Cedarville Magazine, Spring/Summer 2016

The Exclusivity of the Gospel billion people who, if they died today, would never have had access to the Gospel? This question is not just an intellectual exercise, but represents a powerful motivation for evangelism. In what follows, we will see the answer Scripture provides concerning the unreached and consider how this answer fuels missions at Cedarville University. JESUS CHRIST: THE ONLYWAY The storyline of Scripture points to Jesus as the only way for salvation. From the earlymoments following the Fall, God makes a plan to save the people He created in His image. Eve, who rebelled against God’s command, would one day, through her offspring, bear a child who would crush the head of the serpent, and whose heel would be bruised in the process (Gen. 3:15). This promise of a serpent-crushingMessiah signaled the first indication of the power of God for salvation that would be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Throughout the Bible, there is an array of verses that demonstrate that the early promise in Genesis of salvation through a Messiah was fulfilled exclusively in Jesus Christ. For instance, the idols and gods of the nations failed to provide a way of salvation compared to the spiritual power and deliverance found in the God of Israel (Ps. 96:5; 97:7). Jesus’ claim for Himself is that He alone is the means to salvation: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). In his bold sermon delivered before the council in Jerusalem, Peter claimed, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). And finally, the Apostle Paul made clear that Jesus Christ is the exclusive fulfillment of the law, making salvation available in Him alone (Rom. 10:1–4). While some argue that those who are well intentioned and seeking God will be saved based on humanity’s universal access to God’s general revelation in nature, this notion misses the biblical picture that general revelation is inevitably suppressed (Rom. 1:18–23). For example, in the one New Testament example where an individual responded to the limited revelation he had, God did not regard that response as sufficient for salvation, but supplied further specific revelation of salvation in Jesus Christ alone (see the story of Cornelius in Acts 10–11). The teaching of the Bible, though sometimes hard for people to accept, is that “no one seeks for God” (Rom. 3:9–12). Apart from the Holy Spirit’s ministry of conviction and illumination through the Word of God, we do not seek God (1 Thess. 1:4–5; 1 Cor. 2:1–5). The image of the unregenerate heart is not one of a well-intentioned wanderer seeking truth, but of an idol factory producing false worship. FUEL FOR THE MISSION: THE ONLY TRUTH As the commitment to the exclusivity of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ goes, so goes themissionary impulse of the people of God. The New Testament motivation for evangelism is for the glory of God as well as the spiritual need of the lost. The command to go and God’s concern for the lost among the nations is set within a single context: His redemptive plan of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. Cedarville Magazine | 11