War of the Worldviews (Part 1)

By John MacArthur @http://www.sfpulpit.com

Five years ago, I wrote a relatively brief book entitled Why One Way? Defending an Exclusive Claim in an Inclusive World. As the title conveys, the book was meant as a reminder of the gospel’s distinctiveness.

That reminder is still desperately needed today, as evangelicalism continues to find itself tempted by the siren calls of our pluralistic society. Now is not the time to make friends with the world. It is certainly no time to capitulate to worldly cries for ecumenism and inclusivism. Unless we recover our conviction that Christ is the only way to heaven, the evangelical movement will become increasingly weak and irrelevant.

It is ironic that so many who are downplaying the exclusivity of Christ are doing it because they believe it is a barrier to “relevance.” Actually, Christianity is not relevant at all if it is merely one of many possible paths to God. The relevance of the gospel has always been its absolute exclusivity, summed up in the truth that Christ alone has atoned for sin and therefore Christ alone can provide reconciliation with God for those who believe only in Him.

The early church preached Christ crucified, knowing that the message was a stumblingblock to the religious Jews and foolishness to the philosophical Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:23). We need to recover that apostolic boldness. We need to remember that sinners are not won by clever public relations or the powers of earthly persuasion, but it is the gospel — an inherently exclusive message — that is the power of God unto salvation.

That very narrowness sets Christianity apart from every other world view. After all, the whole point of Jesus’ best-known sermon was to declare that the way to destruction is broad and well traveled, while the way of life is so narrow that few find it (Matthew 7:14). Our task as ambassadors of God is to point to that very narrow way. Christ Himself is the one way to God, and to obscure that fact is in effect to deny Christ and to disavow the gospel itself.

We must resist the tendency to be absorbed into the fads and fashions of worldly thought. We need to emphasize, not downplay, what makes Christianity unique. And in order to do that effectively, we need to have a better grasp of how worldly thought is threatening sound doctrine in the church. We must be able to point out just where the narrow way diverges from the broad way.

In tomorrow’s post, I will overview what I believe to be six key components of a biblical worldview – that is, the worldview that sets Christianity apart from every other worldly viewpoint.