Lecture

Dr. Doug Groothuis: The Christian offer of salvation is tremendously important. Christianity is not simply a perspective on life. It is that. It’s not simply a faith rooted in history. It is that. It is an offer of a new way of life, of hope, ultimately of eternal fellowship with God and all those that have submitted themselves to God.

According to the Bible, the Christian offer of salvation does not depend on what individuals do for God, but on the acceptance of what God has done for them.

R. Douglas Geivett: What makes the Christian offer or approach to salvation unique? What distinguishes it from other religious traditions? Well, first of all, it fundamentally involves trust in a person, the Person of Jesus Christ. Why trust in Jesus Christ? Because He lived a distinctive kind of life, and no other religious figure, however saintly, ever lived. Most saints, acknowledged saints today, would be the first ones to tell you they’re not perfect. Jesus Christ is an acknowledged Saint of religious history, and yet He never confessed sin, he never acknowledged failure. He was very focused in identifying sin in the world. And He was here, He said, to deal with sin. But He never gave any indication that He regarded Himself as a moral failure. So He was a very different kind of saint, even if we regard Him as a saint. And then in His death, He died an extraordinary death, which He interpreted as the source of our salvation.

What other religious figure provides offers of salvation with God through his own death? Now why is that significant? That’s significant because every human being is deserving of death as the just payment for his rebellion against God. But Jesus Christ inserts Himself into the human situation and says, “I volunteer to die in their place.” No other religious figure would be a plausible candidate to play such a role than Jesus Christ.

Finally, in His resurrection from the dead, every other religious figure who ever sponsored or inaugurated a religious tradition is still in the grave. And if his remains had not been disintegrated, they could be excavated from the ground and you could say, this was the body of the man. But you cannot do that with Jesus Christ. Within a few hours of the death of Jesus Christ, He became alive again and the tomb in which He was buried was emptied forever. And the tomb that was empty became a symbol of the power of God to provide salvation in a unique way through the figure, the Person of Jesus Christ.

Doug Groothuis: And so that’s why Christians talk about the uniqueness of Jesus, the supremacy of Jesus, the exclusivity of Jesus. But in another dimension, it’s completely inclusive and all- encompassing, because Jesus said, “Come to me all you who are burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and Christians have gone out throughout history to all the world to bring this good news to people.

So it’s focused in Jesus. Salvation is in His life, death, and resurrection. We receive it by faith, by trusting Him. But that message is to be taken to everyone, and anyone who comes to Christ receives the forgiveness and the new life and the hope and ultimately eternal fellowship with God.

So it’s exclusive, but logically, legitimately exclusive. It makes sense, there’s evidence for it, but it’s also inclusive in terms of those who are invited. And we have wonderful scenes in the book of Revelation of people from every tongue and tribe and nation worshiping the Lamb. So there’s the specificity. They’re worshiping the Lamb, that is Christ the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But we have all manner of different people from different times worshiping together the Lamb.

Dr. Vernon Grounds: I’m not a Christian because I happened to be born in a so-called Christian country. I’m not a Christian because my parents when I was a child may have carried me into a church where I was baptized. I’m not a Christian because now on occasion I will attend a religious service in some church that is supposedly, nominally, and maybe truly Christian.

No, I’m a Christian because I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.

Dr. Michael Wilkins: What’s at stake has to do with our eternal destiny. This is not a game that we’re playing here. And sometimes I think we tend to look at maybe going to church or even looking at some options as, well, you know, maybe I’ll join the Kiwanis, maybe I’ll join the Rotary. It doesn’t really matter; they’re all good things. No, it really isn’t that. I mean, God has talked about what eternity is; and for His reasons eternity hangs in the balance with the decisions we make every day of our lives.

Dr. Bob Pyne: There are a lot of intellectual obstacles for some people in coming to faith in Jesus Christ. I believe we can answer most of those. I don’t think we can answer them perfectly. I think there comes a time when people have to look at the evidence and say, “Boy, it’s close, it looks really close to me.”

I think of the conversion testimony of one fellow who is an American writer. He said that as he looked at the gospel, at the promise of salvation in Christ, it looked like a gap he would have to step over. He said there’s this gap between me and it—this gap of doubt I’m going to have to bridge. He wasn’t sure he could jump across it. He wasn’t sure he could step across that line. And then he said he looked behind him, and he realized there was a bigger gap behind him. And he knew it would be hard to embrace Christ. But he knew he couldn’t walk away. He said, I’m not sure that I can trust Him, but I know I can’t reject Him. And he said he closed his eyes and flung himself across the gap to Jesus. I think that’s what we have to do sometimes. Sometimes we get to the point where it becomes an issue of the will, where we have to say, “It’s close enough. I think I can trust Him now.”