“I love Jesus, I love God and I have come to realize that all religions are the same and all gods are the same when people worship more than one god they are just seeing God in different forms.” I have heard this or a similar statement three times in the last month so I wanted to take the time to address it on this Good Friday morning. It is so wrong and misguided. What is particularly disturbing to me is that I have heard people who profess to be Christians echoing this same sentiment. Set aside for a moment the fact that God told His people who were living in a land filled with other people who worshipped other gods “There is no other God besides Me, A righteous God and a Savior; There is none except Me (Isaiah 45:21).” Set aside for a moment the fact that other religions say you have to work to earn your salvation and Christianity says that you cannot earn salvation, it is a gift from God. Set aside for a moment the fact that other religions view Jesus at best as merely a good teacher or perhaps a great prophet and some even see Him as a mad man! Only Christianity recognizes His deity and sees Him as God in the flesh. Set aside the contradictions between the religions, what they proclaim and what they say about Christ and think about what we recall and reflect on during Passover week. Do you remember how Christ went to the Garden to pray on the night that He was to be betrayed? In Mark 14:335-36 we are told
35 And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. 36 And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.”
The One who had never sinned was about to be bloodied and beaten. But what was worse was that He was about to take on the sin of the world! “If there be any other way…yet not my will, but Thine be done.” If there be any other way, if all religions were the same, if it did not matter who or what people worshipped, would it have been necessary for Christ to have gone to the cross? No! The truth is, it does matter. The truth is there was no other way! There is no other way! Jesus said that He came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). Jesus said “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by Me (John 14:6).” God declares in Acts 4:12 “there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
To say that all religions are the same, to say that anybody who worships any god is worshipping the same God is wrong. Not only is it wrong but diminishes the great sacrifice and the great love of Christ. I pray that as we Christians celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord this weekend, we proclaim that it does matter that Christ came. It does matter that He lived a sinless life. It does matter that He willingly gave that life for us and rose again on the third day according to the scriptures. It does matter that people place their faith and trust in Him.
