14 - Christianity Defined

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of World Religions. This class we will be discussing in the class of an introduction to the major Western religions. In other words, we are not going to cover every religion that could possibly be covered.

Not at all. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and you can find out more information about Striving for Eternity at strivingforeternity .org. I will be your instructor today, Andrew Rappaport.

I encourage you guys to get the syllabus that you can get at our website at the store. The syllabus is priced at about $25 each. You can go to store .strivingforeternity .org to pick up a syllabus. It will have information that you can follow along.

We offer the classes free to you on the internet. We pay for them by those who support us through buying the syllabus. So that would be an incentive. Another thing you can do while you are at that site, while you are at the store, I would encourage you to pick up my book which is what most of this material is going to be based on.

What Do They Believe? A Systematic Theology of the Major Western Religions. Most of what we are going to be going over will be in that book. If you find that you want more information, all of the scripture references and especially when we looked at some of the other religions, you will see that those are all covered in my book with way more scripture or of their scripture references than we had time to cover in these classes.

This will be the last class that we are going to do. I am actually going to try and do something crazy. I am going to try to fit the entire lesson in one class. This is the last class that is actually covered in the book and after that we go into some basically a Christian response.

But this week's class will be lesson number, it says 4 but that should say 6 right? So lesson number 6, that was my goof not the engineers, lesson number 6, Christianity. So this is the last lesson that we have in looking at what they believe, what the different groups believe.

Then what we are going to get into is a Christian response. Therefore, since I know we are going to spend this next 6 to 10 lessons giving a response, a Christian response, I am not going to take the time to look into all of the scriptures that we have to support all of the arguments because we are going to look at those in detail.

But what we are going to do this class is cover at a high level what Christianity believes and you are going to see if you have been following along on the other classes, you are going to immediately see how it differs from some of the other religions in different ways.

But what we are going to look at is we are not going to give the scripture references. I am actually going to try to do this in one class, cover all of the material and then what we are going to do in the next several weeks is break each of these 6 doctrines, the biblical authority, the view of God specifically, the Trinity, the view of Jesus Christ specifically as deity, the view of sin, the view of salvation, and the view of end times.

We are going to look at each one of those in greater detail. And as we do that in greater detail, we are going to give the scriptures there. So this class is going to try to be one shot, cover the high level, hopefully it will be one that you can use to go back to as a hey this is what makes Christianity different than some of the other religions, this is what Christianity as a whole would hold to.

So let's begin by looking at the Christian authority. What is in Christianity, what do Christians hold as the authority? So as we look at this, I would say that the authority for Christianity is the scripture alone, and your blank there is alone.

Why is that significant? This is what makes Christianity then different as you saw with some of the others, is that in Christianity we don't hold to traditions or men in an organization of any kind to be the authority to interpret God's word for us.

We take the scriptures and we look at the new covenant being that the Holy Spirit would indwell us, and in that indwelling He will be the one to lead us into all truth. We still have to be diligent to the study of God's word, but He will be the one to guide us and direct us, and we do not need someone to tell us.

Does this mean that we don't need pastors? We do need men who take the time to put energy and effort into the study, remembering that we're 2 ,000 years removed from its writings at its earliest, 3 ,500 years from its oldest.

We have to realize that we don't understand always the culture, and many people make some basic mistakes because they don't understand basic things about the scriptures, and a lot of that is simply because of the fact that they're not trained.

I'm not saying that everyone must be trained, but the training does have some benefit. The distinction is that we can sit with the scriptures and read them on our own, and have that as the ultimate authority, and compare what people say to the scriptures.

A lot of people have been criticizing us here for looking at these other religions because they have this wrong definition of love, that love means you never say anything negative about others while they're saying negative things about us for saying negative things about others.

We're not saying negative things. Every one of these religions, people have been attacking us, and I've been asking this question over and over, can you name one thing that we have gotten incorrect, and no one can do that.

So we're accurately explaining what other religions believe. If you don't like the comparison of what they actually believe to scripture, that's not my problem. That's a problem with the false religion not being accurate, that's all.

So, the Bible is God's self-revelation. How would we know about God unless he revealed himself to us? He wrote in a book, the Bible, and that is his self-revelation, so it's God's word. It is limited in space and time as directed by various designated individuals.

