Meditation on The Way

Copyright 2009 Gloria Fisher. All rights reserved.

Jesus said in John 14:6 "I am the Way and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me."

Today there is disagreement between some in mainline denominations, between evangelicals and liberals, and between Christians and other world religions about whether Jesus is the only way to salvation. Arguments fly because non-Christians cannot bring themselves to believe that God would not honor any other religion except Christianity. They say, "My Muslim friend is a really nice person. Surely, he is going to heaven!" When a Christian says, "No. I’m sorry but only believers and followers of Jesus Christ are saved," then the discussion usually deteriorates into either a heated argument or a silent stand off. The Christian may say, "This is not my opinion. It says so in the Bible. Jesus said it!" That answer doesn’t usually fix the problem.

Those people who don’t believe Jesus is the Way also don’t believe most of what the Bible says about Him or what He said Himself. Either Jesus was who he said He was or He was crazy. C. S. Lewis said in his book, Mere Christianity, "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

When Jesus said, "No one can come to the Father but through me," He meant it. But doubters say, "Well, surely that can’t be right. Surely, my Hindu neighbor can get to God! Surely, my Buddhist cousin is saved! He’s such a good person." Most Americans especially don’t study world religions and don’t know what Hindus, Buddhists, or Muslims really believe. They only "know" what they hear from television or from their family and friends. No other religion bases the salvation of its followers on a God who came to earth to die for them out of love. Or who rose from the dead to save them from their sinful lives.

When Jesus said, "I am the Way..." What did He mean? Perhaps He meant that He knows the way to the Father and is the only one who knows the way precisely because He is the only one who has ever come from God, lived as a man, and then gone back to God. He has traveled that way and He knows the way from heaven and back. He alone can possibility say, "I know the way, follow me. I’ll show you the way there. I am your way to get there. I am the way to God. I am the way to heaven. I am the way to eternal life."

And who else is? Did Buddha come from God? He never said he did. Did Mohammed come from God? Was he with God in the beginning? Not ever did Mohammed claim to be God in the flesh. No other world religious leader but Jesus said, "The Father and I are one." (John 10:30)

Even John the Baptist recognized Jesus as the way. He knew that Isaiah the prophet had seen the day coming when "the way" would arrive. John quotes Isaiah in Matthew 3:3 when he says about himself that he is, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord...’"

Evidently, the first followers of Jesus believed that He was the Way. Before they were called Christians, they were referred to as "men and women belonging to The Way." (Acts 9:3) In other words men and women belonging to Jesus.

In Hebrews 10:20 the writer says that believers have "confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way..." The living way is obviously Jesus. What other living way is there? None. No one else shed His blood for the lives of sinners.

The way in which you do something is "how you do it." Following that logic then Jesus is the How you get to heaven. The How you are saved. The How you are filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is How you have eternal life–the Way you have eternal life. The only Way.