In the Old Testament, God’s people were exhorted, “You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him”. They were commanded to love the Lord their God. Jesus is taking hold the multiple exhortations in the Bible and saying I am the one you are meant to love, and it is my commandments you are to obey. Jesus is claiming to be God.

Some say a quick prayer or assert a statement of faith and yet continue to reject God and go their own way and have no relationship with him. Some set out to perform enough good works to be worthy. Some have a lot of knowledge that puffs them up. We will seek these things and yet do not pursue a relationship with God. If we get our “fire insurance” or present our holiness or our knowledge, we are in reality only becoming more destined for hell. We have missed the power of the work and worth of Jesus. And it is solely by the work and worth of Jesus that we come to God. Our trust in Jesus brings us into a relationship. Love brings us into a relationship. You can not have God without a relationship. Love demands pursuit. Love rejoices in truth, to be known truly and to know truly. You cannot pursue a God of your own making, you must pursue a God who is. The wonderful thing is that as we come to God, we don’t have to bring works, we don’t say a prayer and then head off our own way, we come as we are, and we come to Love, a love that pursues us and embraces us. And as we our embraced by Love, the filth of the world is abandoned in the light and beauty of His glorious face.

So in short being rescued from hell is not the primary purpose of salvation. It is a consequence of the main purpose of salvation, which is to restore us into a relationship with God. So have you given up your own source of life, your own way? Have you stopped trusting in yourself and the things you have determined are right in your own eyes? Have you come to Jesus, trusting in him, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Have you abandoned your own life, only to have been embraced by true Life? Have you come to know and be known by Love?

Oh, how glorious and beautiful and satisfying Love is. We cannot be and will not be satisfied by anything less. Anything less will leave us parched and unsatisfied, well . . . only hell awaits. A branch withers away after it has been separated from its source. Have you ever felt the ache of lost love? What will the eternal heart ache be if we have rejected the One True Love? The descriptions of hell seem tame to me. But the good news is that our relationship can be restored, Love conquers, we only have to trust in Jesus, who beckons us to come home.

Thank you, for your response. I appreciate that you are open and willing to discuss things, even hard things with patience. Not many are willing to talk even when they disagree and try to understand the other. I learn so much from those discussions and look forward to learning more.

You are right there are many religions that claim to have aspects similar to Christianity, Buddhism being one. And on the surface, they may seem to. Jesus himself said there is a wide road, but he also said there is a narrow road that leads to life. Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.” We can search the wide roads, see similarities to Christianity, but only one road leads to Jesus. No other religion has this. In other words, all of our efforts are of no avail, except to be known by Jesus. What Jesus did at the cross, was the only means of restoring that broken relationship. If it were not Jesus would not have gone to the cross, nor would God the Father have allowed it. Jesus says that the Father always answered his prayer, yet when He asked for this cup to pass if it were possible, even to the sweating of blood. The request of the Son to His Father was intense. The answer was the cross. Jesus said that the deepest love of an earthly father is evil compared to the immense love of the God the Father. If there was another way, no matter how remote it was, there is absolutely no way the Father would have sent His son to the cross. If Buddhism was a way, Jesus would not have gone to the cross. If any other religion provided a way to restore our relationship with God, Jesus would not have gone to the cross. But because of the Love of the Father and the Son, they were willing to go through this, to restore a relationship with us. This is the power and romance of a Love that conquers. After His resurection, Jesus was walking with two men on the road to Emmaus “and he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” The whole of scripture is about the work and worth of Jesus.

This in itself does not prove that Buddhism is better or worse than Jesus. Nor would I claim that I am wiser or better than others. I am not. I have great love and respect for you and Michael and learn from my discussions with y’all. One of the reasons I want to hang out with y’all is I love how you challenge me to grow. Wish we lived closer together, and we could hang out and talk more. But Buddhism and Christianity only have superficial similarities and those similarities have a very different core, and essentially are not the same in the end. I don’t say this to put down your comment, but to discuss and help you understand why I would say Buddhism and Christianity are different. And I am eager to hear your thoughts.

If who Jesus claimed to be is true, then we must abandon all other so-called gods, religions, or ways to life, for if we reject Jesus, then we have now rejected the only true God and have rejected the source of love. And life and like a rose plucked from a bush, even in our grandest beauty and most fragrant smell, we too will one day wither and decay. No matter how much nutrition we place in the vase, it is fundamentally different from the source of life. The wonder of the Gospel is that in order for us to be restored into a relationship with God, we cease striving, and trust in the work and worth of Jesus. This is personal and engaging. It is not an idea we trust, it is a person we trust. God, himself, coming and living amongst us in order to restore a relationship with us. Which is something you expect from a God, who from all eternity has been in relationship.

Jesus was born, God became flesh, because He loved humanity and desired to bring us into relationship with Himself. Love has conquered the effects of sin and has broken down the walls that keep us from God. At the cross, all our works are nailed at the cross, for they are of no avail. What matters is God’s love for us. As we have faith in the work and worth of Jesus, we die to ourself, and our works no longer matter in the immense presence and beauty of being known and loved by God. And in this relationship and love we truly live. And so the God who came as a babe, cries out, “Come to me, I am the Way the Truth and the Life.”! In God alone can we have life.