TOGETHER: Jesus is the way, the truth & the life

Posted: 3/30/07

TOGETHER:
Jesus is the way, the truth & the life

A speech by Charles Kimball at this year’s Christian Life Conference has generated a lot of discussion. Kimball, a professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, said Christians and Muslims “are talking about the same God.”

“There is really not much ambiguity about this. Allah is simply the Arabic word for God,” Kimball said. “The name for God in Islam, in Arabic, is Allah. This is not another god. This is the same God that Jews and Christians are talking about.”

Executive Director BGCT Executive Board

This language is a bit jarring. It’s not how we Baptists normally talk. Kimball was referring to the fact Christians and Muslims, as well as Jews, trace their theological heritage to the God of Abraham. He also was stating the linguistic fact that Middle Eastern Christians who speak Arabic use the word “Allah” (God) in prayers, Scripture reading and worship.

To say that the God of Christians, Jews and Muslims is the same God is a literary and historical understanding of the common origins we have in the story of Abraham. But the reality of Jesus Christ as God incarnate means that any view of God that does not look through the eyes of Jesus is going to be flawed and inadequate to provide salvation.

The 1963 Baptist Faith & Message statement, which is the theological statement of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, is very clear about our understanding of the nature of God and about his Son, Jesus. The statement is too lengthy to quote here in its entirety, but I want to pull out a few key statements. First, from the general statement about God:

“There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. To him we owe the highest love, reverence and obedience. The eternal God reveals himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence or being.”

The Baptist Faith & Message then says this about our Lord Jesus:

“Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ, he was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. … He honored the divine law by his personal obedience, and in his death on the cross, he made provision for the redemption of men from sin. He was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to his disciples as the person who was with them before his crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God where he is the One Mediator, partaking of the nature of God and of man, and in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man. …”

The full statement is available on the BGCT website.

We Texas Baptists affirm that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6).

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The call for all people to know the love of God in and through Jesus Christ is the good news we share.

Jesus loves us all.

Charles Wade is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board.