Among the ‘solas’ of the Reformation – the doctrinal emphases that highlight the unique nature of the Gospel – is ‘solus Christus’, a clear and unambiguous assertion that our relationship with God can be secured and mediated alone through Jesus Christ.

The emphasis is not difficult to find on the pages of the New Testament. Jesus makes the knowledge of God, and eternal life, entirely dependent on a relationship with himself. He brooks no rivals, shares none of his glory, and does not concede one inch to the view that all religions stand or fall together.

The Sermon on the Mount, so beloved of those who want a Gospel of love without a doctrine of accountability, ends with the claim that to ignore Jesus is to build on sand and to collapse in the day of testing. The Gospel of John, with its insistence from the outset that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, includes the claim on Jesus’ own lips that no-one can come to the Father except by him.

Indeed, John also records the bread of life discourse in which Jesus stood poised to galvanize his large following, and to win by a majority. Five thousand people fed and following him! Surely this is an evangelist’s dream?

Well, it may be to us, but it was not to him. Instead of pampering to the crowd, and entertaining them into a following, Jesus actually put his popularity on the line by the insistence that one could only have eternal life by consuming his flesh and drinking his blood. It was not designed to be seeker sensitive; and it was not.

In fact, the doggedness of Jesus’ claim to be the only source of eternal life proved to be a doctrine too far for most of these disciples. They walked no more with him, John says, and the greatest crowd-puller in history lost his fan base just as quickly as he had gained it.

But the apostles after him had learned the message from his lips, and they too went around preaching it: ‘there is no salvation in any other; there is no other name by which men may be saved’. Talk about exclusive! This is where the solus Christus of the Reformation is grounded: in the solus Christus of the New Testament itself.

We live in the most permissive and liberal culture; yet it is amazing just how much there is that is politically incorrect. And in the realm of religion, nothing is more so than the claim that there is no valid way to God but the Lord Jesus Christ.

Nothing was more calculated to incite a major religious huff than Jesus’ claim to be the only standard of Truth amid all the pretended deities of his age. To preach this message will not win us the crowds any more than it won Jesus his popularity and reputation.

Not that I am excusing anything dull or necessarily unattractive in our liturgy; all I am saying is that for Jesus it was not possible both to preach the truth and to keep his audience. We may be giving offence unnecessarily; if so, may God forgive us. But if we are preaching the truth as he preached it, we will certainly give offence.

Of course, some evangelicals have bought into a religious shift that is less hardline and more accommodating. Clark Pinnock, for example, in his book ‘A Wideness in God’s mercy’, accuses the majority of evangelicals, preaching that the only alternatives are faith in Christ or a lost eternity, of being ‘hardline restrictivists’. This old view, he argued, limited the goodness and mercy of God in a way that was not warranted. The unevangelised are not necessarily lost, if God’s final purpose in Christ was to save the human race.

It is difficult not to conclude that this is just a new form of the old pluralism that believed that we are all going to be saved anyway. Only it is not; Pinnock sincerely wants to do justice to the finality of Christ, while abandoning the idea that one necessarily becomes a Christ-follower in order to be saved.

That sounds cool. It avoids having to ask the difficult questions about other religions. Surely the millions of devotees to Muhammad cannot be in error? Does the Bible actually relegate the whole pagan or atheistic world to Hell? Who in this modern age can tolerate the view that the Christian way is the only way?

The view of Pinnock and others is entirely untenable in the light of the New Testament. The whole evangelistic and missiological task of the church has been driven from the outset by the concern that men and women need to know of the exclusive Saviour called Jesus if they are to be saved. Whether they are devotees of every religion or of none, whatever creeds they commit to, and whatever religious experiences they have, the emphasis of the New Testament is that without Christ they – we – perish.

That may seem hardline. But it is no less hardline than the doctor who says to me that I need one important, life-saving treatment if I am to recover from a serious illness. I will not take offence when she tells me that the only possible hope for me is to be knocked out, physically invaded and operated on. Indeed, the one possibility that exists will be the best possible news for me in that situation.

And that, precisely, is where we find ourselves as evangelicals, preaching the message of Christ in the twenty-first century. The disease is called sin. It spreads like wildfire, infects everything, and separates us from God. The remedy is called Christ. There is no other.

And if that is the case, then the foolish thing is not in the offering of the remedy, but precisely in the refusing of it.