CHAPTER 30
Ajith Fernando
Ajith Fernando (ThM, DD) was National Director of Youth for Christ, Sri Lanka, for 35 years and now serves as its teaching director, mentoring and counseling younger Christian workers. He has a worldwide Bible teaching ministry. He studied at Asbury and Fuller Seminaries. His books have been published in 24 languages.
This article is a short excerpt adapted from The Supremacy of Christ by Ajith Fernando, Good News Publishers, 1995. Used by permission of the author.
Pluralism has become a dominant philosophy today. Eastern religions have adopted a strong missionary stance, and New Age thinking has made huge inroads into different spheres of Western society. The evangelical movement, especially in the West, seems to have lost its commitment to the radical truth of the gospel. There is now, within Christianity, a great deal of skepticism about the possibility of knowing truth.
The philosophy of pluralism lies at the heart of the New Age movement and of some so-called Christian theologies. It fits in well with Buddhist and Hindu thought, too. We are not talking here of the pluralism that allows for the existence of political, ethnic, and cultural differences in a society or a church. Rather, we are referring to a philosophical stance that recognizes more than one ultimate principle and therefore claims that it is not possible for us to recognize any one system of thought as absolute truth.
Religious pluralism espouses a new idea of revelation. Over the years, Christians have understood revelation as God’s disclosure of truth to humanity. They believe He discloses truth both generally, in ways accessible to all people through nature and conscience, and specifically, through the Scriptures and in Jesus Christ. According to religious pluralism, truth is not disclosed to us but is discovered by us through our experience. The writings of the different religions are then understood to be different discoveries—through human experience—of the one God. Since the different religions are viewed as different expressions of the Absolute, each is believed to contain facets of the truth.
There are similarities between Christianity and other religions, but these similarities are in the peripherals, not the essentials of the faith. It is simply not correct to say that all religions teach essentially the same thing. Those who promote pluralism today must reckon with the fact that this attitude is completely opposite to that of the New Testament church. New Testament preachers and writers responded to the pluralism of their day with strong affirmations of the singular power and greatness of Jesus Christ. Paul’s ministry in Athens (Acts 17:16–34) and the Epistles to Colossae and Ephesus are good examples of this.
Jesus spoke of His supreme uniqueness when He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6 NIV).
Jesus as Absolute Truth
Into the current environment of uncertainty about truth, biblical Christians come with the assertion that we can know absolute truth. We claim that we have found it in Jesus, that Jesus is the Truth. He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6 NIV). When Jesus says He is the truth, He means He is the personification or the embodiment of truth. Jesus says not only, “What I say is true,” but He says “I am the truth itself.” This revelation is not something discovered primarily by experience. The pluralist says that Christian revelation is actually just a record of the religious experiences of a particular people. Christians affirm ultimate truth is disclosed by God. It is not primarily discovered by humankind.
In the verses that follow Jesus substantiates His claim to be the Truth. He first explains what it means to claim that He is the Truth: it means He is equal with God. “If you really know me, you will know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him” (John 14:7 NIV). To know Jesus is to know the Father. Leon Morris points out that Jesus “goes beyond anything that the holy people of old normally claimed Jesus brings to those who believe something new and outstanding in the real knowledge of God.”1
Jesus claims that the disciples have seen God the Father. William Barclay comments that “it may well be that to the ancient world this was the most staggering thing that Jesus ever said. To the Greeks, God was characteristically The Invisible. The Jews would count it as an article of faith that no man has seen God at any time.”2 Yet, Jesus claims to be equal with God and says that when we see Jesus, we see God the Father.
Absolute reality has become concrete in history in the person of Jesus (see also John 1:14, 18). The singular truth of the Christian gospel is an extension of our belief that Jesus is God incarnate.
A Personal Response to the Truth
Now we come to the question of how, and in what sense, we know absolute truth. If truth is a Person, then we will know the truth in the way we know people—through facts about them and through relationship with them. God communicated truth through a person, therefore we know God through relationship with that person.
E. Stanley Jones tells the story of an unbelieving doctor who lay dying. A Christian doctor sat beside him and urged him to surrender and have faith in Christ. The dying doctor listened in amazement. Light dawned. He joyously said, “All my life I have been bothered with what to believe, and now I see it is whom to trust.”3 Belief is entrusting ourselves to Jesus. We love Him as our friend and follow Him as our Lord. This is the reason the basic call of Christ is not “Follow my teaching” but “Follow me.”
