NO OTHER WAY

It’s just like going down a road in rural Kentucky.  We learned there was one way and one way only to get from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ in the area where we lived as young missionaries in training.  As one local resident told us when we moved there, “You ain’t got no other way to git where you wanna’ go, honey.”  He was right!

That reminds me of a question that’s come up often in our mission’s mobilization journey “Won’t God save ‘those people’ –meaning those living beyond the reach of the gospel, if they never hear of Jesus?”

It’s an innocent question, alright, but God doesn’t have any other way we can embrace forgiveness of sin or attain a home in heaven except thru His Son Jesus.  If lost people will be saved it will only be through faith in the finished work of Christ. There’s no other way!

Occasionally someone will protest, “It’s seems so unfair that God wouldn’t make another way for such ones to be saved.”  But think

think about it… if God had another means of saving people then it would nullify the finished work of Christ and make the gospel of no

effect.  Jesus said “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. None… NO ONE comes to the Father except through me (Jesus).”  

Acts 4: 12 affirms it.  There just isn’t any other way to have a relationship with God, and no other way to get to heaven or avoid hell outside of the gospel.  I’m thankful we have the freedom of choosing life over death.  But there are many who haven’t been given that choice.

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?  And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?  And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?  As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”  Romans 10:13-15

Those scriptures say it well although some struggle over the fairness issue.  I ask… “is it fair that Jesus took our sin upon himself and died in our place?  Is it fair we’ve heard the message of salvation and ‘they’ haven’t?  …And if you’ve embraced the gospel, is it fair not to tell some lost soul… or go to the ends of the earth as Jesus commanded us to do to tell them the message?

“When men are heathen by choice that’s their business.    …But when men are heathen by no choice that’s our business.” 

There is no other way such ones will hear unless we go.  NO OTHER WAY.