“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

In this quote from Jesus He is pointing towards Himself saying “I am the way”, whereas most religious leaders tend to point away from themselves saying “that is the way”, or “this is the way”. In this quote Jesus is clearly stating that He is “the” way” rather than “a” way, “the” truth rather than “a” truth and “the” life rather than “a” life; He is making a very exclusive statement.

Such a claim is seen by many today as arrogant and intolerant. That is understandable because of the implication of the claim that Jesus is making – if He is the only way to God, then all other ways must be wrong!

In our diverse society, claims to exclusivity are often strongly rejected. Society wants to include everyone’s opinion, but when various truth claims are made that contradict they can’t all be right or true. The poet, Steve Turner, highlights this in his satirical poem “Creed” when he says “all religions are basically the same – they all believe in love and goodness and only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation”.

Consider, for example, views on the nature of God. Some beliefs claim there are no gods, some claim that everything is part of god, some claim there are many gods, and others claim there is only one. Logically speaking, they can’t all be right! You may say that it is sincerity that counts – but you could be sincerely wrong! The only way they can all be acceptable is if none of them are actually true, in which case, what you choose to believe is your own personal choice and as equally valid (or not) as anyone else’s. But what if one of them was true? How would you know which one? If you lined up all the world religions, beliefs, ideologies and world views together and put them through tests of whether they made logical sense, the vast majority will quickly fall away and you would be left with just a few. We believe that if you keep testing until you are left with just one, that would be Christianity.

Jesus makes this exclusive claim to be the only way to God, so how should people respond to that? He only gives us the options to either accept it or reject Him. You cannot take the claims of Jesus seriously and just sit on the fence and say He was merely a “good” teacher, for surely you can’t call someone a “good teacher” if they falsely make such claims. He cannot be just “liked”. If He is right He requires us to bow before Him as Lord. If He is wrong, well, now we can’t trust anything else He says and we must reject Him as either deluded or, worse still, deceptive.

CS Lewis, when talking about Jesus’ claims about Himself put it this way “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 patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

What do you think? Come and speak to us about it!