The gospel of Jesus is about certain events in history, including certain claims Jesus made. There are claims in God’s revealed truth—the Bible—about which there can be no compromise., The truth about Jesus’s relationship with God is one of them. For example, in John 14:11 (NIV), He tells His disciples, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”
The Words of Jesus Affirm His Uniqueness
Jesus claims to be equal with God when He says, “The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (John 14:10b NIV). We might have expected Jesus to say, “the Father speaks through me.” Instead He says, “the Father who dwells in me does His works.” This is because, as Archbishop William Temple put it, “The words of Jesus are the works of God.”4
We take Jesus’s words seriously because when He speaks, God speaks. His claims about Himself leave us with the inescapable conclusion that Jesus views Himself as equal to God.
The Works of Jesus Authenticate His Words
Jesus knew that some people would not accept the startling claims He made about Himself. So He said, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves” (John 14:11 NIV). He meant that if we consider His works, we will be challenged to take His words seriously.
In the Gospels, the miracles are often presented as evidence to support the claims of Christ. When the people murmur about Jesus’s statement to the paralytic that his sins are forgiven, He heals the man so “that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:8–11 ESV). When the Jews accuse Him of blasphemy, saying “You, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33 NIV), Jesus says in His response, “Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:37–38 NIV).
The absolute lordship of Christ does not emerge from a few proof texts in some isolated passages in the Gospels. It shines through all of it. If we take out those passages that contain teaching about the absolute lordship of Christ, we are left with no life of Christ at all. The same material that gives evidence to His being a good man also gives evidence that He is Lord of all.
The Joy of Truth
When we come to Jesus, we enter into a relationship with the Truth. This is what people are thirsting for in our confusing age. What a joy the discovery of such truth can be! This truth gives us an eternal foundation on which to build our lives. This, in turn, brings a great security that is a springboard to lasting joy.
Jesus succinctly described this experience when He said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32 NIV). As we experience the truth, we find freedom from dependence on this unstable world for fulfillment, freedom from the dehumanizing power of sin and freedom to dwell in the sphere of eternity where springs of eternal joy (Ps 16:11) will satisfy our deepest aspirations. Recognizing Jesus as the Truth is an experience unmatched by experience with other faiths. It is an experience with the eternal God, and only the eternal God can give us eternal joy.
Jesus as the Way
If Jesus is not only the truth but also the way, then understanding the cross is the greatest key to understanding Jesus. An English theologian said, “Christ is to us just what His cross is. All that Christ was in heaven or on earth was put into what He did there You do not understand Christ till you understand His cross.”5 When Jesus says in John 14:6 that He is the way, He means that He will become the way through His death.
What the cross of Christ achieved is so vast and so deep that numerous interpretations of it have appeared throughout the history of the church.6 Here we describe what was achieved at the cross by looking at five concepts found in the New Testament.
1. Substitution. Perhaps the most basic feature of Jesus’s death is that He took our place and bore the punishment for our sins. He was our substitute. Peter, who first revolted against the idea of Jesus’s crucifixion, later wrote a significant statement about this: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” (1 Pet 2:24 ESV).
2. Forgiveness. The death of Christ was necessary for the forgiveness of our sins. “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb 9:22 NIV). The message of forgiveness is one of the most distinctive features of the gospel of Christ. It is missing in most other religious systems.
3. Redemption. In the ancient marketplaces, slaves were purchased for a price. Redemption speaks of the purchase of our salvation. Ephesians 1:7 (NIV) says, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” The price paid by Christ on the cross liberates us from the captivity of sin.
4. Justification. This word comes from the law courts. Justification is “a judicial act of administering the law—in this case by declaring a verdict of acquittal, and so excluding all possibility of condemnation.”7 Paul says, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom 4:25 NIV).
5. Reconciliation. Reconciliation is necessary because sin is rebellion against God and results in enmity between God and humankind. Paul says, “While we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (Rom 5:10 NIV).
The Challenge of the Cross
Many who encounter the Christian belief of grace ask, “Should we not save ourselves? Why should another die for us?” Most people would like to save themselves. Stephen Neill has said, “The last thing that modern individuals want is that anyone should do anything for them.”8 People like to think that they are saving themselves. It makes them feel good and helps to temporarily still the voice of insecurity and emptiness that is theirs because they are separated from God. This may account for the fact that religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and New Age are growing, even in the West. These religions, which offer people ways to save themselves by living multiple good lives (reincarnation), are growing even in the West.
