03 If All Religions Lead to God, Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the third episode in a companion series to my book, Start Strong: A New Believer's Guide to Christianity. Today we'll be studying John chapter 3, verses 16 to 21, which is one of the see-for-yourself passages from chapter 3 of the book. If all roads lead to God, why is the cross necessary? In this episode, we'll confront the contradictions many Christians quietly carry, believing both that Jesus is the only way to salvation and that all religions are valid paths. In this season of the podcast, each week we are going to walk through one of the book's See for Yourself passages. If you don't have a copy of the book, you can keep listening, it's no problem. You will still understand the passage and its main themes. If you already have the book, you might want to read through chapter three before listening. If you're listening or reading with a friend, group, or a book club, don't forget to download the free discussion questions for every chapter. There's also a companion workbook to help you reflect, journal, and apply what you're learning. You can find the free resources, the book, and the workbook at startstrongbook.org. Thanks so much for listening today. I'm glad you are. Well, if all religions lead to God, why did Jesus have to die? That's not a trick question. It's actually attention many evangelicals seem to be living with. According to the 2025 State of Theology survey, 65% of evangelicals agree with the statement God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, but almost the same number, 63%, also affirm that Jesus Christ's death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin. Can both of those statements be true? No. And that confusion strikes at the heart of the Gospel, and it's exactly why chapter 3 of my book Start Strong focuses on the necessity of the cross. Today we're going to look at a passage from the Gospel of John to see why the cross is the only door to forgiveness. If we get this question wrong, we're not just blurring theological lines. We risk missing the very heart of the Gospel. Today we're looking at John chapter 3, verses 14 through 21, which contains probably one of the most famous verses in Scripture. This section we'll look at is part of the discussion Jesus had with a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and he was part of the ruling and religious elite of New Testament Israel. Pharisees were a group that specialized in teaching and applying the Old Testament law. Nicodemus approached Jesus late one night to ask him some questions. He opened the discussion by saying, Jesus, we know you're a teacher from God because of the signs you do. And then he goes on. Now you might think Jesus would be encouraged that one of the religious leaders in Jerusalem is interested in him, especially since Nicodemus appears to be professing belief in Jesus. But Jesus challenges Nicodemus and questions his interest. The part of the dialogue we're looking at is still part of his response to this initial statement. Nicodemus opens the conversation. And in response, Jesus confronts Nicodemus with four challenges. For time's sake, we won't look at the first or the second challenge, which appears in the first 13 verses of the chapter, but I will summarize for you what they are. I do have a podcast on my website where I go over this chapter in detail. So if you want to explore those two challenges, I'll put a link to that in the show notes. The first thing Jesus confronts Nicodemus with is the need for spiritual rebirth. Nicodemus portrays himself as a kind of a truth seeker. He acknowledges that God is working through Jesus, but he's seeking more information. And Jesus reminds him that only those who have been spiritually transformed by the Spirit of God can receive life and blessing from God. Seeking the truth alone is not enough. You have to be born again. Well, that's very confusing to Nicodemus, because he thinks being born Jewish as a descendant of Abraham and making a good faith effort to keep the law is enough to be saved. From his perspective, if being Jewish and law-keeping is not enough, then how can anyone be saved? And Jesus answers, well, salvation is not up to your own efforts, it's a gift of God. Now Jesus doesn't use this language, but essentially he says, God gives you his spirit to change you from the inside out. This rebirth is not something that you can physically do or see. It's like the wind. You can't control the wind. The wind blows where it wills. You don't see the wind, but you know that the wind has been there by the changes that take place. And the spirit is like that. To be saved, you must be born again by the Spirit. The Spirit needs to remove your rebellious heart, your rebellious posture toward God, and give you instead the desire to love God and follow Him. And being born again, the term Jesus uses, refers to the Spirit of God changing you so that you repent of your sins and begin to seek God's mercy. The second challenge is to the way Nicodemus was thinking. Nicodemus came to Jesus saying, Well, we know you're a teacher, but Jesus says, I am more than a teacher. At times God revealed some of his plans to prophets like John the Baptist, Isaiah, or Moses, but no human being has gone to heaven to bring back truths of God. We're cut off from God's realm. We have to depend on God to reach out to us because we can't go to heaven and learn from him. We don't get to go up to heaven, check out the scene, and then come back and explain to everyone else what we saw. But Jesus does. Jesus