How can christ be the only way to god

Should an unrepentant killer go to heaven? Should someone who enjoys torturing people, or who molests children and feels no guilt, go to heaven? If not, then there are cases when it's morally right for people to be excluded from heaven.

Christianity does not teach that only Christians deserve to go to heaven. Rather, it teaches that no one deserves to go to heaven, because we have all done wrong during our lives Rom We can gain admittance to heaven by repenting of our wrongs, accepting Jesus Christ's death as payment for our wrongs and deciding to follow and worship him as Lord.

The principle is that Jesus is the only way to God, not any particular church or denomination Jn Thus, salvation is accessible to everyone and is intended by God for everyone:. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! Is I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all Indeed, there are people "from every nation, tribe, people and language" who will be saved Rev We are merely relating His claim, and the claim of the writers of the New Testament.

In fact, it is the united testimony of the New Testament that no one can know God the Father except through the person of Jesus Christ. To understand why this is so, we must go back to the beginning. An infinite-personal God created the heavens and the earth Genesis and a man in his own image Genesis When He had finished creating, everything was good Genesis Man and woman were placed in a perfect environment, with all their needs taken care of.

They were given only one prohibition: they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, lest they die Genesis No mere human being can save us — no priest, rabbi, pope, guru, or prophet. They promise much but deliver nothing. The priest with his beads and candles is not any better than the witch doctor with his feathers and bones.

They are not in the same class with Jesus. Secondly, Jesus is unique because of what He did. Remember, He was sinless and did not deserve to die. None of us can pay our debt to God, even by death and Hell.

But Jesus paid our debt for us by dying on the cross and suffering the wrath of God in our place. Furthermore, He rose from the dead I Cor. Karl Marx did not die for our sins, and neither did Buddha.

God says over and over that He alone is the one true God e. God Almighty utterly condemns atheism, polytheism, pantheism, and dualism. God is there, and the only true God is the God of the Bible. He is our creator. Allah is a false god; Brahman is a false god; Krishna is a false god. They are mere idols. Scripture goes so far as to say that they are really demons I Cor. Obviously one cannot come to know the one true God through any of those false gods.

Likewise, all the prophets of other religions are false prophets. They did not get their messages from God, and therefore they cannot lead us to God. In fact, they only lead away from God. This applies to their writings as well the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, etc.

Simply put, one cannot know the one true God by reading the religious texts of non-Christian religions. Because they are lies and frauds. Islam and Judaism believe in one God; Hinduism believes in many gods; while Buddhism believes all is God.

They contradict each other and so cannot all be true. However, there is a sense in which they are all alike. They are all alike false religions. Some are closer to truth than others.

But none of them lead to God. They all lead to Hell. Paul warned of false religions, including perversions of true Christianity, in Gal. The good news is that God does have a way of salvation. He has given us a bridge whereby we can know Him. Jesus Christ is that bridge.

Are Christians dogmatic to say that Jesus is the only way to God? We are dogmatic because God is dogmatic. Why do we believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to God?

Because God says so. But this again seems to be a textbook example of what is called the genetic fallacy. This is trying to invalidate a position by criticizing the way a person came to hold that position. The fact that your beliefs depend upon where and when you were born has no relevance to the truth of those beliefs.

If you had been born in ancient Greece, you would probably have believed that the sun orbits the Earth. Does that imply that your belief that the Earth orbits the sun is therefore false or unjustified? Evidently not! And once again, the pluralist pulls the rug from beneath his own feet: for had the pluralist been born in Pakistan, then he would likely have been a religious particularist. Thus, on his own analysis his pluralism is merely the product of his being born in late twentieth century Western society and is therefore false or unjustified.

Thus, some of the arguments against Christian particularism frequently found in the literature are pretty unimpressive. Nevertheless, I find that when these objections are answered by defenders of Christian particularism, then the real issue does tends to emerge. That issue, I find, concerns the fate of unbelievers outside one's own particular religious tradition. Christian particularism consigns such persons to hell, which pluralists take to be unconscionable.

But what exactly is the problem here supposed to be? What is the difficulty with holding that salvation is available only through Christ? Is it supposed to be simply the allegation that a loving God would not send people to hell?

The Bible says that God wills the salvation of every human being. Or again, "He desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" 1 Tim. So God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel:. For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone,' says the Lord God. Say to them, "As I live," says the Lord God, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.

Turn back, turn back from your evil ways. For why will you die? Here God literally pleads with people to turn back from their self-destructive course of action and be saved. Thus, in a sense, the biblical God does not send any person to hell. His desire is that everyone be saved, and He seeks to draw all persons to Himself. If we make a free and well-informed decision to reject Christ's sacrifice for our sin, then God has no choice but to give us what we deserve.

God will not send us to hell—but we shall send ourselves. Our eternal destiny thus lies in our own hands. It is a matter of our free choice where we shall spend eternity. The lost, therefore, are self-condemned; they separate themselves from God despite God's will and every effort to save them, and God grieves over their loss.

Now the pluralist might admit that given human freedom God cannot guarantee that everyone will be saved. Some people might freely condemn themselves by rejecting God's offer of salvation. But, he might argue, it would be unjust of God to condemn such people forever. For even terrible sins like those of the Nazi torturers in the death camps still deserve only a finite punishment. Therefore, at most hell could be a sort of purgatory, lasting an appropriate length of time for each person before that person is released and admitted into heaven.

Eventually hell would be emptied and heaven filled. Thus, ironically, hell is incompatible, not with God's love, but with His justice. The objection charges that God is unjust because the punishment does not fit the crime. For the objection seems flawed in at least two ways:. We could agree that every individual sin which a person commits deserves only a finite punishment.

But it does not follow from this that all of a person's sins taken together as a whole deserve only a finite punishment. If a person commits an infinite number of sins, then the sum total of all such sins deserves infinite punishment.

Now, of course, nobody commits an infinite number of sins in the earthly life. But what about in the afterlife? Insofar as the inhabitants of hell continue to hate God and reject Him, they continue to sin and so accrue to themselves more guilt and more punishment.

In a real sense, then, hell is self-perpetuating. In such a case, every sin has a finite punishment, but because sinning goes on forever, so does the punishment. We could agree that sins like theft, lying, adultery, and so forth, are only of finite consequence and so only deserve a finite punishment. But, in a sense, these sins are not what separates someone from God. For Christ has died for those sins; the penalty for those sins has been paid. One has only to accept Christ as Savior to be completely free and clean of those sins.

But the refusal to accept Christ and his sacrifice seems to be a sin of a different order altogether. For this sin repudiates God's provision for sin and so decisively separates one from God and His salvation.

To reject Christ is to reject God Himself. And in light of who God is, this is a sin of infinite gravity and proportion and therefore plausibly deserves infinite punishment. We should not, therefore, think of hell primarily as punishment for the array of sins of finite consequence which we have committed, but as the just penalty for a sin of infinite consequence, namely the rejection of God Himself.

But perhaps the problem is perhaps supposed to be that a loving God would not send people to hell because they were uninformed or misinformed about Christ. For according to the Bible, God does not judge people who have never heard of Christ on the basis of whether they have placed their faith in Christ. Rather God judges them on the basis of light of God's general revelation in nature and conscience that they do have. The offer of Romans 2.

This is not to say that people can be saved apart from Christ.