Another belief of Hinduism and the New Age movements is that we are all part of the divine. This, too, is distant from the biblical idea that we are guilty before God and in need of salvation. Swami Muktananda had a great influence on Werner Erhard, founder of self-help seminars. He expresses well the mood of many people today with his statement, “Kneel to your own self. Honor and worship your own being. God dwells within you as You.”11 Fallen humanity, in its natural state of rebellion against God, would prefer this approach to salvation.
Ten Qualities of Jesus’s Words Ajith Fernando
1. His teaching is profound, yet simple. Bishop Stephen Neill says, “The quality of ordinariness runs through much of the teaching of Jesus. It is this, perhaps, which has given His words the extraordinary power to move the hearts of men and women through almost twenty centuries.”9 The temple guards, sent to arrest Jesus, returned without Him. When they were asked, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” they responded, “No one ever spoke the way this man does” (John 7:45–46).
2. He speaks with great authority. Shortly before His ascension, Jesus tells His disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18 NIV). The way He speaks befits one who can make such a claim. About His teaching He says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matt 24:35 NIV). After the Sermon on the Mount, “the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law” (Matt 7:28–29). R. T. France says, “Any other Jewish teacher made sure that his teaching was documented with extensive quotations from Scripture and with the names of his teachers added to give weight to his opinion; his authority must always be second-hand. But this is not so with Jesus. He simply laid down the law.”10
3. He claims to have the authority to forgive sin. When He forgives the sins of a paralytic and the people question His right to do this, He proves it by performing a miracle. He says He is doing it so that they may “know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10 NIV).
4. He not only tells people to “Follow my teaching,” He says, “Follow me” and demands total allegiance. He says, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:37–38 BSB).
5. He takes on titles given to God in the Old Testament. Psalm 27:1 (NIV) says, “The LORD is my light and my salvation.” Jesus says, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12 NIV). Psalm 23:1 (NIV) says, “The LORD is my shepherd.” Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11 NIV).
6. He considers Himself worthy of receiving the honor that is due to God. Isaiah 42:8 (NIV) says, “I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.” He says, “Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father” (John 5:22–23a NIV).
7. He claims to have a unique Father-Son relationship with God. He calls Himself God’s Son, and He calls God “my Father.” “My Father” is not the way Jews usually referred to God. They did speak of “our Father,” and while they might use “my Father” in prayer, they usually qualified it with something like “in heaven” in order “to remove the suggestion of familiarity.”12 The various references to God as Father in the Gospels show that Jesus intends to convey He has a relationship no other human being can have with God.
8. He claims to be the judge of humankind. He says of Himself in John 5:27 (NIV), “And [the Father] has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.” Leon Morris points out that “if Jesus was anything less than God [this] is a claim entirely without foundation No creature can determine the eternal destiny of His fellow creatures “13
9. He says that He will give us things that only God can give n John 5:21 (NIV), He says, “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it “ He said He gives “water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14 NIV). He speaks of giving “my peace” (John 14:27) and “my joy” (John 15:11).
10. His opponents, the Jewish leaders, understood the implication of His claims. In a discussion about the Sabbath, Jesus makes the statement, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” The next verse says, “For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:17–18 NIV).
Someone said of the words of Christ, “If it is not super-human authority that speaks to us here, it is surely superhuman arrogance.”14
[after sidebar above] RETURN TO LESSON 4: Mandate for the Nations
Those who try to offset guilt by their own efforts soon find they do not have the strength for it. However, as much as they try, they are not able to tilt the scales of their lives in the direction of their innocence. The gospel says that, seeing our helpless condition, God did not abandon us.
What we see here is an amazing love. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We call this grace, the result of which is salvation. I know of many Hindus and Buddhists who, when despairing of their efforts to save themselves, have found this message of salvation through the grace of Christ to be very good news.
CONTINUE READING Sidebar: Ten Qualities of Jesus’s Words
Jesus as the Life
Another important aspect of the uniqueness of Christ is Jesus as the life (John 14:6). Jesus says, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3 NIV). Eternal life is a relationship with God.
In John 10:10 Jesus describes the life He gives by saying, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” It is a completely fulfilling life because of a love-relationship with God. It is not an impersonal pleasure or “kick” that He gives us through specific experiences. All other ways of living fall short of the fullness of life that only the living God can give. God created us for relationship with Him. Without that, we are as good as dead. As John says, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12 NKJV). When people who are created for life do not have it, they are restless.