is different. He came down from heaven in a way that no other human being has. He knows God's plans and purposes because God revealed them to him. God sent Jesus to explain those divine plans to us. And Jesus is testifying to what he knows. So he challenges Nicodemus. You have to think of me as more than just another teacher of the law. You have to see that I am the Messiah sent from God. Again, that's not the language Jesus uses. I'm summarizing his point. Sadly, Nicodemus doesn't get it. Nicodemus almost immediately starts questioning and doubting what Jesus tells him. He says, What are you thinking about? How can these things be true? Jesus has to explain the need for spiritual rebirth to Nicodemus. And from Jesus' perspective, that's the easy stuff. Nicodemus should already understand the need to be born again because he studied the Old Testament. Those truths have been apparent from the Old Testament for centuries, and Nicodemus, as a teacher of the Old Testament law, should know them. Jesus challenges him, look, if you don't believe me about the ideas that God has already revealed through Scripture, how are you going to believe me about the heavenly things, the new ideas that I've come to tell you that no one has ever heard before, because God is just now revealing them through me. Because the fact is, I, Jesus, know the whole story, and I'm here to testify concerning that story. And that brings us to the third way Jesus challenges Nicodemus, and this is the passage I want to focus on today. Nicodemus has acknowledged Jesus as a teacher of God, but Jesus has to remind him there's a lot at stake here. Your eternal destiny is dependent on whether or not you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the messenger of God sent from heaven. And this starts in chapter three. Let's start with fourteen through seventeen. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Now Jesus is clarifying how important it is to believe that he is the means of salvation. Believing in him is the way and the only way to eternal life. And whether you receive eternal life or not depends on whether or not you respond to Jesus in belief. Now if you stop and think about it, that is a really audacious claim to make. Today we're so used to this as Christians. We've known this story for centuries. Believe in Jesus and you get saved. We kind of lose sight of the fact that that is a really kind of bold and strange claim for Jesus to make. Imagine if I came to you and I said, believe that I'm the best Bible teacher in the world and you will be saved. Well, you'd all laugh in my face, and you'd have good reason to. I mean, what a ridiculously bold and outrageous claim to make. You'd probably respond something like, Who do you think you are? Why would believing anything about you make any difference at all to anything? Why would that determine my salvation? Well, that's how the claims of Jesus must have sounded to the Jews standing around him, including Nicodemus. Nicodemus must have thought, look, Jesus, we're the Jews. We've had prophets come and prophets go for centuries. What makes you think you're any different than Moses, Isaiah, or Ezekiel? Why should belief in you make any difference at all? But nonetheless, that's what Jesus says, and we want to explore what he means by it. Jesus refers to the story of the serpent in the wilderness, which you'll find in the Old Testament book of Numbers, chapter 21. First, let me explain where this story from Numbers falls in biblical history. The story of the nation of Israel begins way back in the book of Genesis, when God called one man named Abraham to follow him. God gave Abraham a promise. He told Abraham, I will bless you, and through you all the nations of earth will be blessed. That one promise becomes the foundation for a nation of people descended from Abraham. Abraham had a son named Isaac, who inherited the promise, and Isaac had a son named Jacob who inherited the promise. God changes Jacob's name to Israel, and Jacob has twelve sons who become the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. So one man becomes a family, and that family grows into a large tribe or a nation. And this is in the very beginning of the nation of Israel. It's not yet a nation in the formal sense. They have a shared family history and a shared God, but they don't yet have a land or laws or a king. Eventually, through a series of events involving one of Jacob's sons, who is named Joseph, and his brothers, the large tribe ends up in Egypt. At first, they are welcomed as guests, but over time the political climate shifts and they become slaves in Egypt. The opening chapters of the book of Exodus tell us that the Egyptians began to fear the Israelites as the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were known, because they began multiplying rapidly. So Pharaoh, the head of Egypt, enslaves them and subjects them to brutal labor. But God had not forgotten his promise to Abraham. God called one of the Israelites, a man named Moses, and through a series of miraculous events, the plagues, the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, God brings his people out of slavery, and this is what we call the Exodus. It becomes the defining rescue story of the Old Testament. After escaping Egypt under Moses, the Israelites don't go straight to the Promised Land. Instead, they enter a long season where they wander in the wilderness. And this is where the book of Numbers comes in. It's a record of what we call the wilderness period. The people have escaped Egypt and they are wandering in the Sinai Desert, learning what it means to trust and follow God and follow his leadership and live as his people. Eventually, this season ends with the conquest of the promised land, which is recorded in the book of Joshua. But the book of Numbers captures that middle ground, the wandering, the waiting, and the wrestling with faith. The story that Jesus refers to in John's Gospel refers back to a story that takes place in the wilderness and is recorded in Numbers 21. Let me just read it for you. I'm going to read verses four through nine. From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom, and the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food. Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us. So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole, and if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. All right, so the children of Israel rebel against God and the leadership of Moses. They start grumbling and complaining, and in judgment, God sends fiery, poisonous serpents among them, and many of them die from the snake bites. Eventually the people cry out for forgiveness and beg Moses to talk to God for them. In response, God tells Moses to fashion a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. Anyone who was bitten by one of the snakes could look at the serpent on the pole and they would be healed. So in this story, we see God sends serpents as judgment on their rebellion, and at the same time, he provides a way of salvation. Look at the serpent on the pole, and you will not die from this bite of the snake that he just sent as judgment. Now Jesus refers back to that, he says in through fourteen and fifteen, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. So what's the analogy to our situation? What analogy is Jesus making? The world is under the wrath of God. We are under his judgment. We are evil, rebellious creatures, we are guilty, and we will stand condemned. If God does not make a provision for us, we will die. Just like the ancient Israelites who were bitten by the serpents died until God provided a way of escape, we too are going to die eternally if God does not provide a way of escape for us. And Jesus is saying, I am that provision. If you look at him the way the Israelites look to the serpent on the pole, you will live. Now I think he's probably thinking of the cross too. He will be lifted up on a cross in a similar fashion to the way the bronze serpent was lifted up on a pole. It's the same visual metaphor in both of these stories. In the time of Moses, God's solution was to put the serpent, the thing that was their judgment, and the thing that brought them death, high on a pole for them to look at. When they looked at it, they were saved. Well, we could say the same thing is true about the cross. We are asked to look on Christ offering his life, on the death that he died on the cross, and realize that is the death that we are escaping. We need to acknowledge that is our judgment. We will be judged and condemned unless we accept the mercy offered by the cross. Just as Moses lifted up the snake and presented it to the Israelites as their means of salvation, so Jesus is going to be lifted up that we might look to him and find salvation. Now the important point here is that Christ came to save us by being the object of our belief, which is what Jesus says next. Let's read John 316 and 17, and John 3.16 is the famous verse. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. What's his point? You gain eternal life by believing Jesus was sent by God to be the Savior of the world. We all deserve condemnation. But Jesus, the Messiah, did not come the first time to carry out that condemnation. He didn't come to hand out the judgment we deserve. He came to rescue us from condemnation instead. In a supreme act of love, God sent his son into the world not to judge and condemn us, but to offer us a way of escape. And that's the point Jesus is making. Sending his son was an act of great love, not an act of judgment. Now we know that there will be a day of judgment. Jesus talks about that in other places. But here he makes the point he came to rescue us by dying on the cross. So we can see that when Nicodemus makes this simple statement, you're a teacher from God, that's not going to cut it. Jesus is more than just a teacher from God. And making that claim, believing that statement is true, is not enough. Nicodemus has to come to terms with the fact that Jesus is the Messiah sent from heaven to save us from the judgment we deserve. Now, we're still left with the nagging question: well, why is believing in Jesus so important? And this is where Jesus' final challenge to Nicodemus comes in. Nicodemus has not understood that his response to Jesus is a symptom of his underlying spiritual condition. How we respond to Jesus is significant because it reveals who we are inside and what we're counting on. And this is the last point that Jesus makes starting in 318. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and the people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. Now personally, I think what Jesus says here in this little section is hugely important. We have to start with the understanding that we are all guilty and worthy of judgment. That's what the first two chapters of my book are all about. If God does not show us mercy, we will stand condemned. That's the bad news. But the good news is there is a way to avoid condemnation. Each and every one of us will be justly and fairly judged, condemned, and found guilty. But those who believe in Jesus will escape the consequences, will escape the punishment. For those who believe, our sins will not be held against us, and we will find forgiveness. God has thrown us a lifeline just like he threw a lifeline to the ancient Israelites in the wilderness. If we reject that lifeline, then we will stand condemned. Notice he says, the one who refuses to believe has already passed judgment on himself. His very refusal to believe is testimony to his guilt and condemnation. Think about how important that statement is. Unbelief itself is testimony to the inner reality that we humans are hostile to God and reject his truth. Jesus is shining the light of truth on everything. He says with divine authority, this is true, this is a lie, this is who God is, and this is what you can expect from him. He's telling us the truth about God, but he's also shining the light of truth on us and showing us how sinful and rebellious we are. And we don't want to hear that. We want to be told we're special, we're misunderstood. But the fact is we are evil and we deny it. We don't want to admit that we are fallen, corrupt, sinful creatures who deserve condemnation. Basically, we don't believe because we don't want the truth to be true. It's inconvenient. It interferes with our selfish desires. It interferes with how we understand ourselves. We want to tell ourselves a different story. We want reality to be different than reality actually is, and we insist on believing what we want to be true. As Jesus puts it, we love the darkness rather than the light because our deeds are evil. Truth is humiliating, because if we measure ourselves by the truth, we don't look so good. To believe in a savior, you have to admit that you need saving. It is truly wonderfully good news that Jesus came to save us, but accepting that news involves standing in a very bright light and saying, I am unworthy. I need to be saved from who I am. But by and large, we're not interested in coming clean that way. So refusing to believe in Jesus is a symptom of a deeper fundamental hostility to God and a rejection of the truth about our own guilt before him. The very act of unbelief proves that I am hostile to God. It shows that I refuse to come to the light and let the truth be known. So this statement that all roads, all religions lead to God can't be true because Jesus is telling us if you don't believe in who I am and what I came to do, then you are already condemned. Just as unbelief is a symptom of condemnation, Jesus tells us belief is a symptom of a deeper spiritual reality. By the grace of God, some of us walk in the light, some of us embrace his teachings and practice the truth. Look at how he ends in John 3.21. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. Now you might think that Jesus is saying there are two kinds of people in the world. There are evil people, they don't believe in Jesus because they don't want it to be known that they're evil. And then there are these wonderful, righteous, perfect people, and they don't mind coming to light because they say, hey, look at me, I am great, and God made me that way. It might sound at first glance that that is what Jesus is saying, but that is not what he is saying. Everyone is guilty. Every one of us is evil. Every one of us stands condemned unless God provides a way of escape. It is only by God's grace and mercy that any of us receive forgiveness and escape his wrath. It's a miracle that any of us come into the light. It's a miracle that any of us believe. Because saving faith itself is a gift of God. It's only because God is acting in our lives that we believe it all. That's what he means so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. God did this. God brings us to a point of belief. Even our faith itself is a gift of God. The difference between believers and unbelievers is not that we are better people, we are not. The difference is that we embrace the truth. We've stopped lying to ourselves about God and who we are. We admit the problem that we have with sin. We're grateful for the mercy of God because we know we desperately need that mercy and we hunger and thirst after God's holiness. But we reach that point by the Spirit of God changing us from the inside out. We reach that point by being born again, as we talked about earlier. God has to intervene in our lives, changing us, giving us his spirit so that we are willing to come to Jesus and seek the salvation he offers. Now, let's sum up what Jesus said to Nicodemus. Jesus says, I am not just a teacher, I am not one prophet among many, I am the Messiah, the only person sent from heaven itself. What I teach is straight from heaven itself. I am testifying to the very things of God, and I have come to the world to save the world from condemnation. That means you have a fundamental choice that you must make. Your eternal destiny depends on whether you believe that Jesus is the Savior. Believing is essential because to reject Jesus is to rebel against the truth at a most fundamental level. If you don't believe Jesus, then you have condemned yourself as an enemy of the truth. To believe in Jesus, on the other hand, is evidence of a profound work that God is doing in you. It shows your willingness to come to the light, to the light of truth, to admit your sin, to repent, and to be known as a recipient of God's mercy. Now, I can't overemphasize how important that is. Probably all of us at one time or another have wondered, well, why does it really matter whether I believe in Jesus or not? If I'm just a good person, if I, you know, basically morally good, I try hard, my good deeds outweigh my