You can look up 2 Peter 1 .21 for that. The acceptable books that Christianity would hold to for the Bible would be the 39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books without any additional writings, commonly known as the Apocrypha or Pseudepigrapha, you see that in Roman Catholicism.

We don't hold to these newer Gospels, supposedly, that they're finding, these Gnostic Gospels. They were never accepted as part of the canon. It's just that people hold to them now because they like the Gnostic Gospels.

They like the fact that they think that they teach something opposite what Christianity teaches, and they're trying to say that these were rejected. They were never accepted. The Bible provides the only inerrant, that means without error, and absolutely authoritative propositional knowledge of the existence of God.

Inerrant means that it is without error. It is an absolute because of its source being God. It's authoritative, again, because if God's the one that wrote it and He created everything, He's the only one that knows, and that's why it is the knowledge that God exists.

It's the best source of it. It is because that it comes from God that it is the source. Let's move on or I'll never get done. The authority of Scripture is God's self-revelation of one who has the right and power to command compliance in thought and action upon rational creatures.

The Scriptures are our ultimate basis for authority for the determining what is and who are right and wrong. So, in other words, we look at the Scriptures, how do we know one group? What have we been doing with these other religions?

We've been trying to accurately record what they teach. If we're fair and accurate there, then what we're doing is looking at what Scripture says and just doing the comparison. And if it doesn't line up with what God says, it's false.

It's not me saying it, it's God saying it. Here's God's Word, this is the standard, and they're saying, well, this is what we believe. All we're doing is comparing it to that standard. If it doesn't line up, it's not of God.

I mean, that's really what it comes down to. And people don't like us saying that, but what more can we do? Our concern is for people's eternal soul. You get these issues wrong and you spend eternity in a lake of fire.

Not very good. That's why we do this. So, therefore, the Bible supremely defines what we believe and how we are to conduct ourselves. The Bible alone is authoritative for faith and practice. This is how we know.

We don't go to men. Now, one of the things, let's look at some doctrines. The Bible is inspired. So, the doctrine of inspiration. Let me define this for you. It doesn't mean, as people use the term, I was inspired to write a song or something inspired me, made me feel good, made me feel like, you know, something special.

That's not the definition, right? The Bible is inspired by God, meaning that inspiration identifies the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, which He superintended. That means He controlled and directed the receiver, those that did the writing, and the communication.

In other words, that what people heard in the writings, okay? In other words, that which was written down. So, not only did it come through the person doing the writing, but what was written was divinely inspired.

And the product in its original, in other words, not the manuscripts we have today, but in the original, not the copies. In its original, it was verbally, meaning every word, and plenary, which means complete.

So, whether it's to the word or the whole thing, is both inerrant, which is without error, and authoritative. You can look at 2 Timothy 3 .16 and 17 for this. We're going to look at that much more next class.

God spoke in His Word in a process of dual authorship. So, in other words, God the Holy Spirit wrote and men wrote, okay? So, that becomes the distinction. We believe that it is God's Word because He wrote through men.

So, He superintended, He controlled the men and directed them so that the very words they wrote is exactly as God intended it to be. And because God wrote it, letter B in your syllabus, it is sufficient.

The sufficiency of the Word of God is that the Word of God is completely and totally sufficient for the believer in each and every area of life of faith and practice. In other words, it doesn't answer how you should handle viruses on your computer.

Not what it's meant for. That's not a faith and practice issue. But whether you should, you know, get pirated software to solve the viruses on your computer, that would be stealing. And therefore, that is addressed because that's a moral issue.

That's a faith and practice, okay? Do you see the distinction there? All right. There's absolutely no human reasoning that needs to be added to or replace the Scriptures to make the believer know how to live in a way that's honoring to God.

God's commands are enough. And that means that we don't go to... Back in the 80s, it was a thing where many people felt that you couldn't get counseling from the Bible or from pastors. You need to go to professionals.

And the Bible wasn't sufficient to answer men's problems. Well, it is. And it shouldn't be added to. It shouldn't be detracted from, subtracted. It is completely sufficient in every area of life that we need for faith and practice, okay?

So, we have a slew of Scriptures that you can look there. You get the syllabus. You can look that up. They're also in my book in this one. So, you can look that up. Let's go to the next topic. This is the topic of God.

