Cornerstone University Chapel - December 1, 2025 | Dr. Doug Groothuis

- I was asked to speak about my Christian testimony in light of our theme verse, which is John 14.6. Let me read John 14, five through seven. And I'd like to talk about Christ as the way the truth and the life. And then why I am who I am because Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life. Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know "where you are going. "So how can we know the way?" Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. "No one comes to the Father except through me. "If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. "I am who I am because Jesus is the way the truth and the life, "and because no one comes to the Father except through him. "I have a story of redemption only because of Jesus' story, "of winning that redemption through his life, death, "resurrection and ascension. "I hope you can say the same thing. "What I like to do is talk about the claims, "credentials of Jesus makes him comparison of Jesus "with other religious figures. "Talk about his achievements and the challenges "that Jesus as the way the truth and the life presents to us. "And then I'd like to speak a bit "about how this objective living reality "has made all the difference in the world to me "the last 49 years." So I'd like to give kind of a miniature or abbreviated Christology and apologetic. Think of some of the claims of Jesus Christ. He claimed to be the way the truth and the life. He didn't claim to be a way. He didn't claim to be merely a teacher or a sage. He claimed to be actually the conduit or the channel for eternal life. Not that he pointed to it, but he was the way the truth and the life. That's a remarkable and rather astounding claim. And even if we've been Christians for a very long time as I have, that should still stun us and shake us in terms of the truth and living out that truth in our own lives. Jesus also said in John 8.58, culminating a discussion before Abraham was "I am." Now the "I am" means "I am God" because it's a reference to God's name as God revealed his name in Exodus 3, 14. So Jesus is saying, not merely that I existed before Abraham, which would be quite a stunning claim for a man to make, but I existed as God, as the God of your fathers, the God of the covenant, the God who revealed Himself to Moses before Abraham existed. Strong, profound, remarkable claim. In Mark chapter two, we find a story that culminates in Jesus saying that he has authority on earth to forgive sins. And people say, who can forgive sins except God alone? Jesus doesn't correct him. And so I'm sorry you misunderstood me. He claims the authority to forgive sin, a divine, a uniquely divine, prerogative. Jesus claimed that he was a man who was born to die and rise again. In Matthew 16, we read, from that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. What sort of a man is this? The way the truth, the life before Abraham was, I am. The authority on earth to forgive sins who predicts his own death and resurrection from the dead. Think of two claims about Jesus made by the apostles Peter and Paul. In Acts 412, we read that Peter says this about Jesus. Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. Can you get more clear than that? Think about this for a minute. Salvation is found in no one else. He could have just stopped there and made the point, right? The uniqueness, the finality, the supremacy, the singularity of Jesus for salvation from God. But he goes on, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. Salvation is found in no one else, no other name, but the name of Jesus. Under heaven that covers everything, given a mankind that covers everybody by which we must be saved, not by which we might be instructed or given a positive self-image or given a religion that we could choose or leave alone if we want to, by which we must be saved. Acts 412, I hope you're seeing a pattern here. And this is a pattern that our contemporary world resists. In fact, the world has always resisted it in one way or another. And that is there is one God-shaped way to be redeemed, to have your sins forgiven, to have eternal life. And it's not found in yourself, your good works, your achievements, your experiences, your fame, your status. It's found in someone else. It's found in one other person, Jesus Christ. Or think of what Paul said in 1 Timothy 2, 5 through 6. "For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, "the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people." You know, as Paul's not bashful about these universal, absolute objective compelling claims, either, is he? One God, not many. One mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus. How so? "Who gave himself as a ransom for all people by dying on the cross? "I was able to share this verse with a workman "that came to my home a few weeks ago." So we have these remarkable astounding claims by Jesus, there are so many others, and about Jesus by Peter and Paul, and there are so many others. But we don't just look at claims, we look at credentials. What did Jesus do in light of what he said and what was said about him? He fulfilled dozens of prophecies from the Hebrew scriptures. This gives him a supernatural credential. He was foretold so many. Isaiah 7 speaks of him being born of a virgin. Isaiah 53 speaks of his substitutionary death on the cross. There's so many. In his life, we see that he was miraculously conceived. There was a miracle right at the beginning of his ministry. But he worked miracles over nature, over various types of sickness, and over death himself, think of the raising of his friend Lazarus in John chapter 11, a very profound and dramatic account. Jesus taught with unmatched wisdom. Think, for example, of the sermon on the Mount. Even people who don't follow Jesus as the singular absolute universal Lord of the universe will say he was a great teacher, or even the greatest teacher. And that's what I want to say. Do you know what he taught about himself? Do you know what the apostles taught about him? He yes, gave us unmatched moral standards. Love your neighbor, love your enemy. Pray for those who persecute you. He gave parables. Everyone knows about the good Samaritan and so on. Statements that everyone knows. Practice what you preach. But he also said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He also said before Abraham was, I am. He said he had the authority on earth to forgive sins. He said he would die and be raised again from the dead in victory. He died in love to atone for our sins. He paid a price we could not pay. Took our punishment. Freed us from Satan. I love