Do other religions offer unconditional acceptance?

Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/love-1-john-4-7-21/

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent messages. I know we’ve started a series on the fruit of God’s spirit. In this last week we talked about love, that the unconditional, bottomless, endless love that we all seek is really only found Christ. No matter how good our parents were, they didn’t always, without fail, love us unconditionally or show us unconditional acceptance. The best parents need to apologize to their kids sometimes same things with our spouses, right?

No matter how much we want to be the biggest cheerleader for our spouse, we don’t always succeed in doing that. So we said, really? It’s only found in Christ. The question this week is, don’t other religions offer us the unconditional love and acceptance that we need, the bottomless, endless unconditional love and acceptance promotion celebration of us at all times? And the answer is really no.

And encourage you to verify this on your own. But really, all other religions boil down to what I say often. Be good enough right enough, long enough, and you will get your treat. You need to measure up somehow. You know, karma, how do you get rid of bad karma is you have to be good enough right enough, long enough right.

You have to have enough good karma to get over it. You know, Buddhism has the Eightfold path to enlightenment. Islam has nine pillars of Islam. And you need to measure up. Of course, these other religions, there are things like mercy and forgiveness.

They don’t claim that you have to be perfect, but you do have to measure up. I had a Muslim friend tell me one time that what really worried him about Islam is he never knew where he stood with God. He hoped God would be merciful. He was trying to live a good life, but he was uncertain where he stood. And that is the exact position that we said causes fear and anxiety.

That was in our text from one John if you don’t have perfect love, it causes you fear. You are afraid of judgment. You’re worried if you’ll be accepted. That’s really how every other religion works. It’s have you been good enough, right enough, long enough?

And you don’t know for sure where you stand. Christianity is not like that. Acts 412. Salvation is found in no one else, no other name under heaven by which we may be saved. And that is objectively true.

Nobody else is offering to be our savior. Everybody else says, measure up. Christianity says, we’ll give you a savior. We’ll give you someone who measured up in your place where you failed to measure up. You don’t have to worry about if you are accepted because you get the credit for Christ measuring up perfectly, we get what he deserves, which is eternal life in the kingdom of God to be seen as holy, blameless and perfect, to have the status of perfect righteousness.

Co heir with Christ in the eternal kingdom. We are given that not based on our merit, really counter to our merit. Christ taking the blame we deserve. We getting the status and acceptance that he deserves. He measured up in our place where we failed to measure up.

Really, no one else is offering that. There really is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved. There’s no other savior. So I would invite you to check that out. No one else is offering what Christianity is offering.

And so if you can tell in your heart that you have a need for that, if you know that you, that you need someone to measure up in your place because you didn’t measure up, if that is up and running in your heart, then I’m telling you, there’s only one place to go to get what you need, and that is in Christ. He is the only one offering this bottomless, endless, unconditional love and acceptance. And I pray that that sinks down deep into all of our souls because it is the most transforming, liberating truth that has ever been revealed on the earth.

Thanks for the question and we’ll see you next time.