What did Jesus say about other religions?

Worship. — As such she now addressed Him, starting quite a new, and a very different, subject from that hitherto before them. Then she had replied by questions to that which the Lord had said. Now she introduced the subject of the place of worship, a matter of contention between Samaritans and Jews. To this He replied, "Woman, believe Me, the hour comes, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth" (21-24). The Samaritan worship was then all wrong. Their separation from that carried on at Jerusalem was quite unauthorised. Salvation was of the Jews. Through them it must come, and not through the upholders of the Samaritan schism, as we may well call it. Besides, those worshipped they knew not what. A solemn announcement indeed! A false worship has another being behind it than God. Demons are there, not God (1 Cor. 10:20). Was it not that to which the Lord referred? No question, then, could there be, but that the Samaritan worship was wrong. That question, which Samaritans had debated for centuries, and determined as they wished in their own favour, was settled against them by the prophet, as she thought Him, in a very few words, and there was left no room for a rejoinder. Salvation being of the Jews, Samaritan opposition to the worship at Jerusalem must be wrong. God could not be with them who disowned the only house and altar which He had sanctioned. Real worship of God there could not be in the Temple at Gerizim. Then if God was not there, what was there?

Before leaving this chapter notice how in the latter part of it the exclusive claim of Jehovah is emphasised again and again. Beside Him there is "none else." The faith of Christ, and the Gospel which proclaims it, have today just this exclusive claim, as witnessed in such scriptures as John 6:68; John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Galatians 1:8-9. There are today men who would go to the Buddhist or Confucian acknowledging their religions as ways to God and only claiming that "Christianity" offers them a rather superior way. In so doing they bring themselves near to, if not actually under, the apostolic curse of Galatians 1:8, while they avoid the reproach that the Gospel brings. It is this exclusive claim, inherent in the Gospel, which provokes the opposition.

He that has the Son has life (1 John 5:12) and he “that confesses the Son has the Father also” (2:23). It is never stated the other way, as though it were reciprocal. “No man comes to the Father but by Me,” said the Son of God. “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” This excludes all the efforts of man apart from the Son: it shuts out the natural man even at his very best. The Son is the Way, not simply a way! The Son is the Truth, not simply a portion of it! The Son is the Life, not simply a partial manifestation of it. Yea, “He is the true God and eternal life.”

In verse 22 the Lord leaves it impossible for the Samaritan to draw the inference that, if Christian worship was about to be alone acceptable to God, independently of place or race, Samaritan had been just as good as Jewish. Not so. The Samaritans worshipped what they did not know, the Jews knew what they worshipped; "for salvation," as He added, "is of the Jews." They had "the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, the law-giving, and the service, and the promises, whose were the fathers, and of whom as pertaining to flesh was the Christ Who is over all God blessed for ever. Amen." (Rom. 9:5.) The Samaritans were mere imitators, Gentiles jealous of Israel and hostile to them, without fear of God, else had they submitted to His ways and Word.

340 The woman now turns to worship. The Lord tells her that salvation was of the Jews; the Samaritans worshipped they knew not what; but the hour was coming, and now was, when the true worshippers should worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for it was no longer a question of what man ought to be for God, but of what God is for the sinner. "The Father seeketh such to worship him." As for man's worship, it was all worthless. You may get a machine to do ceremonies if you only are clever enough to make one. As we read in the prophet of the outward worship of Israel. God calls it, "bowing the head like a bulrush." It is utterly worthless. You must have to do with God who knows you, and whom you must know if you would worship Him in spirit and in truth. It is not God requiring worship - all very true, as man's duty - but the Lord is here in grace, and out of the abundance of His heart He says, "The Father seeketh" worshippers. He is not regarding forms of worship, but He is seeking vile, broken-down sinners to make them worshippers. He is not seeking the Pharisee: his worship proceeds out of himself; he thanks God for what he is.

