Jesus declared, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6) and “Whoever believes in the Son [Jesus Christ] has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him” (John 3:36).
But the majority of Christians disagree.
The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life surveyed 35,000 Americans about their beliefs. Eighty-three percent of mainline church members, 79 percent of Catholics, and even 57 percent of Evangelicals believe that “many religions can lead to eternal life.”
Perhaps the rejection of Jesus’ statements stems from the 37 percent of people of faith do not believe their “sacred texts are the word of God” and the 27 percent who believe those texts “should not be taken literally.”
So, some thoughts on Jesus answer to, What must I do to inherit eternal life?
What are your thoughts?
P.S. I post several of these commentaries over at ThinkChristian.net Albert comments, “This statement, ‘many religions can lead to eternal life’ is completely true! We all will lead an eternal life after this corporeal body goes away. That’s not the issue. The issue is where you spend that eternal life.” Good point!
P.P.S (July 5, 2008) An article at ChristianPost.com reports “New Study Finds Fewer Evangelical Universalists than Reported “
- A re-wording of a question about religious beliefs coupled with a more precise definition of a Christian group found that far fewer evangelicals are universalists than what the Pew Forum reported in its landmark report last week.
LifeWay Research, associated with the Southern Baptist Convention, found that only two out of 10 evangelicals – as defined by their belief system rather than what church they attend – agreed with the statement that eternal life can be obtained through religions other than Christianity.
“When we define evangelicals as not just those who sit in pews but who agree with certain evangelical beliefs, we find a different picture than was widely reported in the news about the recent Pew study,” said Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, the research arm of LifeWay Christian Resources, in a statement.
3 Comments
June 24, 2008 at 11:38 am
Please show me that Jesus ever said ” I am God” or ” Worship me”
Mark 12:28-33 (New International Version)
The Greatest Commandment
28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29″The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[b] 31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[c]There is no commandment greater than these.”
32″Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
Isn’t this what Islam teachs
112:1 SAY: “He is the One God:
112:2 “God the Eternal, the Uncaused Cause of All Being. [1]
112:3 “He begets not, and neither is He begotten;
112:4 “and there is nothing that could be compared with Him.
with best regards
June 29, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Thank you for a very thorough Biblical exposition. The idea that anyone who is not a Christian is literally going to burn in hell for eternity has always stuck in my throat, but, just because I find it unacceptable doesn’t carry much weight if an omnipotent God said it. Although the First Amendment does NOT say all religions are equally true (it says the government is incompetent to decree which faith IS true), it is hard to accept my neighbor’s choice of faith if I believe they are doomed and damned for it.
You have made very clear that Jesus himself offered many different perspectives on what a man (or woman) can or must do in order to have eternal life. The parable from Matthew 25 starting at v31 offers that many who did not know Jesus at all will be on the right with the sheep, precisely because “inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me.” At times Jesus spoke of how to live or what commandments to follow, at times he spoke of someone’s faith alone saving them. There is a lot more to salvation than any human mind has ever reduced to a neat little slogan.
I would submit that John 14 has been utterly misunderstood through most of the history of any formally organized Christian church. That is an arrogant thing to say, but didn’t Wycliffe say we must each read the Bible for ourselves, with no earthly intermediary or overlord? The church has taken Jesus’s answers as one-liners, without looking at what QUESTION from the disciples Jesus was answering. They had not asked “can the pagan Greeks be saved?” They had not asked “Can the Jews who have not flocked to hear you teach be saved?” Thomas asked “we know not where you go, how can we know the way?” Philip then asked “Show us the father, and it sufficeth us,” a remark that borders on idolatry. Jesus essentially was telling them, ‘You can’t see the father, human eyes cannot behold such glory, that is why I was sent. I am all you are going to get. Follow me, study what I taught you, look at my example, the Word made flesh. The chapter doesn’t signify “If you are not one of us, you are damned.” He was speaking to and about his own disciples, and others who might join them or be moved to follow them, not about strict exclusion of the rest of humanity.
July 21, 2008 at 8:24 pm
“And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
—1 John 5:11-12 NKJV