All right. That was a nice delay. Sorry. You were waiting for me. I was taking a sip of water. That's right. Thank you. I was wondering why you didn't put my up there. All right. So, the topic of God.

This is section number two now in your syllabus. There is one, that's your blank there, one living and true God. There's one God. Deuteronomy 6 .4, a passage known by every Jewish person, okay? God is one.

Now, this immediately causes problems as we saw because many people, as we talk about the Trinity, they misdefine the Trinity as three gods or three persons. We're going to get into this. And they confuse three and one, what it means.

So, there is one living and true God, an infinite all-knowing spirit, John 4 .24, perfect in his attributes, one in essence eternally existing in three separate and distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Okay? So, each are equally deserving of worship and obedience. So, the idea here is you have three separate and distinct persons in one being called God. Okay? So, persons are not direct to being or Godhead.

So, three persons, one God. Three separate distinct people that make up one God. So, we would say it's one God and yet we see, we'll get into that Jesus is called God, the Holy Spirit is called God. We see that they're separate.

We could see that Jesus is in baptism, the Holy Spirit is descending as a dove, Jesus who's physically standing there, and then you have the voice of the Father. All three separate, distinct, and yet all deserving of worship.

So, let me give some description there. Look in your syllabus, letter A. God orders and deposes all things according to his own purpose and grace. He is the creator of all things. In Isaiah, I think it's 44, either 44 or 42, I forget.

It says that God is the creator alone and no one else created but him. The importance of that is we see in Colossians 1, 15, 16, 17 that Jesus is the creator of all things. So, if God of the Old Testament, God the Father, is the creator of all things alone and he did not create through anyone else, now we see that the Son was the creator.

Actually, in Genesis, you see that the Spirit was the creator. So, who is the one that did creation? Actually, there's several areas. You see in creation. You see in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You see in the role of salvation of mankind.

You see all three members of the Trinity involved. Alright, as the only absolute and omnipotent ruler in the universe, he, God, is sovereign in creation, in providence, and redemption. He has an all-inclusive plan and he designed for his own glory all things that shall come to pass, Ephesians 1, 11.

He continually upholds, directs, and governs all creatures and events. He is in complete control. He is the sovereign and he deserves that. So, when people argue and they butt up against him, they don't like his plan, it's too bad.

He's the one that created us. He can do what he wants. We don't get to make the rules. He does. And it's because of that that even if we don't like his rules, he's the authority on morality because we understand what is right and wrong from the nature of God.

He saves us from sin. He is the one who comes to us to offer us eternal life. And so, these are the things that we get adopted into his family. That is the description. Now, what is this triunity? The triunity is basically when we look at this, we have to understand with this, this is something that was developed over time in the first couple hundred years of the early church.

They did not have this word does not appear in the Bible. That doesn't mean it's not biblical. We have plenty of words that are not in the Bible. The word Bible is not in the Bible. The word omniscience is not in the Bible.

The word omnipresence is not in the Bible. But we use these words. These are words that are descriptive that help us to understand the nature of God. Trinity or triunity is another one like that. I like triunity.

Three unified. But that's really trinity is a shortened version of that. The idea there though is this is something that as they wrestled with what the text said, we have to remember theology never came to us straight out systematized.

Men had to wrestle through the scriptures to come to a systematic theology. And that's what they did. And as they wrestled through it, it was kind of hard to wrestle through it when Nero was burning them and feeding them to lions.

They weren't as concerned with writing down stuff. And that's why the very early years we don't have so much of it because they had to hide and keep it in secret. But as Constantine allowed Christianity, a lot of these battles started happening because Constantine just declared everyone Christian.

And that's not how people become a Christian. And so people saw that a good way to get in the emperor's good graces is to claim to be a Christian leader. And therefore, you had unbelievers who were trying to lead the church so they can have a political lifestyle, so they can be high ranking.

And so they wanted to affect the doctrines of the church. And you have these battles that started happening. And what you ended up having is men that were having to struggle with what the text said. And you always have theology.

Good theology always comes in answering the heretics. And this is no different. Athanasius came out and he was trying to resolve this. And he is the one that really gave us the definition we hold to. So the triunity refers to a doctrine of three persons in one God.

That's in its shortness, in its essence, three persons in one God. Now, some falsely believe, as we've seen, that it's three persons in one person or three gods in one gods. This would be incorrect. This is what false teachers end up teaching.

