Oh wow, you people are making my head spin! Excellent parallels/observations all around.
I definitely don't get the feeling that all this is included in the show for the purpose of promoting any of it. If it were (which is extremely unlikely anyway), I'm sure the Christian imagery and references would all add up to one consistent pattern, which they don't. If, for example, Sherlock was intended to be a Christ figure, they wouldn't just include certain elements of that, and all of those in the wrong order - they'd make it a proper pattern than would make sense within itself. But I can't see any pattern of that sort. The references are thrown in almost randomly, so I think that's just what they are - references to the framework and to the imagery that makes up the cultural heritage of a great part of the western world.
As Liberty pointed out, the Bible is full of great, very fundamental, very powerful stories dealing with the biggest questions that people have ever asked and the biggest issues that people have ever had to contend with, so in a way every other story dealing with fundamental issues written later "owes" something to the Bible in that way, without any missionary intent.