Many other religions and non-followers of Jesus acknowledge Christ in some way. They may even greatly respect and admire Him and much - though not all - of what he taught and did.
However, the claim he made above as the only way to God (and other similar claims), if fully understood, may require them to reevaluate their view of Christ and reconsider who He claimed to be and is.
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On the flip side, if Christ taught great things, did great deeds and set a great example, maybe we should pay more attention to the things He said that we disagree with, such as the verse above. Maybe everything he did and said is right, not just the things we prefer or like.
A person worth trusting, admiring, and following fully is someone we can trust fully i.e. trust all they said and did, not just some of it.
Why does Christ say he is the way (not a way) to the Father (God), the truth (not a truth) about the Father, and is life Himself? Christ wasn't saying this only about what he did but who he was and is.
How do we understand this in light of all the different paths/religions out there?
Christ didn't make these claims because there is no value in all the various religions or traditions, but because these paths (⁴particularly adulterated versions of Christianity) never get us to the destination we seek. The problem isn't simply a philosophical or theological one but a very practical "rubber meets the road" one.
That doesn't mean the various religions don't also move us along in a good and helpful way. Much can be gleaned from them (contrary to the views of many within the "Christian" tradition). The problem is they never fully get us to where we ultimately hope, desire, and need to be. They come up short. Every one of them.
What is the ultimate destination that all paths seek? Some religions call it Nirvana (or moksha). Jesus called it eternal life (vs ongoing pain and eventual death and separation from our Creator, the source of life, love, and all things). It goes by different names in different religions.
John 4:9-10
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
John 4:13-15
Everyone who drinks of this water (from the physical well) will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
The following are additional analogies Christ used to convey who he is and what he offers...
John 6:35
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
John 7:37-38
Rivers of Living Water
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
This overflow of love and life is the very essence of God as Spirit. God is love, life, and Spirit and He calls us to enter into and partake of this Union of perfect glory, love, joy, and celebration between the Father and Son in, by, and through the Spirit. A glory he has always had (and is) in perfect completeness and fullness from all eternity past.
Why does Christ say he is the way (not a way) to the Father (God), the truth (not a truth) about the Father, and is life Himself? Christ wasn't saying this only about what he did but who he was and is.
How do we understand this in light of all the different paths/religions out there?
Christ didn't make these claims because there is no value in all the various religions or traditions, but because these paths (⁴particularly adulterated versions of Christianity) never get us to the destination we seek. The problem isn't simply a philosophical or theological one but a very practical "rubber meets the road" one.
That doesn't mean the various religions don't also move us along in a good and helpful way. Much can be gleaned from them (contrary to the views of many within the "Christian" tradition). The problem is they never fully get us to where we ultimately hope, desire, and need to be. They come up short. Every one of them.
Why? Because they are based on attempts to reach the Creator through our efforts instead of being connected to God by and through Christ's efforts - whose efforts alone are good enough to please, restore, and unite us to the Father; the Creator, and Source of life and all things.
What is the ultimate destination that all paths seek? Some religions call it Nirvana (or moksha). Jesus called it eternal life (vs ongoing pain and eventual death and separation from our Creator, the source of life, love, and all things). It goes by different names in different religions.
Whatever it is called, there is a universal sense expressed within all religions that something is incomplete, missing - "off" - that we all seek to find - i.e. we need to obtain something or arrive at a certain place - to be complete.
What do we seek? Wholeness, release (relief) from our state of pain, meaninglessness, insignificance - deliverance, restoration, reconciliation, rest, peace, completeness, paradise; in a word, home - a place where we feel completely safe, welcomed, and loved even when we are at our worst.
Jesus alone extends to us the offer of complete and perfect love, joy, and fullness that is found only in God. He alone offers us the way to enter a state of perfect belonging, of bliss in union with God and who He is in spite of our greatest weaknesses or worst moments - vs our best efforts, for they are never enough.
Christ described it the following way...
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies.
