Audio Transcript
Christianity is the best religion in the world. We make that claim implicitly every day. Why? Why are we so sure of this fact, that Christianity is the best religion in the world? That’s the question today, from Will in Chicago:
“Hi, Pastor John! I am fifteen years old, and right now in school I am forced to study world religions. Maybe not forced. I actually am kind of curious about them, but there are so many. Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, the native religions here in America and in South America. Plus, I’m reading about all the ancient temples that have been excavated in Rome and even those being discovered deep in the Amazon rainforest. I’m trying to make sense of it all, and I want to understand Christianity better. So, what makes Christianity different, or even better, than all the other religions in the world that have been around so long, many from before the birth of Jesus?”
Well, thank you, Will, for sending us the question. It’s really good for me to step back from time to time and try to answer some huge, basic questions, and this is one of them: Why is Christianity better than all other religions?
I don’t hesitate to say it is because I think it’s just nonsense to try to pretend that all religions are equally valuable. Christianity is not of that sort. Yes, I want to make four claims for you to consider.
1. Relation to Other Religions
Christianity is better than all other religions because it gives a credible account of why other religions exist. Now, I don’t mean this proves Christianity. I mean that other religions do not take Christianity off guard.
Christians are not surprised that there are, like you say, so many other religions. They are not a surprise to Christianity. Other religions fit into the worldview of the Bible. They are what you would expect if Christianity is true — they’re not a threat to Christianity. Christianity is not obscured by other religions. On the contrary, Christianity sheds light on other religions and why they exist and why they are the way they are. C.S. Lewis said back in 1944, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else” (C.S. Lewis: Essay Collection, 21). By Christianity, the existence and the inferiority of other religions makes sense.
It doesn’t work the other way around; Christianity does not make sense to other religions. The claims of Christianity don’t fit into their worldview. Paul said in Romans 1:20–23,
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived [by everybody] . . . in the things that have been made [creation]. . . . Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images [religions] resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
“No other religion has anyone comparable to Jesus.”
He said in Romans 2:15 that the law of God is written on everyone’s heart. He said in Romans 1:32 that all humans know the basics of behavior that are right and wrong, and what deserves death. Those three texts — Romans 1:20–23; 2:15; 1:32 — are the makings of all other religions. “I do not live up to what is right; I deserve death.” And religion is man’s effort to devise a way for humans to get into favor with that deity.
Christianity reveals that, but that is not what Christianity is, as we’ll see in just a moment.
2. None Like Jesus
Jesus Christ is the absolutely unique, gold standard of why Christianity is better than all other religions. No other religion has anyone comparable to Jesus. “He was in the beginning with God,” and he “was God” (John 1:1–2). He took on a human nature and entered real history. Now, this is the amazing part; listen to the way Luke describes the setting of his arrival:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas . . . (Luke 3:1–2)
In other words, those are real names, like Theodore Roosevelt or Winston Churchill. We know these people from sources outside the Bible. It’s the amazing combination of the supernatural reality in Jesus with the absolutely natural, historical reality of his setting in his life that makes him so unique. He lived three decades, he taught like no other man, he died at the hands of real Roman officials, he rose from the dead — not like a ghost, but with a new body that could eat fish and pass through doors. He reigns today at God’s right hand. He’ll return again in great glory.
There is no other religion with such a God-man, who lived in this world as if it were just yesterday, next door. There’s nothing mythological or make-believe about it — that’s unique.
3. Support from Eyewitness Testimonies
Christianity is better than other religions because those historical realities were written down by eyewitnesses and by those who knew them. There are thousands more manuscripts of these writings and fragments of these manuscripts — from more places, and from the earliest centuries — than any other historical work of similar antiquity. There are thousands of them, over five thousand right now, and they’re still being discovered. We have a wealth of manuscript evidence — I want to say an embarrassing wealth of manuscript evidence — that validates the earliest eyewitness testimonies.
“Anyone, anywhere in the world who trusts in Jesus, the God-man, will be saved from his sins and from the wrath of God.”
One of the claims of Islam is that the New Testament portrait of Jesus and his way of salvation is a result of corruption and change in the New Testament over time. The problem with that claim is that they cannot point to any earlier manuscripts that present a different picture. They don’t exist. There are many minor differences among the historical manuscripts — that’s true. There simply is no earlier portrait of Jesus Christ who was not divine, who did not die for sinners and rise again. It doesn’t exist. That claim from Islam is without any historical support.
4. Hope of Eternal Happiness
Christianity is better than all other religions because the path of salvation it presents is absolutely unique in the world and offers the only hope of eternal happiness for sinners who know they don’t deserve it. In no other religion does God himself — in the form of a real, mortal human being — come into the world to die for his enemies, to bear the punishment that he himself must inflict on them in order to be just. It is breathtaking, not only in its utter uniqueness but in its utter ecstasy of good news for a guilty world. Anyone, anywhere in the world who trusts in Jesus, the God-man, will be saved from his sins and from the wrath of God.
Christianity is not a man-made religion designed to help man make himself acceptable to God — that’s hopeless, which is why all other religions are not going to make anybody eternally happy. All other religions are hopeless. Christianity is the one true history of what God has done that we could never do for ourselves: bear our just condemnation in Jesus’s own death and bring us to everlasting happiness in his presence. That’s what he has done.
Well, keep studying, and by all means keep praying that God would give you insight, because two people — you and some other student — can look at the same true story, and one of you can see beauty and glory, and the other will see myth and boredom. Pray that God would help you see glory in the truth.
