Is Jesus the Only Way?
John 14:1-10, John 3:17
July 4, 2010
Hot Stuff Series
I have GPS on my Blackberry. If I need to go somewhere, but I am not sure where to go, I can search for directions starting from where I am and then enter the address where I want to end up. The program searches for a satellite signal and identifies my location, then a screen comes up offering me four options, “fastest route, shortest route, avoid highways, avoid tolls”. I am trying to arrive in a single location, but my directional program offers me potentially four different ways to get there. I always choose the fastest route. I’m busy.
Some people view God and religion in a similar way. There is one greater being who created everything, but there are different ways of “getting to” God. Each religion offers a different revelation of, and path to, the same mysterious and distant God. Sometimes, I want this to be true.
If you have taken the “StrengthsFinder” survey, then you may know that “includer” is one of the possible strengths that you may discover you naturally have in your list of top five strengths. Just like it sounds, a person with the gift of includer values having everyone involved. The includer is someone who works to make sure no one is left out. I do not have includer in my top 5 strengths list, but it must be my #6 because I really like for everyone to be included. I don’t like it when people’s feelings get hurt or they are left out. I think that desire is what sometimes makes me want to say yes to the “all paths lead to the same place” idea of religion.
If we all agreed that we are going the same place, but just using different routes, then maybe there wouldn’t be any cause for religious wars, or arrogant declarations that “I am saved” or “I am enlightened and you aren’t”. And why can’t it be that all religions, all faiths, lead to eternal life with God? How can we say, “our way is the only way?” How can we be so sure that God isn’t revealing God’s self through Buddha, Krishna, and Muhammad?
Let’s begin with the words of Jesus from the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verses 1 through 10.
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ 5Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ 6Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’
8 Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ 9Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? 10Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works (John 14:1-10, NRSV).
“I am the way”. These are the words of Christ, the point of the whole Gospel of John, the core of the Bible, the truth passed on by the early church, and the foundation of the Christian faith today. Way—the Greek word here is “hōdos” which “can mean not only a road, a path, but also a practice” (Willimon). Here, it is not used as a geographical term. It isn’t the same kind of “way” that we talked about finding with the blackberry GPS program. It is “instead a description of the revelatory work of Jesus. To know ‘the way’ is thus synonymous with knowing Jesus himself” (The New Interpreter’s Bible).
In this passage from John 14, Jesus doesn’t just say that he is the way. He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Looking at this entire “I am” statement can help us understand more of what Jesus is saying about being “the way”. In this statement, “Jesus reveals himself to be simultaneously the access to and the embodiment of life with God” (New Interpreter’s).
“I am…the truth”. Jesus is the Word of God made flesh—Gospel of John begins with a description of “the Word” through whom all things were made. As the Word of God among us, Jesus makes the truth of God available to the world. He does this by speaking and teaching about God and how to live as a child of God; and by demonstrating the love and the life of God through his actions—what he did and how he lived. Jesus is the Word of God, the truth of God, in person.
“I am…the life”. Through healings, and especially through the raising of Lazarus back to life, Jesus shows that he has God’s life-giving power. Through these acts of restoring life, Jesus announces himself as life. So, Jesus is the way because he is the access point to God’s promise of life. In Jesus, we can see and know God in a way not possible before.
These “I am” sayings all point to the cooperative power of Jesus and God the Father in the work of salvation. They all point to Jesus as “the way” of receiving God’s salvation.
When Jesus speaks these words to his disciples, he is saying them as part of his farewell speech. He is with them for the last time before he is taken into Roman custody to be killed. So, he is not telling them “I am the way” for the purpose of creating an exclusive group who keep to themselves the “secret” of re-connecting with God. This is part of his last speech to them, and comes right after he says “my Father’s house has many [rooms]”. He is trying to reassure his disciples that all he has said is true and that even though he will not be with them soon, it is for a good purpose. It is better for them, and better for all creation that Jesus leaves them and sacrifices his life. Basically, he says, ‘You are not going to have me with you in the flesh any more, but it is okay. I am going so that I can make a place for you—and all God’s creation—in the eternal place of God. You know what to do while I am gone, because you have heard what I have said and seen what I have done. You know me, so you also know “the way”.
“I am the way” is a statement of hope, promise, and reassurance. Saying, live as I have taught you, believe in me, and you will be fine because “I am the way” to life with God.
This is not a statement meant to be used against people. It is a word of reassurance for all people—that God has come into the world to show everyone God’s love and bring salvation to all who will receive it. And yet, the phrase, “I am the way”, It is used to do damage all over the world. It is used to judge and condemn people who practice other religions. It is used as a supportive purpose for war. It is used as a weapon. So, we may understand the desire to “dethrone Christ” (Wright) and say instead that all religions are the same. It doesn’t matter who or what you believe in. But if we claim that all religions are the same, that all are “echoes of God”, then the result of our claim is that Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Krishna, and the whole lot “all provide a way towards the foothills of the mountain [of God, but] not the way to the summit” (Wright). We cannot come into the full presence of God and receive salvation without Jesus, who provides for us all ‘the way’ to God.
In the Bible, people who follow “other gods” are called Gentiles. We, those of us who were not born Jewish, are gentiles. The only reason we can say today that we have a place in the kingdom and life of God is because of Jesus, who opened the way to God for us. So who are we, the newly included, to become exclusive and start saying who will be left out of God’s kingdom? Jesus came to redeem God’s creation—the whole creation!
In Romans 4, Paul is writing a description of a “fully justified, righteous believer” and he uses Abraham as the main example (Willimon). Abraham didn’t know anything about Jesus, and yet, “somehow, what Jesus did, he did even for Abraham who knew nothing of what Jesus did” (Willimon). So we can say, yes, Jesus is the only way to God without excluding those who have never heard the name of Jesus. “If anyone is saved without knowing about Jesus, that person’s salvation is still an event that occurs through Jesus” (Willimon). It may be a mystery to us how God can act in history through one perfect humanity-divinity combination in Jesus Christ to save even those who do not know the name of Jesus, but the power and the truth of God are no less real just because we can’t fully understand.
Here’s something we can understand. “The whole of early Christianity insists that the one true and living God, the creator, is the God of Israel; and that the God of Israel has acted decisively, within history, to bring Israel’s story to its proper goal, and through that to address, and rescue, the world” (Wright).
The following are familiar words, but let’s not dismiss them for that reason. I invite you to hear these words of Jesus again. “’For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’” (John 3:16-17, NRSV). And so Jesus says, “’I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6b, NRSV).
Resources Used
New Revised Standard Version of The Bible
The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX on Luke and John
Willimon, William H., Who Will Be Saved?
Wright, Tom., John for Everyone, Part Two