And it's a straw man argument because it's not a proper definition. They build a straw man that could easily knock down. The properly defined the Trinity is three individual, separate, and distinct persons in one complete, totally unified Godhead.

The Deity and Incarnation of Jesus Christ

All right. Let's move on to the topic of Jesus Christ. Now, here we want to focus on His deity. All right. On His deity. Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity or Triunity. He possesses all of the divine attributes and excellencies as the Father does and as the Holy Spirit does.

He is co-equal. He's co-eternal with the Father. John 10, 30 and 14, 9. You can look those up. God the Father created according to His own will through the Son and He did it alone. So it's not that He did and this is the false that we looked at.

It's not that God created Jesus and then Jesus created everything or that He created Michael and Michael became Jesus. It's God the Father created but God the Son created and God the Holy Spirit created because they're God.

So God created but yet the Godhead and I understand. You're going, this doesn't make sense. I understand that. But that should not cause the Christian to be worried. This is the issue. These other religions that feel that everything has to be understood and answerable by a human mind, then their God is no greater than the human mind.

And if God created the human mind and there's still things we're learning and discovering, God should be greater than us and He is. And because of that we're not going to comprehend everything there is to know about God.

So if we don't understand the Trinity completely, so be it. That's because God is greater than us. That's why. All right, so Jesus Christ, the second person in Trinity, possesses all the divine excellencies and in these He is co-equal, co-substantial, and co-eternal with the Father.

All right, God the Father created according to His will, I think I start reading this, Jesus Christ by whom all things continued in existence and operation. So Jesus Christ represents humanity. That's your first blank.

He represents humanity and deity. That's your second blank. Jesus Christ represents humanity and deity in one indivisible oneness. In other words, He's fully God and fully man in one being. You can't separate His humanity from His deity.

That's the idea there. So it's not that He became man and gave up being God. No, He was God and He had to be God to pay the eternal fine. He had to be an eternal being. Okay, and so we have the fact that He has to have those.

So, let's look at incarnation. How did He become a man? In the incarnation, the incarnation means God becoming man, Christ surrendered only the prerogative of His deity and nothing of His divine essence.

In other words, He didn't stop being God. He just gave up the right to use His divine attributes, either in degree or in kind. In His incarnation, the eternally existing second person of the Trinity accepted all essential characteristics of humanity and so became the God-man.

This is what makes Jesus different and unique. He's fully God and fully man. He was born of a virgin. He was incarnate. God became a man for the purpose to die on a cross and be a slave unto death that we may be redeemed.

Therefore, letter B, He is our Savior. Jesus Christ accomplished our redemption through the shedding of His own blood as the sacrificial death on the cross. His death was voluntary. In other words, God the Father did not force it upon Him.

When people say that it's wrong for Jesus to have to pay a fine for us, He chose to and He is the only one that could. It was substitutionary, it was redemptive, and it was something that satisfied the wrath of God.

On the basis of His death, the effectiveness of it, the believing sinner is freed from the punishment, the penalty, the power, and one day the very presence of sin. And every Christian should say, Amen.

Do we look forward to that day? As believers we know the penalty, the punishment, the power, those things are done away with. But one day, one day is coming when even the very presence of sin will be gone and eradicated from our life and I look so forward to that day.

And we actually become, according to 2 Corinthians 5 .21, we become the righteousness of God. We actually become and are declared righteous in God's sight. We're given eternal life. We're adopted into the family of God.

We are inherited. Our justification is made sure by His literal, physical resurrection of the dead and that He now ascends to the right hand of the Father where He mediates and is our advocate and high priest to the Father.

That is some great stuff. We're going to dig into each of these things in much more detail in the next several classes. I hope that you're hearing these things. It gets me so excited. I want to get into more detail but I'm going to try to finish this up because there's so much good, good doctrine in here.

This is what these other religions are lacking when we talk about who Jesus is and this saving work that He did. Why did He do a saving work? Well, because of one simple thing. It's called sin. Sin. We have a sin problem.

None of us like to admit it. I understand that. But we do. We have a sin problem. So, let's look at sin, man's sinfulness. Let's start with the creation of man. What does Christianity teach about the creation of man?

Well, man was directly and immediately created by God on the sixth day of creation with at least the appearance of age in His image and likeness. Man was created free of sin with a rational nature, intelligence, volition, self-determination, and moral responsibility to God.

