What makes Christianity unique?

Every comparative religion is based on the doctrine of man being his own saviour, and therefore contains an appeal to the natural heart of man; Christianity bears witness to the utter ruin of the sinner. In this it stands alone. It cannot be compared. It directs attention to the blessed risen Christ of God as the only Saviour, and that in virtue of His atoning death on the cross, to which the Passover pointed forward, whilst the Lord’s Supper points back to it.

Two things seem to operate markedly in such cases: (1) A deep sense of sin and guilt, giving the strong urge to seek God's forgiveness; and (2) a conception of God far removed from that of the heathen religions, attracting them to trust the Saviour of sinners. Christianity stands out in vivid contrast to all other religions in that it alone offers a Saviour to sinful men. It was no wonder that the late well-known preacher, Joseph Parker, when giving a lecture on contemporary religions, paused impressively, saying, "Remember Christianity is not one of them." No, it stands altogether by itself in its own divine glory.

The difference is this. In the religions described by this book, man becomes God in heathen belief. In Christianity alone do we have the sublime conception and the glorious fact of God becoming Man for the purpose, as Man, of making atonement for His creatures’ sin, and in ascending to heaven, when once His work was done, and remaining Man for ever, though never less than God, from all eternity to all eternity. God and Man—one Person—first in the world His hands had made, and then in heaven.

And He went on to the cross of Calvary to die the sacrificial death, to be the Mediator, the Saviour. The Christian religion is the only religion that presents a Saviour to mankind. All other man-made religions appeal to the pride of man in that they put salvation before him as the climax of his own endeavours.

In Christianity the preaching of wisdom is the presentation of a Person—Christ. The truth is not set forth in a creed, in a code of moral maxims, or in a system of theology, but livingly in a glorious and attractive Person. In this Christianity differs from any religion, philosophy, or code of ethics, whether ancient or modern, and the difference is vital.

“Philip went down to Samaria and preached Christ to them” (Acts 8). This brief and simple statement embodies in it a grand characteristic feature of Christianity — a feature which distinguishes it from every system of religion that now exists or ever was propounded in this world. Christianity is not a set of abstractions — a number of dogmas — a system of doctrines. It is preeminently a religion of living facts, of divine realities — a religion which finds its center in a divine Person, the Man Christ Jesus. He is the foundation of all Christian doctrine. From His divine and glorious Person all truth radiates. He is the living fountain from which all the streams issue forth in fullness, power and blessing. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Apart from Him all is death and darkness. There is not one atom of life, not one ray of light in all this world except what comes from Him. A man may possess all the learning of the schools; he may bask in the most brilliant light that science can pour upon his understanding and his pathway; he may garnish his name with all the honors which his fellow mortals can heap upon him, but if there is the breadth of a hair between him and Jesus — if he is not in Christ and Christ in him — if he has not believed on the Name of the only begotten Son of God, he is involved in death and darkness. Christ is “the true Light which lightens every man that comes into the world.” Hence no man can, in a divine sense, be termed an enlightened man except “a man in Christ.”

There are two grand facts which characterize Christianity and mark it off from all that had gone before. These are, first, Man glorified in heaven, and secondly, God dwelling in man on the earth. These are stupendous facts, divinely glorious and fitted to produce the most powerful effect upon the heart and life of the Christian.

Christianity, while fully maintaining the great truth that there is one God, further presents the equally important truth that there is one Mediator between God and men. This latter truth is the distinctive truth of Christianity.

It is based upon miracles: The intervention of Divine power in the midst of a world of sin, The incarnation of the Son of God, The revelation of God in Man, The cross and death of Jesus, The resurrection, are all Miracles. The glorification of the Man Christ Jesus; the coming of the Holy Spirit from Heaven, forming believers on the ascended Christ into one Body; the Gospel concerning Him, so adapted in its perfection to any and every child of Adam in every land; these are all unique. The calling of the Church, its equipment, its resources, its functions are incomparably blessed as set out in the Christian faith. The return of the Lord Jesus in power — so imminent — whether in the first instance to fetch the Church out of the world, or in the second instance to institute His Kingdom over the world as prophesied ages ago, is clearly included in the one faith. The blessedness of the knowledge of God, revealed as Father and all His counsels too with regard to Christ His Son, may well impress our hearts and minds with the magnificence and comprehensiveness of the One Faith, outside and independent of all the "faiths" of the world. It is utterly exclusive of any assimilation to any other faiths or co-operation with them. It is the TRUTH and stands alone, impregnable as God Himself.

Love and righteousness, which are the two great pillars of the Christian faith, are lacking, at least one or other of them is, in every other religion under the sun. You just inquire whether what I say be true or not. You are surely well acquainted with the mythology of the heathen. Was there much holiness in it? You know pretty well that nearly all the gods of the Greeks and the Romans were deified lusts. Who was Bacchus? Who was Venus? You know they were but deified lusts. Holiness was not there. On the other hand, where was love? You get Jupiter, a thoroughly vengeful deity; and Mars, the god of war. These are but samples of the many gods of the heathen, in every case the creation, in men's minds, of what they thought God must be, and in their religion either love or holiness was lacking. If they allowed lust, they did not judge sin. If they judged sin, there was no love. Now the charm of the gospel of Christ is that, while God is Love, He is also Light; and while He judges sin unsparingly, He loves the poor sinner infinitely. Before the day of judgment has come, when He must judge sin eternally, and the unforgiven sinner bear the fruit and consequences of his sin, His own blessed Son has come into this scene, and in love has died on the cross. His work done, atonement made, and redemption accomplished, He has been raised from the dead in righteousness for our justification. The claims of God have all been met. God's righteousness and hatred of sin have been met in the judgment of the cross. "He who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." And now the worst sinner who looks to Jesus as his Saviour, is saved.