how John puts it in John, this is John the Baptist in John 129. He sees Jesus and he says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And he rose from the dead in victory over death and sin and Satan. We see a glorious account of that in 1 Corinthians 15. And he ascended to the place of supremacy in the universe at the right hand of the Father. We see that in Acts 1 and other passages. These are historical and public and verifiable events with eternal significance. Think of what Paul said before King Agrippa. The king is familiar with these things, he is speaking of the gospel, the life of Jesus. The king is familiar with these things and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice because it was not done in a corner. This is history. It's verifiable. We have documents that are reliable that tell us of this. Now let's make a few comparisons, I spent a lot of my career working in the area of world religions or comparative religion. So let's think about some comparisons and then the achievements of Jesus and then how those achievements briefly relate to me and to you. Jesus was not merely a sage as Buddha or Confucius or Lao Tzu are supposedly sages. The sage is one who has wisdom and articulates the way of life but doesn't claim to be the way, the truth, the life. Now Jesus was a sage. He was the wisest man who ever lived but his wisdom in fact contradicts the supposed wisdom of Buddha, Confucius and Lao Tzu at many points. Jesus was not merely a true prophet as we find in the Old Testament with let's say Isaiah or Ezekiel or Micah or something like that, Micah rather or true prophet in the New Testament like John the Baptist. He was more than that and he certainly was not a false prophet like Muhammad or Joseph Smith. He was infinitely more than merely a prophet, although he was a prophet. He was infinitely more than a sage, although he was a sage and the most agacious person who ever lived. Nor was Jesus in any sense an avatar, this is a doctrine from Hinduism that claims that the universal and personal God occasionally will manifest in a personage such as Krishna. We find this in Hinduism. Now Jesus Christ is the once for all incarnation. He is infinitely different from and infinitely more than an avatar. What about the achievements? Jesus said to take this message to the world and make disciples so that people would obey everything that he taught and the church has done that. Jesus is the most influential person in the history of the world. Christianity is the largest religion. Christianity has done more good by sharing the gospel and through good works than any other religion or world view and the Judeo-Christian tradition is at the root of all that is good in Western culture. Recently a woman who was an atheist, Ion Hersey Ali, converted to Christianity. She'd been a Muslim and atheist. She converted about two years ago to Christianity and she said everything I supported about the goodness of Western culture, things like the importance of the individual, the outcasts, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, representational government. All of this stems from a Judeo-Christian view of reality and as an atheist I had no philosophical support for my deepest values and so she was smart enough to become a Christian. And also she was going through a deep struggle in her own life with sorrow and anxiety and struggling with alcohol and the Lord met her profoundly. You and I are part of the achievements of Jesus Christ who is the way the truth in life and the only way to the Father, the only name under heaven by which we must be saved, the one mediator between God and man. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ you are one of his achievements, you are one of his trophies of grace and you were saved to glorify him, to do good works and to make him known to the watching world. Let me talk a little bit about how Jesus factors in to my life. I was born in Anchorage, Alaska in 1957. I was raised by a very good set of parents, Lilian and Herald. They were, I'd say, God-fearing people. They were not church-going people. I was raised with basic moral values. My father tragically died in a plane crash when I was 11 and my mother very valiantly raised me as a single mother. It was a solid and wonderful person. And on her deathbed, I asked her mom, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the way the truth in the life? And she said, yes, I do. I was so encouraged by that. I confessed Christ as Lord in June of 1976. I had gone to college and I had started studying Western atheistic philosophy by the likes of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Frederick Nietzsche and I thought, I can throw off religion, I can get rid of God and create my own meaning and value and significance apart from God. And I was reading Nietzsche to that effect and it's pretty heavy stuff for a very foolish 19-year-old who's discovering philosophy for the first time. But I had some problems. The biggest problem was, anytime I looked at the beauty of nature, I knew there was a God. And that bothered me. I was in Colorado, Greeley, Colorado, when you look at the mountains and the scenery and the clouds and so on, I just had this sense that there was a God. I didn't want there to be a God. Now at the same time, I had been studying Eastern religions to some extent, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and also some occult teachings. And so as a strange conjunction of Western atheism, vis-à-vis Freud, Marx and Nietzsche especially, and Eastern religions and the idea of a spiritual realm, you might have access to somehow. And two things happened that were very significant to bring me to Christ as the way the truth and the life. One was, I had a very bizarre dream in my dorm. I dreamt that there was this huge head outside my window and I was on the third floor. This huge head, disembodied head, just a head. And I woke up and I felt like I was utterly alone in the universe, that I was on the wrong side of God. I was in physical darkness and spiritual darkness. It was a horrible feeling and I picked up a book that I had been assigned in my philosophy class that I had not read much of, written by a Christian philosopher named Sorin Kirkogar, the book's called The Sickness Unto Death. I opened it and started reading it. I thought if I'm on the wrong side of God, maybe this philosopher knows something about God and I opened to a page where Kirkogar described someone who resists God and tries to find his identity by being a rebel against God. He called this defiant despair and that was me. And I wrote in the margin, I still have that book at home. This