So, in other words, man was not created by something other than God. Man did not evolve. The Bible is very clear against that. We can get into more detail about that. But man was created directly by God.

Okay. The fact that man was created in this way, we have this moral responsibility. We were in the garden. Adam was told that he is not to eat of a specific tree. That was a moral act. Okay. The other thing about this is that we see that life in Christianity, we would see that life of man begins at conception.

That becomes an issue when we talk about things, social issues like abortion. Why is it that Christians are against abortion? Because Christians see it as murder. And murder is wrong. It is the taking of an innocent life.

Now, I understand there is no innocence when it comes to a standard of justice by God's standard. Standing before God, every man is a sinner. When we talk about innocence, there is this aspect of killing is separate from murder in the sense that the government has the right to take the life of someone who has violated the life for life policy.

Someone who has taken a life can lose a life. There are things of just warfare. But when you are taking an innocent life, you are taking the life of someone that hasn't done wrong in the moral sense in this way, that is wrong.

This would be murder. And this is why Christians are against abortion. Because of the idea that man begins, life begins at conception, not birth. The spirit of man does not exist prior to conception. We talked about this already when we looked at Judaism.

We looked at some of the others that believe that all the spirits, Mormonism also, that all the spirits of man were already created on the sixth day of creation, the spirit. And now they are just waiting to be given a body.

We don't hold to that. So this means that man don't become angels, angels don't become men. They are totally separate. Men are distinct because all the angels were created on a single, you know, as far as we know, at a single time.

There is not the new creation of angels, but there is man that is being born and new spirits coming into existence. So men are distinct, both from angels and God, and will be for all of eternity. Men are separate.

Similar to angels and having personality, but limited in some powers and whatnot. So what about this issue of the sin nature? We talk about that. This is where, again, Christianity is different than some of these world religions that we've been looking at.

There is a sin nature that is the reality that was imputed directly from Adam. Adam, to every individual since Adam except for Jesus Christ, has a sin nature. You can see this in Romans 5, 12 to 19. So ladies, wives, mothers, I should say, when your children disobey, you can rightly say it is the father's fault.

I tell people when they look at my kids, they get their good looks from mom, clearly. If you see my kids and you see me and my wife, you clearly see they got their good looks from mom, and I'm thankful for that.

But they got their sin nature from dad. Sin is passed on from father to child. That's why Jesus had no earthly father. He had no sin nature. Sin is imputed from the father. When Eve, who is the first to partake of the fruit and technically the first to sin, the curse of sin did not come into the world.

It was when Adam partook. He was our federal headship. We're going to look into that in way more detail. Okay, so by this nature, all men are guilty of sin. The nature is inherited to every person. They have a sin nature, but they are guilty of their own sin.

They're not punished for what others do. The idea of total depravity, that's a topic that gets widely debated. It does not mean that people are as bad as they could be. What total depravity means is that the whole being of a person is affected by sin, even their will.

Every part of man is influenced by sin. All right, next topic is salvation. Salvation. So let's look at salvation here and see that salvation is really this broad topic. When we talk about salvation, there's several aspects.

There's past, present, future, past, regeneration. There was a time that I was saved. That was regeneration. We're going to talk about that. There is the, I'm being saved right now. That is sanctification, the process from that point in time where I'm regenerated until final salvation, which is future called glorification.

Three separate ways that salvation is used. People confuse these. Often people talk about works with salvation because they're confusing sanctification with regeneration. Those terms are significant. Process, once in time, regeneration.

That happens now. We get into a sanctifying process, a process that continues until the day we die. Soon as we die as believers, we are glorified. That sin is put away. We're now in a glorified state.

This is what the Bible teaches. Salvation is wholly a work of God by His grace alone, not by works of man being added to it in any way, shape, or form. Because redemption is of Jesus Christ alone, okay, it is by what He did.

No human effort can be added to it. In fact, if you add any human effort to the work that Jesus did, what you're actually doing is diminishing what Jesus did and raising up your own works. I do not want to diminish what God did on that cross.

So, let's look at regeneration. I think, do I have a slide on that? Nope. Previous one? Nope. I think I have a slide on that. Maybe it's not in the right order. I did it again. I didn't name them. All right.

