The Exclusive Jesus
Over the past several years, Christian Nationalism has been a topic of discussion within not only Christian circles but also in national media. With the rise of outspoken Christians such as Pete Hegseth to prominent positions of power in the government, the American media have taken notice. Though there are various groups within the Christian Nationalists (as there have always been with its ideological predecessors, such as the Reconstructionists), there is one truth that we hold in common: the exclusivity of Jesus as the way of salvation. Jesus is God the Son, and if you don’t worship him as God, whoever else you are worshiping is a demon.
This claim to exclusivity is a threat to modern American pluralism. Pluralism is the belief that all religions are equally valid. We are, above all else, Americans, held together by a common economic purpose. George Will expressed this neo-conservative view thirty-five years ago when he wrote:
A central purpose of America’s political arrangements is the subordination of religion to the political order, meaning the primacy of democracy. The Founders, like Locke before them, wished to tame and domesticate religious passions of the sort that convulsed Europe. They aimed to do so not by establishing a religion, but by establishing a commercial republic — capitalism. They aimed to submerge people’s turbulent energies in self-interested pursuit of material comforts… The Founders favored religious tolerance because religious pluralism meant civil peace — order. (George F. Will, Conduct, Coercion, Belief, Washington Post, April 22, 1990)
The heart of pluralism is to keep religion private, a matter of your inner life, and accept the validity of other religions as “their way to God.” Begin to declare the exclusivity of Jesus, and you will disturb the peace and might be viewed as a threat to the Republic.
The claims of Jesus himself, however, must be considered seriously. When confronted by the Jews for breaking the Sabbath when he healed the man at the Pool of Bethesda, Jesus not only showed that he didn’t break the Sabbath, but he also said that what he did perfectly reflected the work of his Father. The Jews understood this as him claiming that he was equal with God (Jn 5:18). Jesus didn’t correct their understanding, but he doubled down on his unique relationship with the Father. He uniquely understands the Father, “seeing” all the Father does and imitating him. The Father loves the Son because the Son in the heart of the Father (see Jn 1:18). The Son knows the mind and will of the Father infinitely because the Father loves the Son and holds nothing back from him (Jn 5:20). The Father has given exclusive authority to the Son to judge the world, declaring who is in the right and who is in the wrong (Jn 5:22-23). If a man doesn’t honor the Son, he dishonors the Father because the Father honors the Son.
Jesus is the revelation of the one true and living God. If a man doesn’t acknowledge Jesus as God, he does not know God.
Some would like to relegate Jesus to a good, moral teacher, but as C. S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity,
I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
It is all or nothing with Jesus. He will not be relegated to a place among the pantheon. He is the God of gods.
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