Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Jesus the ONLY Way? | Who Is Jesus? | John 14.6

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

But what about people who never hear about Jesus? What about all the other good people who aren't Christians? Get answers to these questions and more from https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastors Keith Simon) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick Miller) as we continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/who-is-jesus/ (Who Is Jesus?) Interested in more content like this? Check out our earlier episode episodes on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/do-all-good-people-go-to-heaven-questions-youre-asking-romans-3-23/ (Do All Good People Go to Heaven?) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-exclusive-is-christianity-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-10-25-37/ (How Exclusive is Christianity?) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minut Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Welcome to the COVID edition of 10 Minute Bible Talks. Patrick, have you had COVID? No. Have you been tested? Yes.

I say it's a COVID edition because I sound like I have COVID, but I've never been tested, so I've never had it. It's amazing how that works, right? You know, I don't think that's actually how it works. What is it? No, it's not. And I feel really glad I'm six feet apart. from you right now. Absolutely. I don't sound very well, but don't worry. Everything will be fine. Everything is fine. Thank you for caring. All right. So here we are. We're going to talk about a question

that I've always kind of been fascinated with, and I get asked by a lot of people. And that is, is Jesus the only way to God? So let me share a story with you about last weekend. We were with some friends, Christine and I were. And one of the people said to me, hey, what about good people? get to get into heaven? I mean, do you really have to believe in Jesus? What about all these other religions? Are they really all wrong? Is that what it means to be a Christian is to say that all these other religions are wrong and good people are not going to get into heaven? And just the context of the place where we're at, I didn't have a chance to dive into that with her. But I think it's a common question that a lot of people have. Patrick, you watch Oprah. I can't say I do. I

Oprah's not even on anymore, right? You've never seen an Oprah show? I've seen the Oprah show. I mean, I remember growing up every now and then it would be on our TV. I don't know that I ever watched through a whole thing. I mean, I was a kid. Well, but it wasn't exactly, you know. You weren't into sports, so you had to be into song.

Okay, so. I watched Jerry Springer. That was Maya. The reason I brought up Oprah is because there's an episode of Oprah that she wrestles with this question, and it's fascinating. It's really interesting. So we're going to play a little clip from that. Now, you have to picture 1980s, at least I think it's the 80s, super big hair.

I mean, it's exciting hair. Well, I mean, yeah, the funny thing is... Shoulder pads. My wife and I, we lived through the 80s, and she had hair. She had hair like that. I got some crazy pictures. Did you kind of have like a bullet thing going on? Oh, I've had some really bad moments in my life.

Okay, so here we're going to go. We're going to play this. it'll set it up and enjoy. One of the mistakes that human beings make is believing that there is only one way to live and that we don't accept that there are diverse ways of being in the world, that there are millions of ways to be a human being. And many ways, no, but many paths to what you call God. And her path might be something else, and when she gets there, she might call it the light.

But her loving and her kindness and her generosity brings her, if it brings her to the same point that it brings you, it doesn't matter whether she called it God along the way or not. And I guess the danger that could be on that, I mean, it sounds great on the onset, but if you really look at both sides, I could be a person. There couldn't possibly be just one way. What about Jesus? What about Jesus? There is one way and only one way, and that is true Jesus. There couldn't possibly be with the millions of people in New York. It could possibly be. Because you say, you intellectualize it and say there isn't. If you don't believe that, you're all buying into the lie.

Do you think that if you are somewhere on the planet, if you're somewhere on the planet and you never hear the name of Jesus, you never hear the name of Jesus. But yet you live with a loving heart. You lived as Jesus would have had you to live. You lived for the same purpose that Jesus came to the planet to teach us all. But you are in some remote part of the earth and you never heard the name of Jesus. You cannot get to heaven.