So, I have a whole bunch of slides you're saying and they're just not in the right order. Okay. Then let's forget the slides. I'm sorry. I grabbed all the slides. I put them in. I will try to be better.

I did not name them. This is a matter of just being rushed in trying to do. So, regeneration. Well, at least I knew I did the slides. Give me some credit. I did the slides. They just didn't finish it in a way that you can easily follow.

Thank you. All right. So, regeneration is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit which a new nature and eternal life are given where a point where we have a transition from being an unbeliever to a believer, being a sinner to a saint, being unregenerate to regenerate, being dead in our sins to having eternal life, being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive.

These are all the things. We're going to get into this in more detail. Regeneration is an instantaneous work of the Holy Spirit, okay, where He works through His Word to where the repentant sinner is now regenerate.

I mean, there's no other way to explain it. This idea here is there's a point in time where God does a work within someone who is at one point an enemy and now He's suddenly a lover of Christ. He's an enemy of Christ, now a lover of Christ.

All right. So, let's look at election. Election is, and this is one that, again, I'm using some of these terms that are, that some people get really fired up about. Total depravity. I'm giving the definition of it.

You don't like the term. Just understand the proper definition of it at least. Election. People are like, oh, no, election's all wrong. Election's in the Bible. And someone that told me that, you know, I'm a Calvinist because, you know, he saw in my doctrinal statement, it says that we are elect before the foundation of time.

He doesn't like that. I said, if that makes me a Calvinist, he said, absolutely. Well, if that makes me a Calvinist, Paul must be a Calvinist because that was a direct quote from Ephesians chapter 1. Okay.

So, election is in the Bible. It's an, what does election mean? Election is the act of God by which, before the foundation of the world, he chose in Christ whom would graciously, whom he would graciously regenerate and saves and sanctify.

Now, the idea of before the foundation of time, God is not a being by time. When he says that we're saved before the, before the foundation of time, what he's trying to say is the focus there is that election had nothing to do with you choosing God.

It had to do with God choosing you. In other words, God chose you to be saved. And yet, you chose God. I understand that. And you go, well, how could they be, how do you reconcile those two? I don't need to.

God is greater than my ability to understand. And I'm satisfied with that. Okay. I know that experientially, I repented. What did I experience? I felt I chose God. I repented. That's what I experienced.

Theologically, what happened? God chose me. That's what the scriptures say. Okay. It is the unmerited favor that God grants to totally depraved sinners. Okay. And there's more in the syllabus that you can look this up.

We're going to get into it in more detail in the next classes. Get the syllabus. You get all this. If you want just this one, you can get my book and you'll see that there. All right. But I'm not, I'm skipping a lot.

Those of you who had the syllabus, you see that. We're going to get into this in more detail in the next several classes. But I want to get through all of this in one shot. But you can see if you get the syllabus.

Justification. Justification letter C. Justification before God is the act of God. Notice how this is all God doing the work. That's the emphasis of the Christian understanding of salvation. God does the work.

Romans 8 .33. By which he legally declares righteous those who through faith in Christ alone repented of their sins and confessed him as sovereign. This righteousness is apart from any virtue or work of man.

Romans 3 .20 and Romans 4 .6. And involves the imputation. That's your blank there. Imputation. It's a big word of our sins to Christ. This imputation is when Christ took our sin upon himself at the cross.

And he gives to us his righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5 .21 is essential to understanding that. That transfer is the doctrine of imputation. And that is what the gospel is. That we actually, think about this.

This is the beauty of what Christian doctrine is. That we actually, you and I, those of us who know Christ, at that point that we were regenerated, we actually became the righteousness of Christ. Even though our sin, the punishment of our sin was paid at the cross.

2 ,000 years ago it was paid. But we have it imputed to us today. And we become the righteousness of Christ. In other words, when God looks at us, when he looks at you, he sees Christ's righteousness, not your sinfulness.

Sorry about that. Trying to suppress a cough. So, what you see there is that we actually become, this is what makes Christianity different. Okay, what you see here at the cross that makes Christianity unique is that God's righteousness and his mercy are both satisfied.

Every other religion has to have one or the other. Either God punishes everyone, either they're going to set up a system where God has a system that is not an absolute system of righteousness and therefore just keeping some law keeping gives you the right to be, oh, I just kept these laws, therefore I'm okay.