book is reading me. The second key thing that happened was I went to Boulder to visit a friend of mine from Anchorage, Alaska who went to the University of Colorado and he said, "I know these two Christian women, we should talk to them, it's kind of fun to make fun of them." And they're also kind of cute. So that sounds good. So little did I know that these two women who were in the navigators ministry were ardent evangelists and they shared the gospel with me. And one of them, Jean, who's still a friend of mine, used an illustration that the navigators use called the Bridge of Life where you have God on one side and you're over here and there's a big chasm which is called sin. And the only way to go, some of you know this, the only way to go across the chasm is the cross. She drew that out for me, she put scriptures and she gave it to me and I still have it and I've laminated it. Although I lost it in my move from Denver, I've got to find that. She explained the gospel and it bothered me because I thought it might be true. Because if it were true, then I couldn't play God anymore. I couldn't be a little God in a meaningless world and rebel against God. I needed to submit to God. Now, I could go on about other experiences that happened, dreams, coincidences that were actually divine appointments. But in some time of June 1976, after talking to friends, I was in Greeley, Colorado, I went back to Anchorage, Alaska for the summer to be with my mother. About half of my high school friend group had become Christians. So I talked a lot with them, especially my friends, Dan and Peggy, started reading the Bible and really started to see that I was at a fork in the road. It was either Jesus or there really was no other opportunity. And I remember my friend, Peggy, said, "Dug, God is calling you." And I realized that he was. So I went to a meeting of young people and they said, "If anyone would like to accept Christ as Savior, please stand up and say so." So I stood up and I don't remember exactly what I said. And a friend of mine was there and he told me years later that I said, "Jesus, I will follow you forever." Now, the problem was, I believed in Jesus at that point, but I had no emotional experience of feeling forgiven or feeling joy as many of my friends who had converted recently had experience. And so I thought, "What went wrong?" I believe in Jesus, he forgave my sins, I don't feel it, and it's really troubled me. But that evening, I remember my friend, Dan, was praying for me after I publicly confessed Christ as Lord and he said, he said, "He was speaking for God." And I think he was, he said, "You are mine, you are mine." God's saying to me, "You are mine." A little bit later, I was with my friend Ruby and I said, "Ruby, I believe in Jesus, but I just don't feel any different, I don't feel like a new creation." Maybe I'm really not a Christian. She said this, it was very simple, "Oh, Doug, you're a Christian." And that helped. Now I needed more than that. So in the next months and years, I began to study the Christian perspective on life, especially apologetics. A key book on this was called The God Who Is There by Francis Schaefer, which gave me the intellectual confidence to attack the world of ideas as a Christian. I got an undergraduate degree in philosophy. I was involved in campus ministry from 1979 to 1984. And I learned how to understand and defend the Christian worldview in a secular setting. I married my first wife, who's now with the Lord. In 1984, she encouraged me to get a PhD to write my first book. And I really found my calling pretty early on as a Christian. And it was to teach, preach, and write in mentor. And another book by Kierkegaard was very helpful to me in this, called "Purity of Heart" is to will one thing. So many of you are trying to figure out what your calling is. Think about this. What are you good at? What do you love to do and what needs to be done? You can combine those three things to the glory of God, honoring Him as the way the truth and the life. You will have a very meaningful life. And I've said for many years that in a way, my entire intellectual career as a Christian has been a kind of attempt to refute Christianity. I've looked at the atheist arguments, the Buddhist arguments, the Hindu arguments, the Islamic arguments, the existentialist arguments. And my attempt to refute Christianity has gloriously failed. And so the result of that, really in many ways, is a big apologetics book, I wrote, called Christian apologetics. So I've tried to give a comprehensive case for the truth of the Christian worldview. And over my career, I've addressed issues such as the New Age movement, cults, postmodernism, comparative religion, philosophy of culture and technology, politics, philosophy of science, and the thought of Blaze Pascal. So far, this has resulted in 20 books. I have three more coming out next year. Many articles, debates, lectures, and so on. Why have I done all this? It's because I am utterly convinced that Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life and no one comes the Father except through Him. That there is one name under heaven by which we must be saved, the name of Jesus Christ. So I am who I am, my calling, my mission to teach, preach, write, and mentor. I am here today as a professor and as a mentor and as an advisor to faculty for one reason, the grace of God shown through the person of Jesus Christ. So let me encourage you, if you don't know Christ as Lord and Savior, bend the knee, bend your life to Him immediately. And give up, as I did many, many years ago. I was afraid there might be a God. Why? I wanted to be a God of my own meaningless universe. I was afraid Christianity might be true. Why? Because then I'd have to humble myself. But the best thing you can do is agree with reality. The best thing you can ever do and to glorify God is to realize that there is one God. Christ is the Son of God. He is Savior, He is Lord, and He alone offers salvation and eternal life. And if you know Him as such, your life, no matter what the suffering, the struggles, the difficulties, no matter how long or short your life, your life will have an objective and eternal meaning that will never end. Let's pray and I'll give them an addiction. Lord, thank you that you are the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes the Father except through you. Thank you that we have knowledge of the way, that we don't have to wander around, that we have a reference point in you. We thank you for that, Lord. So let me give you a benediction, then you'll be dismissed. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 1558, you're dismissed.