bad. Isn't that enough? And Jesus is telling us here, it's not enough. The answer to the objection, don't all religions lead to God? Doesn't God accept all kinds of worship? Is countered in this chapter. Jesus himself says, what you believe about me, Jesus, is critically important. You have to believe that he is the Messiah, that he has come to save his people from sin and save us from the condemnation that we deserve. Ultimately, this brings us back to the four convictions of saving faith, which we'll talk about next week. Those are one, we are sinful. Two, we cannot save ourselves. Three, God is not obligated or required to save us because of anything we've done. But four, God will save us because of the blood of Jesus Christ. We must believe those four things are true. And those four convictions are all about who is Jesus and what did he do for you? Because how we respond to those two questions, who is Jesus and what did he do for you, is the difference between life and death. Jesus is challenging us to come into the light. We have to let the light of truth shine on us and say, Yes, I am a messed up sinner. I need help, and God has offered it in the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am guilty. I would like to be a righteous and holy person. That's what I long for. And I will only have that if God shows me mercy because of the cross of Jesus Christ. Now it's not the fact that I believe a doctrine that's significant or that I could pass a theological test that makes a difference. I must believe it in such a way that it changes my life. I begin to act differently, speak differently, want different things. I think in the past in church history, we have sometimes wrongly put the emphasis on the idea of knowing the right things as being the way to get you saved. But Jesus doesn't say here, if you don't know who I am, you won't be saved. He says, if you refuse to believe in me, you will not be saved. It is unbelief that condemns us, not ignorance. He's talking about a fundamental hostility to the truth, a condition of our hearts, not whether or not we've heard and understood a particular doctrine, but whether we have responded to the truth we've been told. All of us probably believe some crazy doctrine at some point in our lives, maybe all of our lives. We don't have to have our doctrine perfect to be saved, but we do need to be open and receptive to the truth. We need to be people who are willing to walk into the light of truth as Jesus proclaims it and let it change us. We have to humble ourselves before God and say, Father, you are right, I am wrong, I'm a sinner, teach me, forgive me, and save me. So on the one hand, what I believe is a reflection of who I am inside. To refuse to believe the truth about Jesus or about God or myself in the story of the gospel is a very significant thing. To refuse to believe I'm a sinner in need of a savior betrays that I have a heart that is rebellious and hard against God. But on the other hand, I can have all kinds of wrong, mistaken beliefs about scripture and doctrine for a whole variety of reasons. Maybe I've never been told, maybe I've misunderstood, maybe I've been taught the wrong things, maybe I don't know how to think about such things, maybe I have old mistaken beliefs that I'm still sorting through and haven't figured out yet. That is very different than refusing to believe because I don't care what God says about anything anyway. That kind of unbelief is a huge problem, and it says a lot about my spiritual state. So, yes, I firmly believe that Jesus is the only way to be saved. But the issue isn't how much I know about him or what I know about him. The issue is how do I respond to the truths that I have been confronted with. The gospel, as I see it, is like the sharpest, deepest knife in God's surgical toolkit. How I respond to it cuts straight to my heart. And that's why it's so significantly ultimately how I respond to the gospel. But the issue of exactly what doctrines, what theological truths I believe at any particular moment, that can be complex. We need to be patient with each other as we sort out those kinds of differences. There are only two essential questions we have to get right, and that is who was Jesus and what did he do for us? The issue of being born again is not an issue of do I have all my theological ducks in a row? It's an issue of am I willing to embrace the truth when I see it and hear it? Am I willing to believe what God says is true when someone tells me or I see it? And here, Jesus has told us that he is the way of salvation. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. You'll find the blog version of this episode, including links and resources, at Wednesdayintheword.com slash Start Strong Podcast 3. You can listen to all the episodes in this series at WednesdayInTheWord.com. There is no chart, no spam, and no ads. Just free, trustworthy resources to help you grow in your understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please consider following, rating, or reviewing it on your favorite podcast platform. It really does help people find the podcast. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. If you haven't read the book yet, you can find it wherever books are sold, or start with the free resources at startstrongbook.org. If you're reading along with us, you might want to read chapter four before the next episode. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can hear more of Reggie's music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Morata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.