(Vv. 5, 6). The Lord introduces this great theme with the word, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." Thomas, with a very different thought in his mind, fails to catch the meaning of the Lord's words. In reply to the question of Thomas "How can we know the way?" the Lord plainly shows that He is speaking of the Person to whom He is going and not simply of a place as Thomas wrongly supposed. To this Person — the Father — Christ is the way; the One, too, in whom the truth of the Father is set forth. Moreover He is the life in which the truth of the Father can be enjoyed. There is moreover no other way to the Father, hence the Lord adds, "No man comes to the Father but by Me." Words of deeply solemn significance in a day when men reject the claims of the Son while talking of the Fatherhood of God. The words of the Lord anticipate the inspired words of the Apostle who, at a later time, will write, "Whosoever denies the Son, the same has not the Father" (1 John 2:23).

When He was exposing the Pharisees, whom worldliness had set in opposition to Him, He speaks solemnly and peremptorily — "He that is not with me is against me." But when He alludes to those who were owning Him in their affections and in their testimony, but had not, perhaps, that strength of faith that set them in full company with Him, He speaks in other terms — "He that is not against us is for us." (See Matthew 12 and Luke 9.)

p503 [J B Rurkin - probably Purkin, see this letter and other references to JBP in the Bible Treasury.] MY DEAR BROTHER, - The doctrine you refer to is widely spread enough. Zwingli held it: all the Wesleyans hold it and most of the national professors of Christianity. But it is founded on a want of depth and truth in the foundations, denying that we are all lost. The best answer is the very plain statements in the Epistle to the Romans, though these are confirmed by many others. But there is always a want of conviction of sin in these cases: man is not lost, not dead in trespasses and sins, and that is, I am not; for if I have deserved condemnation, it is no difficulty to think we all have. Hence grace, sin, the Lord's death, all lose their import and value and the real way of meeting it morally is to deal with the conscience of the individual. 'So to live that he might be saved' at once shews ignorance of the ways of God in grace - in fact of the gospel, as regards Christ's work. 'Right convictions and good practice' is not gospel. Is he born again? Acts 17:27 does not say a word of the Spirit's acting, and Acts 10:35 says simply that he who is such and such is accepted; it was merely that blessing was not confined to the Jews, as is evident if the passage be read. Romans 2:7, etc., which is the strongest passage, supposes the truth of glory and resurrection known. If I found a Gentile so walking, he is as much saved as a Jew. But it is declared that every mouth is stopped, and all the world guilty before God, that "there is none righteous, no, not one." The condemnation of the heathen is (Rom. 1:18 - 3:19) put upon a ground which negatives the idea of such an universal operation of the Spirit. They are, says the apostle, without excuse, on the double ground of having given up glorifying God when they knew Him, and the testimony of creation adding conscience: a reasoning perfectly futile, and without sense, if there was the other ground of condemnation, namely, that they have resisted the Holy Ghost. They that "have sinned without law shall also perish without law." "The carnal mind is enmity against God," in me, as well as in any other one of the nations. People confound the ground of responsibility with sovereign grace in saving. Genesis 6:3 refers merely to the patience of God in Noah's time.

Men are not saved by grace, if they are as thus stated; because, as the Spirit works alike on all (or the argument is nothing worth), the whole of salvation depends on man's acceptance of and acting on it. As I said at the beginning, our whole state, as scripture puts it, is denied. (See 2 Cor. 5:14, where the apostle draws the conclusion from grace. Compare Eph. 2:5) I do not believe the Gentiles more lost than I was myself. But "there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved" but the name of Jesus Christ. Romans 10:13-15 is positive as to the means. Judgment and condemnation is according to the means we have. What brings, by sovereign goodness, salvation to the lost is another thing. But, as I said, does he think himself lost? That is the real question. The source of thousands of opinions is the want of this, of conscience being before God; where it is not, the mind can have a thousand thoughts, all alike to no purpose. But I must close.

I think so! There may be thousands of people in this world today who have never heard of the name of Moses or of the Name of Jesus. Are these people to go into perdition because of that? There may be those reached in a way which is beyond our understanding, and it would appear that Romans 2 has this in mind.

C.C. — All men have a testimony from God. They may not have heard the gospel preached, but they are not without a testimony from God. In the darkness of heathenism, a man who bows to that testimony he has, will not God hear that man?