So what did you think, Patrick? What do you think of that little dialogue between Oprah and her studio audience? I think that the questions Oprah's asking are questions that a lot of people, I mean, I've asked those questions. They're really good questions. And they kind of feel like good defeaters. I mean, we all know good people. You know, we know these people and we think, gosh, they're not following Jesus. How is it possible that they're not going to be with him or with me forever? And so I really understand it. I'll be honest. The funniest thing about that clip is if Oprah did that exact same stick today, there wouldn't be anybody in the studio audience.

challenging her. There's no one raising. You don't have all these ladies clapping for the Jesus ladies saying, yeah, you're right. I mean, today if that happened, I would be like, uh-huh, yep, no. Good point, Oprah. We agree with you. I think one of the things that keeps people from becoming Christians is that Christians seem very intolerant. The way people understand Christianity and understand Jesus, he is essentially saying he is the only way and every other way is wrong. And in our age, in our culture, and our world, that's just, unacceptable. I mean, that is one of the highest forms of bigotry to think that you've got truth, capital T, truth, that Jesus is capital T truth. I mean, people don't have a category for that,

and they write Christianity off as if, well, that's obviously not right. And I think people are really fearful of bringing that kind of attitude into the public square, the idea that you have or that Jesus has the corner on truth, or that Jesus even has a claim on our lives, that he should be able to tell me or you how we live. I feel like we're seeing this right now. I'm not trying to make a political point, but with the nomination of Amy Coney-Barritt. I mean, one of the big things that's come out of this is there's a lot of people who are questioning, and whether or not you like her, it's interesting that there are people who are questioning her commitment to God. There's kind of people who seem to be saying, wow, she's a little bit too serious about her faith.

And I think that's the problem that they're afraid of is we can't bring someone whose truth, whose values are being shaped by their faith, by the Bible, into the public square, rather than, I guess, secularism? I'm not really sure. Well, and I think if people are concerned about religions believing they have truth and then doing violence in the name of that truth, I think there's legitimate concerns there. I mean, we don't have to think back past 9-11 to see that there was a group of people who thought they had truth, a corner on the market, and they thought that it was right to violently attack us, the United States, because they had that religious truth. And we could go back

through history and find lots of other examples of religious wars between people who... Between Christians. Right. Because they thought they had truth. You were wrong. Now, I don't know that the problem was that they thought they had truth. I think the problem was that they thought violence was the way to spread that truth. Yeah, that's exactly right. And we should be crystal clear. When we talk about, is Jesus the only way? We aren't suggesting that if he is the only way, we should take the Charlemagne approach and forcibly baptize people and make them become Christian. I don't think that's anything Jesus wants anything to do with. Yeah, I think what we're going to find is that Jesus gives us a way to believe that he is the truth

and yet be very gracious and winsome and inclusive of other people, of other faith. or no faith at all, good people, bad people. I think what we're going to find is that Jesus's exclusivity is an inclusive kind of exclusivity. Okay, so let's start here, because there are people who are following Jesus who question whether Jesus really took an exclusive approach. So do we see anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says, yes, I am the only way? Well, I think you're right. The friend I was talking to, no doubt would think that she is a Christian. No doubt considers herself a follower of Jesus in some ways, and yet is turned off by this exclusivity. But it's Jesus himself that we find ourselves arguing with. Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father but through me. He says in Luke 10, by the way, that was John 14.6, but he says also in Luke 10 that the one who rejects me rejects the one who sent me. So this is rooted, this idea that Jesus is the truth and the only way. is rooted in his own claims about himself. He claimed that he was God and that he alone could pay for people's sin. And therefore, he is the only way to be forgiven and to be reconciled with God and to be cleansed to the guilt of our sin. And the very notion that our eternal existence, that there might be two different directions that can go. That's something that Jesus talked about more than any other person in the Bible. If it weren't for Jesus, we probably wouldn't be talking about

him being the only way. If it weren't for Jesus, we probably wouldn't have the idea that people's, again, their eternal destinies can go in two different directions. In fact, if you read Paul in his letters very carefully, it's obvious that he has one particular hope. His hope is for resurrection. He's hoping that one day Jesus will return and bring people back to life on this earth. Well, that's one perspective on what the good place you might say is like. If you talk to a Buddhist, if you talk to a Muslim, if you talk to people from many different religious traditions, they might say, well, no, no, no, no, hold on. My hope isn't to be resurrected and to live on the earth forever. I mean, the hopes themselves are different. So when we start talking about people going to heaven,

we have to start with the fact that somehow we've made this base assumption that everybody's ideas about heaven are the same. They're not the same. Christianity is actually unique in its emphasis on the resurrection. on that being our ultimate hope? Well, am I right to say that Christianity is the only religion? For sure, I think, the only major religion of the world in which its founder rose from the dead. Yes, I have. Right? I mean, Muhammad didn't claim to rise from the dead.

