Real Answers to Tough Questions

Class 2: How Can Christians Make Exclusive Claims About God?

Redemption Hills Church - Adult Sunday School

Pastor Stu • September 20, 2026

Friends, today's question is one I hear all the time: how can Christians claim to know the true religion? Isn't claiming to have absolute truth just divisive? I'll surprise you and agree - religion does tend to divide people and create strife. It creates a slippery slope in the heart that can lead to judgment, stereotyping, and even violence. So how do we address that? There are two ways that won't work, and one that will.

Work to have religion weakened and disappear - that's the first way that won't work. The enlightened crowd has long believed religion would just evolve out of existence as we got smarter. Except the facts say otherwise. Major world religions are growing, not shrinking. The scholar Alistar McGrath put it memorably: the twentieth century's greatest and most distressing paradox was that its worst intolerance and violence were committed by people who believed religion itself was the source of intolerance and violence. Why does religion keep surviving? Jesus said it plainly in John 3:7-8: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes - so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Religion is going nowhere, because we are made in God's image to worship. That need is indelible and intrinsic.

Confine religion to the private realm - that's the second way that won't work. The idea sounds tidy: keep your beliefs at home, keep them out of the public square, and we can all get along. Except you can't actually pull that off. Even Nicodemus, a Pharisee coming from his own faith position, couldn't leave his beliefs at the door when he questioned Jesus at night (John 3:9-12). Marriage law, human dignity, right and wrong - every law rests on some faith-based answer to the big questions of life. Nobody operates without one, whether they call it faith or not.

Everybody has a set of exclusive beliefs. Say it with me: everybody has a set of exclusive beliefs. The secularist, the Buddhist, the atheist down the street who insists he isn't religious - all of them. So don't ask who has exclusive beliefs. Ask this instead: which set of exclusive beliefs will result in inclusive, loving, transformative, peaceful behavior that's an agent for reconciliation in the world?

Consider the beliefs of the gospel that are unique to Christianity alone - that's the third way, and it actually works. Today's passage, John 3:1-15, shows us three things about Christianity that no other religion shares. First, Origin of Salvation. John 3:13 says the Son of Man descended from heaven. Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius - every other founder was only a man. Jesus came already God. Second, Purpose of Salvation. Nicodemus came to a Rabbi in the flesh, in John 3:2, and Jesus didn't come to help you escape this material world - he came to redeem it, body and soul. Third, Method of Salvation - grace. Jesus told him, "unless one is born again… born of water and the Spirit" (John 3:3-8), and later, "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness… whoever believes in him may have eternal life" (John 3:14-15). Every other religion says perform well enough and God will bless you. The gospel says the opposite - you're saved while you're still a mess, on the basis of nothing you've done.

It's the exclusive beliefs of Christianity that if you take them into your heart will turn you into the very thing the world so desperately needs. If you're not saved by your own performance, you've got nothing left to be proud of, and nobody to look down on. That's exactly why the early Christians - despite holding wildly exclusive beliefs - were the ones crossing every line of race and class in a brutal, stratified Greco-Roman world. Exclusive beliefs? Absolutely, without apology. But the right exclusive beliefs lead to humility, not pride; to love, not judgment; to peace, not violence.

To the Glory of God, Pastor Stu. Please remember to come to next week's class if you are not volunteering.

Scripture References

John 3:1-15
John 3:7-8
John 3:9-12
John 3:13
John 3:2
John 3:3-8
John 3:14-15