His Work Forms a New Humanity
God has also formed us for relationship with each other, and the gospel meets this need in a unique way through what we may call the new humanity. One great effect of the work of Christ is the forming of this new humanity, which Paul called the body of Christ. Jesus talks about this new humanity. He says, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16 NIV).
Some people use this reference to the “other sheep” as evidence that there will also be salvation for those who remain outside the church. They say that the work of Christ has won salvation for all, both inside and outside the church. It is most unlikely that the same book that records so much of the necessity of believing in Jesus for salvation should teach that it is possible for people to be saved without such belief. In fact, Jesus says here, “They too will listen to my voice.” The implication is that they will respond to the gospel. When Jesus refers to “this sheep pen,” He seems to be referring to the Jewish people. That makes the “other sheep” non-Jews. Jesus is saying that His death is going to bring non-Jews into the flock also. This theme also appears elsewhere in John (11:52; 12:20–21). It is implied in the statements that present Jesus as the Savior of the whole world (John 1:29; 3:16–17). The result of bringing the sheep into the fold is the creation of a new humanity “in Christ.”
While John 10:16 teaches that the death of Christ makes it possible for other sheep to come into Christ’s flock, the way this will happen today is through the church going out and bringing them in. John 10:16 describes Christ’s mission through His people.
In the last part of John 10:16, Jesus mentions the result of having these other sheep come in: “And there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” What we have here is an initial statement about the universal church that Paul is later going to teach about in some detail. He will use the figure of the body of Christ to refer to the church,15 viewing those who are “in Christ” by faith as belonging to it. Here Jesus is saying that the gentiles will come in, and they will belong to God in the same flock as the Jews.
The Resurrection Is Proof
Christianity makes claims about the uniqueness of its founder that no other religion makes. How do we know these claims are true? While we have given several reasons above, the clincher is the resurrection of Jesus. At the conclusion of his message to the inquiring Athenians, Paul says, “[God] has given proof of this to all men by raising him [Christ] from the dead” (Acts 17:31 NIV). Despite all of Jesus’s teaching about His mission, even His disciples were bewildered by His death. On Easter Sunday, when the women share the news of the resurrection as reported by the angels, Luke 24:11 says, “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” Once the disciples knew, however, that Jesus indeed is risen, they could not be stopped. They went straight to the hostile people in Jerusalem and proclaimed that Jesus is the Messiah [Christ]. Peter declared that the resurrection of Jesus demonstrated that “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36 NIV). The New Testament, then, insists that the resurrection was God’s authentication of the supremacy of Jesus.
Jesus as He is portrayed in the Bible is not only unique but also supreme.
The Creator of the world has indeed presented the complete solution to the human predicament. As such it is supreme; it is unique; and it is absolute. So, we have the audacity in this pluralistic age to say that Jesus as He is portrayed in the Bible is not only unique but also supreme. He is our message to the world. A Hindu once asked Dr. E. Stanley Jones, “What has Christianity to offer that our religion has not?” He replied, “Jesus Christ.” 
RETURN TO LESSON 4: Mandate for the Nations
Notes
1. Leon Morris, Reflections on the Gospel of John, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1988), 495.
2. William Barclay, The Gospel of John, vol. 2 in The Daily Bible Study, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 159.
3. E. Stanley Jones, “The Christ of the Indian Road,” in Selections from E. Stanley Jones (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 224.
4. William Temple, Readings in John’s Gospel (1939; repr., Wilton: Moorhouse Barlow, 1985), 225 (italics his).
5. P. T. Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909), 44–45, quoted in John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 43.
6. For a comprehensive description of the different views that have emerged in history, see H. D. McDonald, The Atonement of the Death of Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1985).
7. J. I. Packer, “Justification,” in The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1984), 593.
8. Stephen Neill, The Supremacy of Jesus (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984), 147–48.
9. Neill, 67.
10. R. T. France, Jesus the Radical (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1989), 204.
11. Quoted in Douglas R. Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 21.
12. Leon Morris, “The Gospel According to St. John,” in The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 313.
13. Leon Morris, The Lord from Heaven (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1974), 36.
14. Quoted in W. Griffith Thomas, Christianity Is Christ (1948; repr., New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, 1981), 26.
15. See 1 Cor 12:27; Rom 12:5; Eph 1:22–23; 4:12, 15; Col 1:18.