The Lord our God is One ... the only One. Romans 3.29-31
11/16/2010 8:50:46 AM
Romans # 24 in series


 

The Lord our God is Onethe only One.  Romans 3.29-31 

He is God Almighty, comprised of Three Persons, the Trinity.

He reconciles us to himself through our faith in his Son—period.

Through that faith, we fulfill what the Law couldn’t in our lives.

We finish out Romans 3 with Paul:

After all, is God the God of the Jews only? Isn’t he also the God of the Gentiles? Of course he is.   There is only one God, and he makes people right with himself only by faith, whether they are Jews or Gentiles. Well then, if we emphasize faith, does this mean that we can forget about the law? Of course not! In fact, only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law.  Romans 3.29-31, NLT

Only one God. A faith relationship with that God is available to all.  Only one way to God, though we live in a time when folks believe that there are many ways to God.  We call this religious pluralism.

Pluralism flies in the face of truth.  Today’s pluralism is an ideology that proclaims truth is a cultural construction valid only for the culture that constructs it. It has therefore no bearing on another culture or system of meaning.  The pluralist pushes the point to individuals. As each individual constructs her own world, there can be as many worlds as there are individuals, and each inaccessible to all the others. So dialogue is futile.  Further, in the name of condemning dogmatism, pluralism is nevertheless the most dogmatic of all ideologies as it will frame any anti-pluralist concept of truth as dogmatism and exclusivism.  Pluralism is the monism of indifference.1

Picture a mountain which comes to a point, and at that top sits God … are you with me?  Now picture many trails leading from the bottom, and they all lead to the top—obviously, they have different paths, but all lead to God.  Un uh…  doesn’t work like that. 

Even if those trail-hikers are sincere,

            even if they are good people … that does not   

                         cause their ‘god’ to all holy

                                       or true or alive.  It does not make

                                                their relationship viable,

                                                            or their eternities secure.

Indeed, we live in a time when the philosophical pendulum has swung so far as to say that ‘there is no absolute truth’, which of course undermines the TRUTH of one true God.  And yet,

without truth,

            science collapses into conjecture,

                        journalism into rumour,            

                                    politics into rules and power-games, and

                                                free relationships into licence’.2

Truth is not relative, nor are all religions equal.  All roads do not lead home.  Other religions claim to be the ‘right’ one or the ‘only true one’, such as Islam and Mormonism, but we serve the only living God.  Followers of Jesus serve a risen Lord…no other religion, ism, or cult can say the same.  The fact that Jesus rose from the dead, doing what he said he would do, sets him apart from all others, and gives him the right to say, ‘No man comes to the Father except through Me.’3   So yes,

Christianity is exclusive,

            offered exclusively through Christ’s work on the cross,

                        but  to all without exception,

                                    making it no respecter of persons,

                                                either Jew or Gentile,

                                                            free or slave,

                                                                        white or black,

                                                                                    male or female.

Christ followers are called ‘narrow’ and ‘intolerant’, both terms that the so-called politically correct like to sling at believers like mud.  That’s o.k. with me . . . I think we can manage that.  After all, the road to Golgotha was narrow and treacherous, and Christ’s death was relentlessly intolerant.  Only one God would have opted for that.  That’s why he is the only One.

Christine

1)   Dr. Yu, the president of the China Graduate School in Hong Kong,  3rd Lausanne Congress on Evangelism, Cape Town, So Africa.

2)   Os Guinness, author, social critic, Sr. Fellow of the EastWest Inst., NY, co-founder of the Trinity Forum. Author/editor of more than 25 books…

3)   John 14.6, NLT