It was one of my dumber moments. My friends and I were playing “war” across our rural Illinois subdivision, running in between houses and making bullet sounds with our mouths as we pointed plastic guns at each other.
My friend Buddy (I don’t know if I ever knew his real name) had all the best fake guns. So I borrowed one of his. When I realized it was quitting time, I told my friends I had to go. But I still had Buddy’s gun, so I had to find him. I turned around and shouted his name. “Buuuuudddyyyy!”
Then I realized he was right behind me the whole time. I felt pretty stupid. What’s the point of this story? Let’s take a little detour to consider a greater question: Is Jesus the only way to God, as some say He is?
I think that question depends on another one. Which God are you trying to get to?
If you are trying to get to a god that you must appease with religious works, monetary offerings, and good deeds, then Jesus will not get you to him. A sizeable portion of the religious machine that is modern American Christianity will get you to this angry god. In fact, most religious will suffice for this. But will they also get you to the loving, forgiving, and merciful God who is in Jesus Christ? Let’s discuss this.
Speaking of the final day, Jesus said, “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matt 7:22-23) As Jesus saw it, those who try to come to God through a bunch of good religious deeds will not make it, because that isn’t the kind of God that Jesus was talking about. In fact, He calls it "lawlessness," or a life of instability and and rebellion. A lot of religious people like to condemn people outside the institutional church as being "lawless," but those same religious people are, in Jesus's mind, living lawlessly. Their position before God is still adversarial: They are trying to earn God's affection through their religious deeds, rather than accepting His embrace and abiding in His freely offered love. Law, in Jesus's mind, simply meant living in love (see, for instance, Matthew 22:35-40).
In constrast to the idea of salvation by religious works and lists of do's and don't's, Jesus makes a quite exclusive claim: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). It is not through works that Jesus said we get to the God He knows. It was through a person, Himself. It is a relationship that gets you there. It is trust in Jesus, not your religion, that brings you to God. That is the kind of God that Jesus was talking about. A God who says, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matt. 9:13). A God who simply wants us to allow Him to love us fully and completely.
Many well-meaning people in the institutional machine likes to twist Jesus words in John 14:6 to “no one comes to the Father except through the machine.” Many reject the religious machine’s twisting of this message because of the arrogance it implies: “We have the power to get you to God, if you just do what we say.” Those who refuse to worship the machine are called pagans or heathens by good religious folk. Many who reject the machine think they are also rejecting Jesus, but they do not understand the difference between Jesus and the institutions that claim ownership of Him. Jesus is not saying we only get to God through a religion (that is, membership and service to an institution), but through Him. It is by accepting His embrace that we come to God.
For millenia before Jesus, moralists and philosophers had given mankind lists of ethical mandates. Jesus came to the Jewish people, who had the best set of ethical rules out there, because they were given by God. The problem has never been that humanity, in its most reflective moments, doesn't know not to kill or steal or hate or cheat, but that we have shown ourselves incapable of performing what we know to be right. How often, in our own lives, do we say or do things to the people we love the most that we knew to be wrong before we did them, and after?
But Jesus indeed offered something revolutionary. In comparing Himself to a grape vine, and us to its branches, He said, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me" (John 15:4).
The problem isn't that we aren't focused enough on right versus wrong. Our problem isn't, as some in the machine will tell us, that we aren't working hard enough to bear fruit to God. Many misguided people will say they know the exact fruit God wants you to bear, and usually that fruit is giving their institution more money, or getting more people into its doors, so those people can give it more money (This is not true in every institutional church. But there is indeed large and growing "corporate America" institutional church philosophy. When I was in the machine, I was involved in the back room financial discussions in which this money-hungry perspective was stated explicitly.)
Jesus didn't see humanity's problem as not working hard enough at the tasks of religion. Our problem is that we aren't focused enough on simply abiding in Him. No vine or true or any fruit bearing plant tries really hard to bear fruit. "Urrrrrrgggh! I'm going to strain my little tree muscles to grow as much fruit as possible." Rather, growing fruit is the inevitable result of being connected to the source of nutrients. If, as Jesus said, ethics only make sense as an expression of a deeper relationship of love with God, and if, as Jesus said, God is the source of all that is good, then being divorced from relationship with Him means we are divorced from the only context in which ethical living makes sense and indeed is even possible.
The relationship is first knit back by God embracing us in His love, and then, abiding in friendship with the Source of goodness, we gradually become transformed into goodness.
But there is more to this story. After Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” He continued, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him” (John 14:7).
Jesus was inviting His disciples to enjoy the love of the relationship He has had for eternity with His Father. This is what He meant when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Can someone get to heaven without knowing Jesus? I’d say that there may be some who died before the Holy Spirit has introduced them to Jesus by name. God only holds us responsible for what we know, so certainly there will be some in heaven who followed what true things they knew, even if they never knew Jesus by name. Perhaps they would still get to God through Jesus, but they might not realize it until they stare at Him face to face. Perhaps they will be like the young Calormen in Lewis's The Last Battle, who winds up in Aslan's heaven even though his whole life he thought he was surving the false god Tash. But he was faithful to good and truth as he understood it.
But what if Jesus indeed is whom He said He is? What if He is indeed God Himself, dwelling in human flesh? This would completely turn our original question on its head. Because if it is true, then He truly desires to dwell among us, and with us, and in us, as He promised He would. And this life in Him is not something we earn, but it was given to us on the cross. It is something He offers to us simply by being in Him, by resting in Him and trusting His kind love.
So is there another way to God? The point of my previous story is this: If Jesus is who He said, then trying to find another way is like shouting for your friend when He is standing right behind you. No one flies to China to seek out a friend who lives next door. What if God is standing next to us, simply asking to be allowed to love us? What if He doesn’t need a our Boy Scout badges in order to convince Him to love us? Why would we seek to come to God through the impossible way of doing enough good deeds and religious works, when He is standing right next to us, asking simply for us to accept His embrace?