His followers didn't claim to rise from the dead. Moses didn't rise from the dead. Buddha didn't rise from the dead. So Jesus said that he was God. He was the only way. He said that he was going to rise from the dead. He then rose from the dead. His followers claimed he rose from the dead. And the whole church was launched by this unique event of Jesus' resurrection. So let's start with a claim that Oprah makes in the

video and that I actually remember having a conversation with a friend several years ago who made the exact same claim. He was saying to me, look, I appreciate J.C. That's what he called Jesus. J.C. I appreciate, you know, Muhammad and Buddha. And I think they all have great wisdom. But the simple truth is they're all pointing in the exact same direction. They're all just different paths up the same mountain, and there's no need to put Buddha in opposition to Jesus or Muhammad in opposition to Moses. We don't have to make that choice. They're all the same. So what I find interesting there is that the person who makes that assertion is trying to relativize the truth of religious claims. So it's trying to say, hey, it doesn't really

matter what you believe because you're all going to end up in the same spot. in the end, just like Oprah was saying, but that's an absolute truth claim, right? I mean, it's sort of self-refuting to say it is absolutely true that religions are not absolutely true. It's not just that. To my perspective, it's a little bit insulting and a little bit naive. The only person who can make a claim like that is someone who hasn't paid very close attention to the actual religious perspectives of the various groups they're saying are all the same. I mean, it's interesting to me. I mean, obviously, I'm someone who's committed to Jesus. I have, and I can sit across the table from someone who's committed to Judaism, someone who's committed to Islam, someone who's committed to Buddha. And we can have conversations. And you know what we all agree on? I think my way is right. And I think your way is probably wrong. But I find it much less offensive to talk to someone who's a Muslim. And he says, no, Allah is the way, not Jesus. I mean, Jesus was a great guy, but he's not the way. I find that much less offensive than the person who is not at all committed to religion. They're not trying to walk with God in their lives in any deeply

committed way. And they're telling me, actually, you two guys who've committed your lives to this, you're both wrong, and I'm right, someone who hasn't committed myself to any form of spirituality, I'm the one who's right here. I mean, it's just ironic to me. We're okay disagreeing with each other, me and my friend who's a Muslim, but the person who doesn't even care about the issue is telling us that we're both being intolerant. Let me make sure I understand this, because it sounds like the person who is saying that all religions lead to the same God, lead to the same place. What they're really doing is minimizing the truth claims, or you might say minimizing the doctrinal claims of each religion. And they're essentially saying what you

believe, the doctrine you believe, that doesn't really matter. But that in itself is a doctrinal claim. So to say, I believe in the doctrine that doctrines don't matter is, again, self-refuting. To say, I believe in the absolute truth that no religions are absolutely true, it just doesn't quite make sense. It's not even internally consistent. So one common response to what you're saying right now, Keith, is they say, well, hold on. I'm not saying that each of these religions don't have a unique take on God that's valuable. They say, look, you can think about God like an elephant. And maybe the Christians got the elephant ear, and they can tell you all about the elephant year. And maybe the Hindu has got the elephant's leg, and maybe the person who is following Muhammad

has the elephant's trunk. You can keep going on like that. Each different religious group has one part of the elephant. The problem is that they're all blind. So all they can do is feel their part, and they, because they're blind, come to the misconception that their part of the elephant is the elephant. The Christian who's got the ear says, ah, yes, God is thin and leathery. And they, and they're, and they're And the person who's got the leg says, ah, God is a great tree. And the person who's got the trunk says, God is flexible and he's a blowhard, you know? Like, I don't know. That's pretty good.

