Did the witers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - EYEWITNESS

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

Grace and other religions

During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world were discussing whether any one belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time, until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. “What’s the rumpus about?” he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. In his forthright manner, Lewis responded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

It seems that most religions have a mixture of ungrace and grace, with the emphasis too often on ungrace. Philip Yancey, in his impressive and timely book What’s So Amazing About Grace? describes the “virulent strain of ungrace [that] shows up in all religions”:

I have heard eyewitness accounts of the recently revived Sun Dance ritual, in which young Lakota warriors fasten eagles claws to their nipples and, straining against a rope attached to a sacred pole, fling themselves outward until the claws rip through their flesh. Then they enter a sweat lodge and pile high red-hot rocks until the temperatures become unbearable, all in an attempt to atone for sins.

I have watched devout peasants crawl on bloody knees across cobblestone streets in Costa Rica and Hindu peasants offer sacrifices to the gods of smallpox and poisonous snakes in India. I have visited Islamic countries where “morals police” patrol the sidewalks with clubs, looking for women whose clothing offends them or who dare to drive a car.

Too often we have also seen ungrace rear its ungodly head in Christian communities.

Grace sometimes appears in religions other than Christianity. Bruce Nicholls, in his AFFIRM booklet Is Jesus the Only Way to God?, writes:

Glimpses of grace are found in every religion for there is an awareness among all people of the majesty of God, the Creator (Romans 1:20) and of the law of conscience (Romans 2:14-15). In moments of true self-knowledge men and women despair of finding God by their own effort and cry out to God for mercy. This awareness of shame and guilt is itself evidence that the living God through the Holy Spirit is at work in every human heart calling them back to God. It is a sign of grace.

Two examples of the sign of grace are sufficient. The Southern Vaishnavite faith since the days of Pillai Lokachari (1264-1327) have believed that salvation is by grace alone. Lokachari’s guiding scripture was the Charama Sloka (verse) from the Gita where Krishna says, “Abandon every duty, come to me alone for refuge. I will release you from all sin” (18:6). Yet even here grace became a crutch to salvation. Apart from the cross the true meaning of grace cannot be fully understood. The second example comes from the Pure Land school of Japanese Buddhism, where instead of strict asceticism implicit faith in the name of Amida Buddha (the Buddha of Infinite Life and Light) ensures the grace of Enlightenment.

However, C. S. Lewis was right when he pinpointed grace as the distinctive difference between Christianity and other religions. The death of Jesus for our sins is the only sure basis for grace. If the Christian doctrines of the personal nature and holiness of the triune God are true, and human sin and rebellion are as serious as the Bible declares, then we can do nothing to save ourselves from certain judgement. However, the God of love has made our salvation totally possible by taking upon himself the consequences of our sin. On this basis alone, through repentance and faith in Christ, we can be assured of salvation now and for eternity. Other religions must either deny the personal nature of God or minimise his holiness and the consequence of human sin.[1] They offer no sure basis on which we can be certain of forgiveness. As the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner said in his classic book The Mediator:

All other forms of religion, not to mention philosophy, deal with the problem of guilt apart from the intervention of God and they therefore come to a cheap conclusion. In other religions human beings are spared the final humiliation of knowing that the mediator must bear the punishment instead of us. They are not stripped absolutely naked.

[1] I have explained more on these subjects in the two booklets With So Many Religions, Why Christianity? and Who Am I? Finding My True Identity As a Human Being and as a Child of God.

However, as Yancey puts it, “Calvary broke the logjam between justice and forgiveness. By accepting onto his innocent self all the severe demands of justice, Jesus broke forever the chain of ungrace.”

Grace in Christianity is totally undeserved, freely offered and guaranteed to those who accept it. “In love he predestined us for sonship through Jesus Christ…to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves” (Ephesians 1:5,6).