the way through
to the last chapter of Revelation.
Christianity is based on an exclusive truth claim about God.
There is one true God and all other gods are false gods.

But we believe that not because we thought that up last week but because we
believe the authority of Scripture and we believe what Jesus has taught.
And Jesus taught this so clearly.
For instance, in John 14 verse 6 what did He say?
“I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father but by Me.”
When I say that I believe that when I’m asked I’m not being arrogant, I’m
listening to what Jesus taught me to believe.
So the reason that we say what we say and believe what we believe is
because we love Jesus and because we love the people that we’re sharing the
Gospel with. Sharing the Gospel is
not an act of hate; it’s the ultimate act of love.

Many of you love the secular comedian Penn Jillette.
Now Penn Jillette is an atheist.
And there’s an interesting story on the internet and I’ll link to it for
you in The First Epistle this week and you can go look at it.
It will only take you five minutes to look at the video.
There was a Christian who went to see Penn Jillette’s comedy routine in
Las Vegas a couple of years ago. And
Penn is part of the comedy team Penn and Teller.
And after that comedy routine this Christian went to Mr. Jillette just to
say, “I loved your comedy routine.
I’ve always loved your comedy, I find you intelligent and witty and funny.”
And he used very complimentary words.
And then the man went away and after the line had gone through speaking
to Mr. Jillette this man circled back around and very humbly and very carefully
the man said, “Mr. Jillette, I wonder if you wouldn’t be offended if I gave a
Bible to you.” And the man gave Mr.
Jillette a Gideon Bible. Now how do
you think the atheist, Penn Jillette, thought about a Christian giving him a
Bible? Well, you can go see his
thoughts on this event on YouTube. And here’s what Mr. Jillette said.
“If that man believes that Jesus is the only way of salvation and that
believing on Jesus is the only thing that can save a person from an eternity of
hell, then the most hateful thing that man could do would be not to give me a
Bible and not to tell me about the Gospel.
If that man believes what he believes, the most loving thing that he can
do is give me a Bible and share with me about the Gospel.”

Now isn’t that an interesting response from an atheist?
A much more clear headed response than many people who profess to be
Christians give to this issue. The
atheist understood if you really believe that there is a hell — and there is —
and you really believe the Gospel and you really trust in Christ and you really
believe what He teaches then because you love people and you want them to be
blessed with God for eternity you will share the Gospel with them, not as an act
of arrogance and hate but as an act of humility and love.
Why is it that we, as Christians, stand up in a pluralistic world and
say, “Yes, Jesus is the only way”?
Because we didn’t think it up ourselves, we learned this from the lips of Jesus,
and because we love people and we want them to be with God forever.
And by the way, if our non-Christians don’t know that we love them that
way then we need to do a better job of loving them.
They ought to know that we genuinely, tangibly love them and that when we
speak the Gospel to them we speak it not out of hate and contempt and arrogance,
we speak it out of love.

CHRISTIANS EMBARRASSED BY THE

EXCLUSIVE TRUTH CLAIMS OF CHRIST

What about Christians who are embarrassed by this teaching?
I’m going to tell you two stories and just two stories that have happened
in the last year, both words from ministers.
But before I tell you that let me say, when you as a Christian are
embarrassed in your current cultural situation, your current societal situation
which is pluralistic and relativistic and thinks that exclusivism is bad and
inclusivism is good and its exclusive about exclusivity, that is, it can
tolerate anybody except somebody who makes an exclusive truth claim, when you
are embarrassed about the exclusive truth claim of the Scriptures that Jesus is
the only way of salvation and that’s what Peter has just said here, don’t answer
that question socially; answer it Biblically.
When you’re wrestling through the claim, don’t answer it socially.
Don’t answer that question based on the way you think society would want
you to answer that question or don’t base your answer to that question based on
your personal experience; base it on the Scripture.

In fact, I think it would be a wonderful thought exercise for every believer
from time to time to think about the best unbelieving friends that you have, the
person that you think of most highly, the person whose intelligence and
friendliness and friendship and character qualities you admire the most who is
not a Christian, and in your mind picture standing at his or her grave and
answering this question. “Even
standing at my friend’s grave, my friend who didn’t believe in Christ, who
didn’t believe the Bible, who didn’t accept the Gospel, do I still believe what
Jesus said or will I change my belief because I’m standing here in a scene that
I don’t want to have to think about?”
I think it would be a good thought experiment for us all to think about
where our belief ultimately derives from.
Does it derive from what we want to be true or does it derive from what
the Bible says?

Now with that as a preface to this story, my exhortation is simply this — don’t
think through this socially; think through it Biblically.
Let me point you to Acts 4:12.
Peter is speaking to a multitude of Jews.
Now let me ask you a question.
Do you think that Peter thinks that what he says is going to be offensive
to the Jewish people that he’s preaching to at Pentecost?
Or, this is after Pentecost — in the days after Pentecost?
Yes, he knows that what he’s about to say is offensive.
Does that stop him from saying it?
No. Why?
Because Peter is talking about the only way of salvation.
Look at what he says in Acts 4:12.
“There is salvation in no one else.”
Now stop right there. In who?
Go back to verse 11. “This
Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the
cornerstone.” So do you think that
Peter knew that what he was going to say was going to be offensive?
The Jesus that I’m proclaiming to you is the only way of salvation you
rejected. Ah, yes, he knew that it
was going to be offensive. Why did
he say it, because he was hateful?
He was a Jew. Because he was mean?
He loved them and was ready to die in order for them to come to faith in
Jesus Christ. He told them because
it was truth and because it was loving.
What did he say? “There is no
other name under heaven.” And if you go look at that phrase, “under heaven,”
it’s a Hebrew idiom. You’ll find it
in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
It means, “absolutely everything and everyone.”
There’s no other name among absolutely everything, everyone, anywhere by
which a person may be saved but through who?
Verse 11 — Jesus.