Yeah, is that good? I don't know. I don't know. And so they'd say, look, I understand that there's differences between your faith. What you guys don't understand is that they can all somehow, and I don't know how this works, be united to one another. You're all just touching different parts of the elephant. Yeah, but of course, the person who sits back and says each religion has part of God. God, but not the whole thing, claims to be able to see all of God or claims to be able to see

the whole elephant. So again, they're putting themselves in this position where they claim to have knowledge that they also claim no one else can possibly have. So they think they've got God when they've just got a piece of the elephant, but they somehow are enlightened so that they see the whole big picture and can tell us that we don't see the big picture. I mean, it's kind of a funny claim. You've effectively told me I'm blind, but you're not. Yeah, right. I've got sight. And again, it's insulting, I think, to people who have deeply committed

themselves to walking with God, whether those commitments are correct or incorrect. It's just insulting of someone who has not deeply committed their life to following God to tell you, hey, I'm the one who sees and you're the one who's blind when it comes to spiritual matters. People look around the world and they notice that people of the same religion tend to live close to each other. So, say a country like Saudi Arabia is overwhelmingly Muslim. And they come to the conclusion that your cultural influence, your upbringing, determines your religion. And so they might say to someone like you, Patrick, hey, you know, you're a Christian because you grew up in America. If you'd have grown up in Saudi Arabia, you'd probably be a Muslim. So therefore, it's your cultural setting

that you're brought up in that really shaped your religious beliefs. I'm kind of laughing as you talk because my first thought whenever anybody says that to me, my very first thought is you would never say that statement to me if you didn't grow up in the United States. If you grew up in Saudi Arabia, you aren't telling me, hey, it's a result of your culture that you have your religious beliefs. That is a very American, Western European way of thinking. Yeah, we're probably one of the few cultures that buy into this relativism when it comes to religion, right? Oh, we're one of the only cultures in history. I mean, I suppose you could go back to, you know, the polytheistic days of Rome and Greece when they're just kind of collecting gods into their pantheon and say, well, there was maybe a time when everybody agreed that everybody could be right, but they were all theists, at least, they all believed in God. Usually the person who's making that kind of critique doesn't have much of a concept of God. I think another challenge I would make to that, and this is one of the things that makes Christianity incredibly unique. Many religions, when they move into different. areas, they bring with it their culture. So if you think about Islam, if you want to

follow Muhammad, if you want to worship Allah, it usually comes with taking on some of the Arabic culture. You might learn how to read Arabic, so that you can actually read the Quran in the original language. The same thing is true for Buddhism and even more kind of stringent forms of Judaism. What's interesting about Christianity is that it has had this ability to be planted in many cultures. And so to say that I'm a Christian, because of my culture is actually a funny statement because Christianity is all over the world. Christianity is actually growing the most in the southern hemisphere and the eastern hemisphere, not in the West. So if you want to make the claim that your culture is leading you into a religion, it would be

far more rational to say that to someone who grew up in the Southern Hemisphere or the Eastern Hemisphere, not to someone who grew up in the West. To someone who grew up in the West, your secularism, your idea that all religions lead to one place, that's much more descriptive of what most people believe in the West. So again, these are just funny claims if you step back and you think about them. So another critique that people have about Christianity is that they say that Christians are arrogant to believe that their religion has a corner on the truth, and they go out and try to share the gospel or try to convert people to that truth. And, you know, I get it in our culture today to try to say that you have capital T truth is perceived as being arrogant. Everybody

wants to talk about your truth, my truth, the truth in your heart. Now, I don't think that actually works in any other area of life. So can we talk about it for just one moment? Let's say I'm getting ready to board an airplane. Let's put you in the situation. You are getting ready to board an airplane and you find out that your mechanic does not believe in truth when it comes to fixing engines. And all of a sudden, he says, oh, yeah, you know, you got your truth, I got my truth. And I just fix this engine according to my truth. You'd go, well, I'm not getting on that plane because I want that engine repaired to reflect the truth about how engines work. Or if you went to the doctor and you're getting ready to go under for surgery and your doctor whispered to you, hey, just so you know,

I don't really believe in truth when it comes to double bypass surgery. You'd be like, well, get me out of here, right? I don't want your truth, doctor. I want you to perform this surgery, according to the truth. But for some reason, when we start talking about religious truth claims, we start minimizing their importance, and we start saying, well, you know, when Jesus said, I'm the way of the truth and the life, that's poetic. But we don't think that in any other facet of our life. And that's important because I would argue that your faith, your commitments to God are far more important than who your surgeon is. They're far more important than the mechanic who's working on your airplane.

