Spotlight on Lausanne
The Uniqueness of Jesus Christ
By John D. Wilson
evangelicals worldwide are looking ahead to the next lausanne Congress on world
evangelization in 2010 in Cape Town, South africa, the third such major gathering in
the movement launched in 1974 by Billy Graham, John Stott and others. Faith Today
has commissioned a series looking at seven of the major issues to be discussed.
Against a background of multiculturalism and pluralism, Christianity competes in the spiritual marketplace of Canadian society today as only one among several belief systems.
The situation is aggravated by the philosophical shift
in the western world view toward the relativity and eclecticism of popular postmodernism. It is no longer acceptable
to assert unequivocally that Christianity is the one true
religion or, more specifically, that the only way to God is
through the person of Jesus Christ.
Try that and you are soon told you are arrogant, bigoted
or intolerant.
Nonetheless, we can affirm that Jesus Christ is unique.
First, He is unique in His person – that is, who He is as the
Son of God. Second, He is unique in what He accomplished
by becoming a human being in the midst of humanity and
through His death, resurrection and ascension.
The main problem is not Christ’s uniqueness but how we
articulate this claim.
Of course, today our understanding of
uniqueness is ambiguous. We often hear people
saying something or someone is “very unique”
as if there were degrees of uniqueness. This betrays our postmodern culture’s reluctance to
claim anything as absolute – that a particular
person, idea or thing stands absolutely alone
and different. We value diversity and “
otherness” to a certain degree and yet we bend over
backwards to assert sameness and coerce everyone into conformity and homogeneity.
Canadians generally tolerate all religions
in terms of their perceived common values.
We regularly hear people assert “All religions
are the same.” And people pick and choose an
eclectic mix from different religions and phil-osophies in order to define their own “
spirituality” – even when some of those ideas are
inherently incompatible or even contradictory.
However, these same people will quickly become irritated if you suggest that your religion
is the one and only true faith.
For these reasons, we will not establish the
uniqueness of Jesus with proof texts like “There
is no other name … by which we must be saved”
or by quoting Jesus when He said “I am the way
… No one comes to the Father except through
me.” Nor is it likely we can convince people
with logical arguments.
Rather, we need to be able to explain why we
believe He is unique in terms of the wider nar-
why these Seven Issues?
The lausanne Congress expects 4,000 participants in Cape Town, with thousands more joining in over the internet. in essence the event will be a global Church council on the pressing issues facing the advance of the
gospel around the world.
as Christians seek to evangelize, they face challenges. Some are local or regional
but others are international. lausanne has a series of online videos introducing
many of these issues, available at www.youtube.com/lausannemovement.
Faith Today has invited columns on seven of these issues: (1) the uniqueness
of Jesus Christ, ( 2) seeking reconciliation in our broken world, ( 3) developing a
redemptive, loving response to world faiths, ( 4) priorities for world evangelism,
( 5) living a Christlike lifestyle of servanthood, ( 6) the Trinity as a model for global
partnership and community and ( 7) megacities and international diaspora.
Global issues like these require God’s people to engage in global conversations
in pursuit of global solutions. no one nation, region, denomination or ministry
has all the answers.
Organizers are praying for three major results from the congress: a greater
sense of unity in the Body of Christ (including hundreds of new organizational
partnerships), of clarity of the gospel and of ordered priority in the tasks ahead.
“Together, we want to discern where the Church should put its energies so that
we can most effectively respond to Christ’s call to take the gospel into all the world
and make disciples of people,” according to www.lausanne.org.
digging deeper Into the uniqueness of christ
•;The;Uniqueness;of;Christ;in;a;Postmodern;World;and;the;Challenge;of;World;Religions,
lausanne Occasional paper no. 31 (free online at www.lausanne.org)
•;richard d. phillips (editor), Only One Way? Reaffirming the Exclusive Truth Claims
of Christianity, Crossway, 2007
•;Sung wook Chung, Christ;the;One;and;Only:;A;Global;Affirmation;of;the;Uniqueness
of Jesus Christ, Baker academic, 2005
•;Stuart Mcallister (audio series on Cd), Responding;to;a;Postmodern;World (order at
store.rzim.org)
•;ravi Zacharias (video on dVd), The;Uniqueness;of;Christ;in;History;(order at
store.rzim.org)
