Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along.
The Mystery of the Incarnation
In this, the last chapter of Edwards’ book, it is fitting that he discusses the ultimate revelation of God—the “incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. Since most Christians have heard Jesus called the Son of God, and probably have even heard the word “incarnation” a number of times, you might be surprised to read that “No other religion—ancient, or modern, local or universal—makes anything approximating the claim that God, without sacrificing his divine nature, has become a full and complete human being.”
This, then, is the mystery—God became human, a specific man named Jesus of Nazareth. The word mystery means more than what we generally think. It includes the idea of mystery being something that is now revealed after having been hidden. In the incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth, God’s plan of salvation which had been hidden was now made plain. Over the centuries God gave various clues to His existence and His plan, but the overall plan remained a mystery because the final clue had not yet been given. In Jesus it was given, and God’s plan became plain to all who were open to the message God was sending in Jesus.
Edwards speaks of the incarnation in terms of a code, a puzzle, and a parable. In deciphering a code one needs the key. Whether that code is a numerical code (such as is used in sending secure messages over the internet) or the kind of biological code that Doctors Watson and Crick discovered in 1953 as they began to unravel DNA, one can look at thousands, even millions, of clues without comprehending the message. Then once the key is found, everything else falls into place. Jesus is the key to understanding the “fingerprints” God scattered around His creation and the code that leads to understanding God’s plan for His creation.
Jesus can also be compared to both the key piece and the box top of a jigsaw puzzle. The box top has a picture of what the puzzle should look like once all the pieces are put together. Imagine that you found a puzzle in an attic, and the pieces are in a paper bag. The original box is not available, and you are not sure all the pieces are there. It may even be possible that there are some extra pieces from another puzzle, but you won’t know that until you put them together.
Later you start to work on the puzzle, starting with the border pieces. As more are added, it starts to look familiar. A long table, some men seated behind it, clothing like that in biblical scenes, but the scene doesn’t start to fall together until the central pieces are put in. Then you realize it is a puzzle of a picture of Michelangelo’s “The Last Supper”. Jesus is the central piece of the puzzle.
How does this relate to how we think about other religions? We recognize that other religions may have some pieces of the puzzle. Some of them have pieces that don’t belong to this puzzle at all. We give credit were it is due, and honor the true pieces of the puzzle that we see in other religions: love, benevolence, knowing of self, humanity, a sense of justice, etc. Yet, we must be true to our own faith and continue to proclaim the uniqueness of Jesus. He is the piece of the puzzle that allows us to put the picture together.
Finally, Edwards compares the incarnation, and our responsibility to tell others about it, to a parable of two brothers whose father had died several years previously. The older brother feels a need to tell his younger brother about their father, because the father died before the younger son was born. The older brother was not better because he could talk about his father. He simply was the one who knew his father.
Likewise Christians have a responsibility to tell others what they know of God, not because we are better, but because we know God by knowing Jesus.
Next Edwards describes what he calls “The scandal of particularity”. Because we say God came to us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, in a particular country, at a particular point in time, that seems for some people to argue against the universality of the Gospel. What about the people who lived before then, or even those who have lived since then, but have not had access to that one point in time and place? In Edwards’ hypothetical, “the particularity of the Christ event in time and space seems to hinder its universality”.
However, as he goes on to point out, the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ reveals God better than any timeless, universal idea would. God is now more accessible: “God can now be known as never before. In the incarnation a religious longing becomes a historical fact.” This makes it better than just an idea about God. There are many ideas about God, all of which could claim to be true; and therefore none of which could claim exclusivity.
Consider the importance of this sentence: “Historical particularity has an advantage over a universal idea.” Edwards then relates this to the longing for a cure for a dreaded disease. When I was young, polio was a serious threat. Everyone longed for a cure for this crippling killer. Then, after Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio in 1955, the news was joyfully spread worldwide. Polio was eventually eradicated. Although the vaccine was developed in a particular place (the University of Pittsburgh Medical School) in a particular year, its effect is universal. Protection from polio is no longer just a hope, it is a reality. Joyful news indeed!
Christians can joyfully share the good news of the Gospel as well. It’s not a bothersome activity “like telephone solicitations or children selling candy for a school fund-raiser. True Christian witness is making known to non-Christian neighbors that they are also created by God, made in God’s very image, and that by faith in Christ they too may become God’s children”.
Edwards’ final statement is worth repeating. “The God who sent the Son into the world to die for the sins of the world now sends believers in the Son into the world. They bear the good news that the God who is the world’s only creator is also its only redeemer in Jesus Christ.”
In coming to know God through our Savior, Jesus Christ, we have been given the happy responsibility of sharing that knowledge with others. We have been saved: reconciled to God through no merit of our own—it is fully by grace. We agree with Paul that one died for all in order “that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them, and was raised again.” (II Cor. 5:14-15)
We have examined the question, “Is Jesus the only Savior?” Not surprisingly, the answer Edwards gives is the same one the Bible gives—Yes!
This is not an answer we can keep to ourselves for any reason: whether from fear of being rejected or of offending others, or from a desire to make Christianity seem more acceptable. Like children, we all want to fit in, to belong to the group. We also want Christianity to fit in with other religions—to not be seen as exclusivist, nor rejected by others. But we have the cure for that crippling killer called Sin. We must share the truth in love with all the world.
I’ll close this series with the marvelous passage in II Cor. 5:17-21.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