And yet we want to treat them like mere opinions. There was a friend of mine who said that his daughter came home from school, and they were learning about facts and opinions, and they were putting in columns what were facts and what were opinions. And where do you want to guess God goes? Oh, wow. This is what school? Okay, never mind.

But God goes into the opinion column, right? You're welcome to have your opinion about God, but there are no facts about God. Isn't that amazing? Why would someone feel like they have permission to put truth, claims, say, of Muhammad in the opinion category. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's not just a Christianity at that point they're attacking. It's all religious truth claims. Yeah, it's absolutely all of them. Now, you know, again, because we live in America, they probably felt like they were only attacking

Christianity, which is, again, ironic because America has lots of different religions. The funny thing to me about this whole bit is that to say that having a truth claim makes you arrogant, That is in itself a, again, self-refuting claim. There's this great story from the U.K. When was it? It was like the 1800s? I think it was the late 1700s. I want to say 1790 Hampton Court maze.

I could be wrong on the date. So all these people... But I'm probably not. COVID makes me smart. It only makes me stronger. So these people go into this maze in Hampton, the Hampton Court maze. And it's a fun maze because apparently it's a big maze and it's a very confusing maze. and people get lost in the maze.

I mean, they get lost for hours, which would be terrifying if you think about it. I got lost in the corn maze nearby us. My daughter got lost in the corn maze just last weekend. She did? What kind of parent are you? What was your daughter doing away from you? I wasn't there. It was just my wife and one of our friends.

Oh, my gosh. You just threw Emily under the bus. Well, you know, I actually believe in a parenting style, which is not helicopter parenting. So I appreciate my wife giving my daughter a little freedom. Oh, wow. That was a good recap. recovery. You can snowplow all you want. She doesn't listen to this anyway.

that she doesn't. So go back to the maze. Hampton Court maze, people are lost. So what's the solution? So what's the solution that they come up with? They get a guy up on a big tower, and his job is to kind of oversee the maze and guide people out of the maze whenever they get lost,

so they don't get stuck. Now, what's so interesting to me is that when someone says your truth claims, your capital T truth claims make you arrogant, what they seem to be implying is that I'm going into this maze of God, I'm getting lost in there. I think that I've got the truth, but really I'm just lost. And that person who's telling me, hey, you're arrogant, you think that you've got the corner on the truth,

they think that they're the maze collar. They're at the top telling me, actually, Patrick, all religions lead to the same place. Actually, Patrick, it's very arrogant of you to think that you have the truth. But they're the one sitting on the tower telling me how to get out. I'm not the one sitting on the tower. I could sit across a table from them and say, hey, well, we have two different perspectives here, and I can tolerate you and I can listen to your perspective, and you can listen to mine, but you shouldn't be calling me the arrogant one. So it's kind of interesting that those who say that Christianity is tolerant for having truth claims are themselves intolerant because they have their own truth claims.

Those who say Christianity is intolerant because they believe they know who God really is are themselves intolerant because they're the ones who are claiming to know who God is. So they fall prey to their own accusations. Yeah, I mean, it is a deeply, richly theological claim. I mean, it is a profound theological claim to say, all religions lead to the same place. You have to be so completely confident that that's the truth, that God has revealed himself to humans in such a way that he has done it with many faces and many places. That is a profound theological statement. It might be a correct one, but man, I'd want to think through it.

So let's go back to the maze for just a second and think, what if God were the person standing on the platform who oversawares? saw the whole maze. And he came down off the platform and led us to the truth. That's what Christianity teaches, right? That Jesus came to reveal who God is and to lead us to God. So that raises another objection that Oprah brought up if you believe that God is revealed in Jesus. What about people who have never heard about Jesus? It's a really good question. And it's something that theologians have struggled with and wrestled through. And in the history of Christianity, you've had people take different perspectives. You have those who say, look, no, people need to hear the name of Jesus. They need to hear that he is king and give him their allegiance to be saved, to live with him forever.