Now many Christians are embarrassed by that and typically here’s how it happens.
They encounter people that they love and they cannot bring themselves to
bear the thought that those people that they love who are without Christ could
be lost and they don’t want them to be offended.
Two stories. Susan Strouse is
an ordained minister and she is the head of an inter-faith ministry in San
Francisco. And in her testimony
about a year ago she tells the story of how she moved from traditional
Christianity to what she calls a more progressive inter-faith view of
Christianity and she says, “Here’s how it started:
I was at a funeral of a friend in an Episcopal church.
I was sitting next to my very best friend who is Jewish and as the priest
read John 14:6, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ for the first time in
my life I heard those words through the ears of my Jewish friend, my best friend
sitting next to me, and I knew then that I had to change my belief.”
In other words, she was offended for her friend by what Jesus said and
she chose to believe something that was more comfortable for her experience even
though it was in contradiction of what Jesus said.
And so she actually went through a process of trying to show that the
Bible speaks with an uncertain sound on this issue.
But notice how it happened.
It happened out of friendship. It
didn’t flow out of a deep Bible study that led her to say, “Well, you know I’ve
been studying the Bible for five years now and I just can’t believe that Jesus
is the only way of salvation anymore.”
No, it happened when she realized that what Jesus said was offensive to a
friend and she decided to change what she believed.

Now another story. A minister who
grew up in a Christian home recently told his congregation that he could no
longer believe that Jesus was the only way of salvation.
Why? Because he said as he
grew up, and I think I’ll just quote here so I don’t get these words wrong.
As he grew up he “came to know people of other faiths, people in whom the
Spirit of God was beautifully, powerfully, undeniably present and then I had
myself a big problem.” He could no
longer believe in the exclusive claims of Christ as the only way of salvation.
In fact, he tells the story of going to the bar mitzvah of the child of a
friend and he said, “I could not go to that bar mitzvah and come away thinking
that my friends were outside the pale of God’s saving love and so I simply had
to reject that part of my belief.”
But notice what’s happening there.
The belief is being shaped by the experience, by the relationship, by the social
setting, not by the Bible. Now he
too attempts to try and provide evidence that the Bible speaks with an uncertain
sound on this question. Sadly, that
is an absolutely impossible feat.
The Bible is crystal clear on this from beginning to end.

The way to answer this is not to try and mute what the Bible says, it is to
humbly accept that Jesus teaches this and there is no possibility in the world
that there is someone out there more loving than Jesus.
You know, if you want to put your money on somebody that you think is
more loving that Jesus, I’ll pick Jesus.
I’m sticking with Him. I’m
going with Him. I don’t think there
is anybody more loving than Jesus.
But the other problem with this, of course, is that it doesn’t accept what the
Bible says about all people. As
wonderful as unbelievers are, what does Paul say about all of us in Romans
chapter 3 verse 10? All of us are
sinners. “There is none righteous,
no, not one.” Not one.
Even the most lovely unbeliever that you’ve ever met is a sinner in need
of God’s grace. And what does the
Bible say about Jesus? He is God’s
only begotten Son. He’s come into
this world to do what? To bear our
sins. Romans 5:10 — “At the right
time, Jesus came” to do what? “To
die for the ungodly.” It’s because
we believe that everybody’s problem is sin and that Jesus is the only solution,
God’s own Son who came into this world to die for that sin, that we receive the
truth that Jesus is the only way of salvation.
Jesus taught it, His apostles taught it, the Bible teaches it from
beginning to end. We believe and
proclaim it not out of hate but out of love, not out of arrogance but out of
humility.

It’s so important for Christians to understand this.
This is important both for our witness and it is important so that our
faith is not undermined. You live in
a world that forever and ever, as long as you live, is going to challenge and
question and generally not like your exclusive truth claims.
But they’re not your exclusive truth claims; they’re Jesus’.
All you’re doing is hearing your Master and listening to Him and doing
what He says. And when you hear Him
and do Him – do what He says – there is no possibility that you will be unloving
towards anyone. We ought to be more
evident and tangible in our love for unbelievers than unbelievers.
You know, one of the things that I say to this dear brother who grew up
in a Christian home and then encountered nice unbelievers is, “We need to get
out more if that’s your experience!
We need to have more relationships with pagans who we like and they need to see
our love and we don’t need to be shaken up by the fact that there are nice
people out there that don’t believe what Jesus says.”
That’s why Jesus has us in the world — to bear witness to those things,
not because we hate them but precisely because we love them.

Oh my friends, it’s so important for us to have the foundation of our faith
squarely laid, not on our experience, not on what the society accepts, but on
the Bible and on Jesus. That’s where
we started singing, hymn 94, “How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord, is
laid for your faith in His excellent Word.”
And where are we going to end?
“Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation.”
Our key in this area is that we want our minds to be the mind of Christ
our Savior and we’re going to sing that too at the end of the service.
Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word.
Help us to faithfully believe what Jesus taught, to hear Him and then do
what He tells us to do out of humility and love but with boldness and courage.
In Jesus’ name, amen.

Now take your hymnals in hand and turn with me to number 343, “Christ Is Made
the Sure Foundation.” Let’s sing the
first stanza.

After the benediction make sure to take out your bulletins and sing that stanza
of “May the Mind of Christ.” Receive
now God’s blessing. Grace, mercy,
and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.