By Pastor Greg
“There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other
name under heaven by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12). Those words were spoken by
the Apostle Peter to a crowd of Jewish Priests.
It seems he and John got in trouble for healing a lame beggar, and these
religious leaders wanted to know by what power or in whose name they performed
this healing. So Peter told them. The
healing came through Jesus of Nazareth; the same Jesus these religious leaders
had crucified, and the same Jesus God raised from the dead.
I suspect these religious
leaders didn’t like Peter’s answer, and I’m sure they didn’t appreciate his accusatory
tone, but he did answer their question.
However, it’s this closing line that probably created the most
trouble. Had Peter not uttered those
highly divisive words, he could have avoided a lot of anguish for himself and
for the church. Guided by the Holy
Spirit, Peter adds those exclusive words – NO OTHER NAME. Salvation cannot be found through anyone else.
Peter’s words set the world on edge,
and they became the foundational rock upon which the church was built. Christianity is built upon the truth that
Salvation can be found in Christ alone.
To gain access to God in the next life, everyone must go through Jesus.
That’s a rather bold claim; one that
continues to set the world on edge. The
world arches its back when Christian’s make this claim. This claim divides, and sets Christianity
apart from all other world religions. It
even seems to divide the Church. A movement
called Progressive Christianity questions whether Jesus truly is the “only
way”. They officially “Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names
for the way to God's realm and acknowledge that their ways are true for them,
as our ways are true for us.” And yet Peter asserts that there is
“no other name”.
So, is this claim
true? Is Jesus really the only way to
heaven? If not, then He was a liar. Either that or He was delusional, because He even
said these things about Himself. To Nicodemus Jesus says, “For God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall
not perish, but have eternal life”. (John3:16). And to His apostles He says,
“I am the way,
and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me”. (John 14:6). What kind of man would say
such things? Either Jesus was really who
He said He was, or He was a madman. We
must choose one or the other. There is
no middle ground. We cannot say that He
was simply a good man; a man filled with the Holy Spirit who taught us how to
be good, and how to love both God and one another. Not even those who were alive when He walked
the earth took this middle ground. John
points out that “a
division occurred in the crowd because of Him.” (John
7:43). Either people believed Him, or
they thought He was mad.
As Jesus walked on earth, people were
constantly amazed at what they heard and what they saw. The crowds were amazed at His teaching (Matthew 7:28). His disciples were amazed when the wind and
the waves obeyed Him (Matthew 8:27). “What kind of man is this” they asked. Even Peter’s eyes were opened one day. Looking at the face of Jesus, Peter realized
that it was no mere man standing before him.
Jesus was unlike any other man he had met before. And in a moment Peter realized that this
person standing before him, who looked like the son of a man, was the Son of
God. Peter falls at the feet of Jesus
and pleads, “Go
away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8b).
Just as the world has been diminishing
God to a size it can manage, so too is Jesus being reduced to nothing more than
a spiritual man; a man filled with the Holy Spirit, who attempted to turn our
eyes back to God. Theologians, biblical
scholars, and seminary professors have taken the Jesus we encounter in
scripture and reduced Him to simply a deified man; a man who demonstrated
god-like character. This is why I
believe the time has come to pursue a bigger Savior.
What do you supposed caused Peter and
John and Paul and all the other Apostles to remain steadfast and immovable on
their claim that there is no other way?
It’s because they knew that Jesus was not a man deified nor was He God
humanized. They knew that there had
never been anyone like Jesus, and there never would be anyone like Jesus ever
again. He was and is the only begotten
of God. And because of this, no other
name would be sufficient to atone for man’s sin, and no other person could
become the perfect sacrifice for man’s sin.
No other god took on flesh. No
other man was sinless.
There is no other name by which we
might be saved because there was no other “man” like Jesus. “For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in
Christ” says the Apostle Paul (Colossians 2:9).
In other words, what we have come to see and know of God, we also see
lived out in Jesus. And this truth
became foundational to the new Church.
The early Church believed this and
taught this. The Apostles endured
torture and death rather than compromise on this truth. They passed on what they had seen and heard. And no threat from Jerusalem or from Rome
could make them recant what they held to be true. The early Church remained steadfast on this
truth; the truth about Jesus, that He is the visible image of the invisible
God.
Considering the way Jesus is being
diminished by our society and even within the Church at large, perhaps we
should take some time pursuing a bigger Savior.
Maybe we could benefit today from a bigger view and a deeper
understanding of who Jesus really is.
Perhaps we need to be reminded just as the Colossian Christians needed
to be reminded. Paul took the time to
tell them the truth, then admonished them to stand firm in that truth. So if Christians today need to stand firm in
the truth about Jesus, perhaps we need to be reminded what that truth really
is; the truth about Jesus Paul reveals in Colossians
1:15-23. Read those verses, and in
the next few weeks we will take a deeper look into the characteristics found in
no other name.
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