Uniqueness of Christianity1

My subject this evening is the uniqueness of Christianity. Some years ago I was invited into a high school in North America. It was a comparative religions class, and I was asked to speak on the subject of Christianity.

My title then was, Why Christianity Can't Compete. The reason was, there's no competition. I don't say that lightly, and I want to say at the very outset that in order to be a Christian, you don't have to believe that everything is bad about every other religion.

There are many good things in other religions, otherwise people wouldn't believe them. But what the Christian believes is that where Christianity fundamentally disagrees with other religions, that Christianity is right, otherwise we wouldn't be Christians. Like mathematics, there are some answers that are closer to the right answer than others, but there's only one right answer.

It astounds me that people who are going to buy a new stereo system or a new automobile or a refrigerator will spend a great deal of time reading the magazines, looking into the consumer reports, and selecting the very best one for the money. But when it comes to their eternal souls, they flippantly say, well, everybody has their own belief, you know. When I went to university, there would be people who would ask me, you're a Christian? Yes.

Your parents were Christians? Yes. That explains it. You're a Christian because your parents were Christians.

If they were Hindus or Muslims or Buddhists, that's what you'd be. And you know, I had to confess that was one reason why I was a Christian, because I had seen the reality of Christianity in my parents' life. But that's not really the question, you know.

The question is, if I were able to line up all the belief systems in the world and prod them and poke them and turn them on and try them out, then what would I be? I'd like to read a few verses from the book of Romans in the New Testament. If you have a Bible, you can read along. If not, you can listen.

This book was written specifically to explain the message of Christianity, the fundamental message of Christianity. And when I speak about Christianity, I am not speaking about this particular church's beliefs or that, but what the Bible actually says about the Christian message. Like barnacles on the hull of a ship, Christianity has tended to gather certain ideas from men that have encrusted it with human opinion.

And I'd like to, if I could, take it simply from the Word of God. What is the message that is proclaimed here? In Romans chapter 1 and verse 1, we read this. Paul, and that's all the reading will do for now, I'll read on in a moment.

But when we read that word, it ought to shock us, because the man who is about to tell us that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the only Savior, was a Jew, a Jew who had been handpicked by the Jewish high court to eradicate from the face of the earth the name of Jesus of Nazareth. He did it with a vengeance, with a passion, going from city to city with authority to take men and women who believed in Jesus, bring them bound to Jerusalem, run them through a trial of sorts, and have them executed. You would hardly think that a man who killed Christians for a living would have anything good to say about Jesus at all.

But one day, as he went about his business, he came face to face with overwhelming evidence that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. He met him, and his life was transformed, and the great antagonist of the gospel became the great protagonist of the gospel, eventually giving his life for the cause of Christ. And so we ought to take his words quite seriously, for this man, unlike the speaker tonight, did not grow up in a Christian home.

He hated the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and something dramatic happened to change him to, as we read, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, or Jesus the Messiah, the Hebrew word for the Greek word Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel, the good news, of God, which God had promised before by his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. As I mentioned, it's quite possible to be a Christian and to believe that there is a great deal of good in other religions, and where the message of Christianity fundamentally disagrees with other religions generally is at one particular point. One day a famous preacher in America, Harry Ironside, was preaching on the streets in Oakland, California, and as he preached, a passerby interrupted him and said, "'Excuse me, sir, how do you expect an ordinary man like me to figure out the right way? There are thousands of beliefs in the world.' Harry Ironside said, "'Sir, thousands of beliefs? I only know of two.'" I said, "'The man, there's Buddhism and Confucianism and Hinduism and Islam and all the isms of Christendom.

What do you mean only two beliefs?' Ironside said, "'Sir, there are those who believe they can save themselves and those who believe they need a Savior.'" All of the religions of the world basically tell you there's something you need to do to save yourself, but the message of Christianity is unique in this, that it proclaims to men and women a Savior.