When I travel, I usually load up my MP3 player with some of the excellent lectures available through The Veritas Forum, a project that brings Christian speakers to college campuses for the purpose of engaging students in the claims of Christianity.

In a lecture given to the Harvard Christian fellowships in 1995, the Reverend John R. W. Stott, rector emeritus at All Souls Church in London, spoke about the uniqueness of Jesus. Stott argues that across the entire history of world religion there is no other religious figure like Jesus. He makes the point that the truth of the Christian religion ultimately rests on the person of Jesus Christ: if he is not who he says he is, our faith entirely collapses.

In other words, where Buddhism rests on the moral insights of Buddha, which may have value apart from anything one has to say about Buddha himself, Christianity's teachings are interwoven with and inseparable from the character and person of Jesus Christ. Jesus placed himself at the center of all he taught, and all we now believe.

Briefly, here are Stott's five ways that Jesus is unique.

He is unique in his claims. Jesus claimed himself as the fulfillment of prophecy and the law. See Matthew 5:17,18 for an example. In Luke 4:16-21, he stood in the temple and read Isaiah 61:1,2, a passage about the Messiah, then claimed that he was the fulfillment of that Scripture. He teaches continually about himself — the Gospels are full of "I" and "me". He speaks about having an intimate relationship with God, calling him Father and referring to himself as "the Son," not "a Son." And he claims the authority to forgive, to make judgments of sin and error, to rebuke Satan and to re-interpret the law in new ways.

He is unique in his death. Where other religious leaders die in their old age and their deaths are of no particular significance, Christianity focuses on the death of Jesus as a pivotal event that is key to understanding Jesus' identity and God's purpose for his work on earth.

He is unique in his resurrection. Though all religions believe their leaders live on in some sense through their teachings, Christians believe that Jesus rose bodily from the grave. This was the clear teaching of the disciples, and this amazing claim figures into the Christian faith as a central doctrine.

He is unique in his exaltation. Paul claims in Philippians 2:9-11 that "every knee shall bow ... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." He is quoting Isaiah 45:23, a passage in which God speaks these same words about himself. In Matthew 26:64, while Jesus has been teaching about his future return to judge the earth, he refers to himself sitting at the right hand of God, the place of authority and power given by God himself.

He is unique in the gift of his Holy Spirit. After rising from the grave, Christ said that he would send his Holy Spirit to be a real and everlasting presence of God with every believer, and with his church. The Spirit came upon the disciples in Acts 2. Christ's work continues in the world not through the words written in the pages of a very old book, but by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit within us.

These five points make Christianity unique among the world's religions. If Christ was not a liar, or an egocentric megalomaniac, or a crazy man, then he is the Son of the Living God, and the claims he made in Scripture and continues to make through his Holy Spirit are true — and life-changing.