But other people have pointed to passages like Romans 1 that seem to allude to the fact that when people don't know Jesus, they're held accountable to, in some senses, their own standards, that God isn't going to hold them accountable for the fact that they didn't know Jesus' name, and said he's going to hold them accountable to what they did know. So here's how I think about it. And like you said, this has been debated through church history, and I am not claiming to have the last word on it. But Romans 1 tells us that everyone can look at the world around us

and see that there is a God. By the design of the creation, we can learn certain things about God. and our own conscience tells us that we are sinful because not only do we break God's laws, but we break our own laws. So imagine this. You could be a person who never heard about Jesus because you lived in a country that was not exposed to the gospel. And you would know this according to the Bible. You would know that there is a God who created things, who created you, and that you are guilty of breaking God's laws and your own laws because you have a guilty conscience. Now, at that point, what do you do? Well, remember, you've never heard about Jesus.

So if you cast yourself on the mercy of the God that you only know a little bit about, I'm open to the argument that says that person will be accepted by God, not based on their goodness, but based on Jesus, even if they haven't heard about Him, because they've cast themselves in the mercy of God because of the guilt of their own sin. I'm not confident that's what the Bible teaches. I feel much better about saying that every person needs to put their hope and faith in Jesus, but I'm open to the possibility. Yeah, God is so much more gracious than I think we imagine.

And so I feel really good about saying, you know what, I don't know the answer, but the guy who does know the answer is Jesus. He's a person who came to be like us, to die for us, to rise for us. If that's the guy in charge of making the decision, I think I can feel confident. I think I can feel confident that he's going to do the right thing. thing. Now, one of the interesting things you just said, Keith, that I think is key, is you said, look, all people know there is a God and that they have fallen short of that God's standards in some fashion in some way. And he said, maybe if you cast yourself on him and you cast yourself

on his mercy, that's the path towards walking with him forever. What you didn't say, though, is that by being a good person, you can earn God's favor and thereby walk with God, live with God forever. And that's actually usually at the crux of this question, right? When people say, hey, it's not just people haven't heard of Jesus. It's also, I know some really good people who don't want anything to do with Jesus. And they're good people. How could Jesus possibly reject them? Well, and you even heard Oprah reference that in that conversation we played earlier, where she's saying, what about all the people who try to do what God wants them to do? And it seems like what Oprah's assuming and what a lot of people assume is that there are people out there who are good,

people. Now, I'm not sure where these people are, right? I mean, I wish they'd show up and lead our country, to be honest, all these good moral people out there. Because when I look at the news and the world around me, I don't walk away from that and going, man, there's a lot of good people. What I look around and go, man, people are corrupt and sinful. But it's not just out there. Unfortunately, it's inside of me too. My own conscience condemns me so that I know that I am guilty. And if we're talking about people who've never heard about Jesus, well, fair enough. But again, we don't have to worry about them breaking God's laws. They break their own laws, just like I do.

Every person struggles with a guilty conscience. So I'm not convinced that there's this group of people out here who are good people. Now, I don't saying everybody's as evil as they possibly could be. I'm not saying everyone is Hitler, but I am saying that no one is good. no one keeps their own laws, much less God's laws. So now, what do we do with that? What do we do with this idea of the gospel for good people? Yeah, and this could be a really offensive notion of people, but it's something that Christians have believed since the time of Jesus, that no one, not a single person, can be considered good or righteous or upstanding in God's eyes by their own works.

In fact, if you go all the way back to Genesis 11 and you read the story, of people trying to build the Tower of Babylon. And what does it say about them? It says that they were trying to make a great name for themselves. Humans have always been proud. We've always arrogantly said, we are great. We are awesome. And one thing we might add to this is, we are good. Look how good we are. I mean, that's part of even here in the West, our kind of modern mythology is this notion that we are the best people who've ever lived. All those people in the 1800s and 70 years, those were, wow, I mean, what bad people, but we've all arrived. We're good. And the Bible looks at us and says, no, no you're not. When people say like Oprah or anybody, again, I don't want to pick on her

because so many people believe this, but when we say that good people will be accepted by God, that sounds incredibly exclusive to me. Why? Well, because only good people can get in, and where does that leave me, because I'm not a good person, where does that leave all those out there who aren't good people? It sounds incredibly unmerciful because there's no room for forgiveness. you've got to be good. But we've all blown it. You've blown it. I've blown it. Every single person has blown it. And there's no mercy. There's no forgiveness in the gospel that says good people get accepted by God. You know what that sounds like to me? Sounds like a country club. Now I'm not a member of a country club. You're not private school Patrick. Couldn't get into the country club? I don't currently make an income level that would allow me to become a member of a country club. I suppose I could get a country club loan, maybe.

and then I could get in. I'd be dumb. Yeah, it would be very dumb. Let's make our own country club. Yeah. Oh, hey, there you go. 10-minute Bible Talk country club. Who wants to join?

