Is Jesus the Only Way?

Don: Is Jesus truly the only way to God? After all, he said no-one comes to the Father except through him. Does this mean that only Christians can be saved? What about the billions today and throughout history who do not know or have not not known Christ, including those who lived before he came among us and including the Jews of the Old Testament? The Revelation account of the New World seems to include everybody:

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:9-10)

So how did everybody get in? According to Hebrews, it was through faith:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. (Hebrews 11:1-3)

Hebrews goes on to list some of those “men [and women] of old”: Able, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Moses, Joseph, and more, and shows that Jesus was the author and perfecter of the faith and the method by which these wo/men of old were saved even though they did not know him:

[Let us fix] our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

In Romans, Paul talked explicitly about Gentiles who did not “have the Law”:

For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, (Romans 2:14-15)

Romans 9 paints a similar picture of those who don’t seem to be schooled in the ways of the Law—of Jesus—who yet have the opportunity of salvation:

What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. As He says also in Hosea,

“I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’
And her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’”
“And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’
There they shall be called sons of the living God.” (Romans 9:22-26)

Paul explained why Jesus was prepared to include everybody:

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:26-29)

He elaborated on the phrase “sons of God”, and also emphasized the importance of being known by God as opposed to knowing him:

Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? (Galatians 4:7-9)

This all adds up to a considerable counter-argument against the common interpretation of “I am the Way” and “only through me” as meaning that only card-carrying Christians can be saved; that the only way to get a card is to somehow find and follow Jesus—the Way, believe in him, be baptized, and so on; and that when we do all this we can claim to know the Way and be guided along that Way by Jesus to the Father for salvation. This of course is the basis for Christian evangelism and missionary work carried out by well-meaning Christians for centuries. But if we take salvation as the prerogative of God—the responsibility of Jesus—rather than a Way for us to find and follow, then “I am the Way” and “only through me” take on the obverse meaning that Jesus will take care of getting us where we need to go. He will show us the way—we don’t need to find it:

Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. (Isaiah 30:21)

The Way is God’s way just as the Garden was God’s garden, not Adam and Eve’s. If salvation is an act of God, a product of his grace, as opposed to something that we have to work on, then the inclusion of all mankind in God’s kingdom makes sense. And salvation is indeed the work of God:

Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.  (Acts 13:38-39)

This is not to say that seeking to know and acquiring faith in Jesus is a waste of time. Everyone will be saved anyway, but it seems believers in Jesus will have some sort of special status:

For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers. (1 Timothy 4:10)

Since Jesus is the Way, then, how much needs to be known about him in order for Mankind to be saved? Is it his person or his personality—his mission, method, and message—that matters? As a person, Jesus was finite, limited, culture-bound, and bound to a specific period in history; but as a personality, he is eternal, unlimited, and universal in time and space, in history and culture.

It is his personality that…

…has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, (2 Timothy 1:9)

The fundamental question is: Is there more than one way to God? What are their defining characteristics?

Michael: I think the way Jesus lived characterizes the Way to God. His name is not the Way; it’s how he lived his life, how he dealt with people, and how he died. That way is open to everyone.

David: I am uncomfortable with the idea of a special status for Christians. It seems to me the quote from 1 Timothy 4 indicating that everyone will be saved could have come direct from God, if only some fallible human had not added” “especially Christians”.

Alice: Somewhere in scripture it says something like: “If God loves us when we are sinners, how much more will he love us when we are at peace with him.” So it seems there is some difference.

Jeff: I agree the 1 Tim 4 sentence is a human interpretation of a divine thought biased by our predisposition to want to pick winners and losers. On the other hand, it occurs to me that a different interpretation of the divine thought would be that God is the savior of all mankind, but the lives of those who seek to get to know God here on earth are enriched through the experience, or living according to the principles and examples taught by Jesus.

David: The problem, it seems to me, is the life of Jesus was a life filled with pain and suffering—not only his own but of everyone around him [i.e., everyone, period]. I think that’s what Jesus meant when he said “You can’t follow this way”. We are flatly incapable of that divine capacity for sacrifice. I admit, that leaves us with another problem, in that it seem to give us carte blanche to lead lives of total hedonism because (a) we can’t be like Jesus anyway and (b) we’ll get into heaven just as easily as Mother Theresa may be presumed to have gotten in.

Jeff: Solomon pointed out, having tried all the alternatives, that in fact leading a moral life was the best overall. There is a blessing in knowing the assurance of salvation through the actions of God and through what Jesus did on earth, even though it’s not an exclusive thing.

Don: Is the value of a gift enhanced by knowing who the giver is? Is a beautiful watch gifted anonymously as precious as the same watch gifted by a loved one or, say, to a doctor by a grateful patient? Is that what Timothy meant—that knowledge of what God has done for us enriches the gift of life even though it is not essential to know it. Both watches still tell the time; both lives still function like normal human lives. But one seems more special.

Jeff: There may be only one way to God—through God’s prescription or allowance or actions—but it’s not necessarily something we have to discern. The fact that Jesus came, died, was raised, and went to heaven is the prescription by which men are saved does not mean that people must know the prescription before it will work for them.

Robin: What if the only way to God is to turn one’s back on evil?

Jay: The way to an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent God must be a universal way. It cannot be a parochial path. In his ministry, Jesus set up the universal principles of his way. Prior to his remark about rendering unto God and Caesar that which was respectively theirs, his audience said they knew Jesus was there to TEACH them the way to God. They did not understand he was here to BE the way. Yet, Jesus did not correct them.

Jeff: The universal way is what was articulated as the New Covenant in Galatians: To love one’s neighbor as oneself. And that is what Jesus’s life and behavior essentially demonstrated. Yet still we feel we have to take some specific action toward making the way.

Don: From Jesus’s perspective, he was telling us that he will make the way for us.

Jeff: But we interpret scripture such as that where Jesus exhorted us to keep his commandments makes us feel we have to do something. In some ways it does seem contradictory.

Michael: If Jesus makes the way, it implies that getting on the way is as easy as doing nothing!

David: Exactly! Jesus assured us we cannot get on it now, but he will put us on it later. It’s not up to us, it’s up to him. There is nothing we can do about it.

Don: Matthew does imply that we have to seek the way:

For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:14)

This seems to contradict the other scriptures we’ve quoted today, in which countless multitudes end up saved.

Michael: Christians see the easy way to salvation as following Jesus. The way in Matthew is perhaps a different way—not one that must be taken for salvation but one that is open to the few who feel a deep level of commitment to it and who are capable of it. People who have the strength to bear the burdens of others as though they were lightweight burdens. Their way is not as easy as our way, but we will all end up in the same place.

Robin: The hard way is to give up our willfulness.

Jay: The hard way, said Jesus, is to hate your father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—to give up literally everything. You have to be God to have that level of commitment. We need the grace of God to cover our inability to commit at that level—to make it easy for us, to give us another way. But there’s no doubt a seeming contradiction between the rosy picture in Revelation and the harsh reality of Matthew.

David: So it comes down to a matter of personal preference. Pick your preferred scripture. Choose one side of the contradiction and stick with it.

Jeff: That’s why we have so many denominations, even within Christianity.

David: The Mormons are currently facing a schism over a policy ruling about the children of gay couples that has served to highlight the contradiction between the Bible’s clear condemnation of gays and Jesus’s clear commandment to love them as ourselves. One member of the church told a reporter:

“Any church that wants to claim itself as a Christian organisation that uses Jesus Christ the saviour to somehow exclude any group of people is not anything that I want to be a part of.”

Love your neighbor, but not if s/he’s gay? Hmm…

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