Saturday, April 25, 2026
Salvation is in no one else
A government affairs attorney and Christian apologist named Jay Atkins recently asked a popular AI engine to evaluate the world’s major belief systems and determine which one makes the most sense. He used a two-step framework: which worldview best explains reality, and which one does so while requiring the fewest unsupported assumptions.
In other words, which has the highest explanatory power with the lowest evidentiary burden?
The worldviews in question were atheism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. In seconds, the AI engine concluded that Christianity offers the most reasonable view of the world. Atkins explained the AI’s reasoning:
[Christianity] offers a comprehensive explanation of reality, why the universe exists, why it is ordered, why we are rational and moral beings, and why we long for meaning. At the same time, it concentrates its evidentiary burden into a relatively small number of claims, most notably the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That matters because a worldview that explains everything but requires you to believe a thousand fragile claims is not rational. The most reasonable worldview is the one that explains the most while assuming the least.
On that metric, Christianity wins.
“There is salvation in no one else”
The New Testament consistently states that salvation comes only by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The apostles declared to the religious leaders of their day, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Our salvation “is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:9).
This is only logical. Our sins separate us from our holy God, the only source of eternal life (cf. Psalm 36:9; Acts 17:28; John 14:6), and thus lead to eternal death (Romans 6:23). Only a sinless person who has no sin debt to pay can pay ours vicariously by dying in our place. And there has been only one sinless person in all of human history. Muslims do not claim this for Muhammad, or Buddhists for Buddha, or Jews for their rabbis.
Jesus alone is our sinless Savior (Hebrews 4:15), the “good shepherd” who “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).
In addition, Jesus is the only person in history to die and rise from the grave, never to die again. This is also a claim Muslims do not make for Muhammad, or Buddhists for Buddha, or Jews for their rabbis. Of all the great religious leaders of history, only Jesus is alive and active in our world today.
If only Jesus has died to pay for our sins and risen from the grave, only Jesus can forgive our sins and grant us salvation (Ephesians 2:4–5). No matter how fervent Iranians might be in their Shiite Islam, or Buddhists in their Buddhism, or Hindus in their Hinduism, their faith and works cannot save their souls (cf. Romans 8:9).
Scripture also teaches that only those saved by Christ are included in the “book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8), and that “if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15).
All this to say, we must be “born again” (John 3:7). The most urgent need in all humanity is the need for humans to turn to Christ as Savior. Stated bluntly, every non-Christian you and I know is in danger of eternal separation from God in hell.
“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes”
Here’s the problem: most lost people don’t know they are lost. Unlike those who are lost with regard to directions, they are convinced that they are on the right path, or they would change.
A woman died mid-flight recently when she suffered a medical episode and lost consciousness. Members of the panicked cabin crew connected an oxygen mask to her face but failed to connect the mask to the oxygen tank. They sincerely thought they were saving her life, but they were sincerely wrong.
Through many conversations with lost people over the years, I have found that convincing them that they are lost is often the hardest part of the process. They have attached their “mask” and are certain it is working for them.
This is not only because our postmodern culture convinces secularists that their “truth” is just as valid as any other. It is also because “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Solomon observed, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes” (Proverbs 21:2). As a result, the sinner “makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made” (Psalm 7:15) and now cannot get out.
As Oswald Chambers warned, “The penalty of sin is confirmation in sin. It is not only God who punishes for sin; sin confirms itself in the sinner and gives back full pay. . . . the penalty of sin is that you get used to it and do not know that it is sin.”
What we owe “every lost person”
The good news is that the Holy Spirit can do what you and I cannot by convicting the lost of their sin and drawing them to salvation. Our part is to share the gospel with them and pray for them (Acts 1:8; cf. Leviticus 5:1).