Costs $10. That's it. No, it sounds like a country club in the sense that if you have to be good to walk with Jesus forever, then you have to have a certain, if you disagree with us and say, no, I think there is such a thing as a good person on their own. Well, what's the right level of goodness? How much goodness do you have to have in the bank to be able to afford to get into heaven? And how many people authentically have that?

I mean, if you put a recorder in their heart, If you could hear their thoughts, if you could hear how they talked about people in their heads, if you get to hear about how they think about others, how they proudly think about themselves. Would anybody have enough money to get into there? But it seems like Jesus is doing something very different. If Jesus has a country club, it's a country club that's got a zero dollar entry fee. In fact, it's a country club that will take on your debts. It says, I don't care how much money you've lost.

I don't care how much money you own to the credit card. People don't care how much money you've got out there in loans. We'll take on all your debt. Anybody here is welcome. We'll take on all the debt. We will cancel it all. and you can be a member of our country club. That's the least exclusive country club that's ever existed.

That's a country club I want to sign up for it, by the way. I'd like to get my house paid off. That'd be very nice. Well, that's what I meant when I said that Jesus is exclusive, but an inclusive kind of way. Because Jesus says that he is the only way to God, but every single human being is invited to come to him. That he has died to pay for your sin.

So that which keeps people from God, their sin, has been paid for in Jesus. All are welcome. Men are welcome. Women are welcome. Older people and younger people and middle-aged people. Black, white, Latino, Asian, there's no ethnicity that is kept out. This is not a religion based on spiritual attainments. It's not a religion that builds spiritual pride. It's a religion that builds spiritual humility because Jesus offers his body, his death and resurrection, his forgiveness, salvation to every single person alive. And I think we can press the point even further.

Christianity, if you take it seriously, if you take the Bible seriously, it actually transforms you over time into the kind of person who's not intolerant, into the kind of person who's not always angrily saying, I'm right, everybody else is wrong. Christianity is actually religion that on the one hand is able to affirm what's good in other religions. It can look around at the world and say, wow, there's lots of good things everywhere. and we can affirm those things. But it's also a faith that right on page one says all people are made in God's image. And because that's true, they all deserve dignity. They all deserve respect and honor.

And so if you follow Jesus, it's not going to transform me to some sort of intolerant bigot, quite the opposite. It's going to transform you to the kind of person who respects and honors and loves and cherishes the lives of others. Yeah, and we're not even surprised when there are people of other faiths or no faith that those people are more virtuous than us. We're not surprised at all because we're not saved based on our virtue. We want to grow in being more like Jesus, but we know that we have a long way to go. And there might be other people out there who don't share our faith in Christ, who are further along. We can respect that. We don't have to act as if we've got the corner on the market when it comes to morality. If I can be honest, I think the real reason that we get so up in

arms about the supposed intolerance of Jesus, the fact that he says he is the way, the truth, the life is because we don't like anything that's binding on us. We don't like the idea that someone could come to us and say, this is the only way. Everybody's welcome, but this is the only way. We want to make our own way. We want to call our own shots. There's nothing more offensive to us, and dare I say, it's because we are in our cultural context, than someone infringing on our sense of liberty, my sense of I get to do what I want to do. And yet Jesus says, you've been doing what you want to do, and it's leading you down a dark path. It's taking you to a place that you do not want to go. And so I'm here to get you out of this maze. I'm here to take anybody who will follow me. All you

have to do is show up. All you have to do is walk alongside me. I will take any of you into eternal life, into a lifelong experience, living with me, and being loved by me. And that, I think, is an insulting message. It's also an incredibly hopeful message. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations. Thank you.