God is love, joy, beauty, fullness, bliss, etc. To be fully united with Him is to have and partake of all these. God is the "home" we long for and seek that is missing. He is - as the loving community of Father and Son in, by, and through the Spirit - the paradise we were created for, had, and lost. He is that place where we can be who we truly are (good, bad, ugly, and everywhere in between) and never be rejected but fully embraced and accepted even with all our short comings i.e. loved.
However we can not fully enter and participate in this until we are perfectly and fully aligned and connected to the Source of complete love, joy, and fullness; the very same blissful fullness that the Father and Son experience in, through, and by the Spirit.
How can we be aligned with the most perfectly loving being when we ourselves are not perfectly loving?
What do we seek? Wholeness, release (relief) from our state of pain, meaninglessness, insignificance - deliverance, restoration, reconciliation, rest, peace, completeness, paradise; in a word, home - a place where we feel completely safe, welcomed, and loved even when we are at our worst.
Jesus alone extends to us the offer of complete and perfect love, joy, and fullness that is found only in God. He alone offers us the way to enter a state of perfect belonging, of bliss in union with God and who He is in spite of our greatest weaknesses or worst moments - vs our best efforts, for they are never enough.
Christ described it the following way...
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies.
God is love, joy, beauty, fullness, bliss, etc. To be fully united with Him is to have and partake of all these. God is the "home" we long for and seek that is missing. He is - as the loving community of Father and Son in, by, and through the Spirit - the paradise we were created for, had, and lost. He is that place where we can be who we truly are (good, bad, ugly, and everywhere in between) and never be rejected but fully embraced and accepted even with all our short comings i.e. loved.
However we can not fully enter and participate in this until we are perfectly and fully aligned and connected to the Source of complete love, joy, and fullness; the very same blissful fullness that the Father and Son experience in, through, and by the Spirit.
How can we be aligned with the most perfectly loving being when we ourselves are not perfectly loving?
This isn't simply a moral question or problem but a practical one. It is similar to asking how water and oil mix. They don't. For something to blend perfectly they must be the same. I think everyone would agree that we're not perfectly loving but very much about taking care of ourselves before we care about others.
This is not the way God is. God is other-oriented; an overflowing fountain of love within the loving community of Father and Son in, by, and through the Spirit. God always has been this way (long before we came along) and will be this way, with or without us.
And the Spirit of God - i.e. God himself - is not some mysterious undefinable apparition but the very Spirit/passion/breath of God who is endless overflowing love and life flowing back and forth between the Father and Son in, by, and through His Spirit of passion and love.
This is not the way God is. God is other-oriented; an overflowing fountain of love within the loving community of Father and Son in, by, and through the Spirit. God always has been this way (long before we came along) and will be this way, with or without us.
And the Spirit of God - i.e. God himself - is not some mysterious undefinable apparition but the very Spirit/passion/breath of God who is endless overflowing love and life flowing back and forth between the Father and Son in, by, and through His Spirit of passion and love.
This alignment and harmony with God is not something we can obtain by our efforts but is offered to us as a ¹gift. This is why Christ said the following...
John 4:7
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
John 4:7
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
John 4:9-10
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
John 4:13-15
Everyone who drinks of this water (from the physical well) will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
The following are additional analogies Christ used to convey who he is and what he offers...
John 6:35
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
John 7:37-38
Rivers of Living Water
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
This overflow of love and life is the very essence of God as Spirit. God is love, life, and Spirit and He calls us to enter into and partake of this Union of perfect glory, love, joy, and celebration between the Father and Son in, by, and through the Spirit. A glory he has always had (and is) in perfect completeness and fullness from all eternity past.
Christ offers and invites us to partake of Him by His Spirit in the same way He partakes of the Father... to become a part of this triune God of joy, bliss, and glory. But to do so - to fully partake of and experience this - we must be perfectly singular in our affections and focus on Him in the same way as the Father and Son i.e. in, by, and through the Spirit. Otherwise, we will never experience fullness of life we were created for and can only find in Him.
All this can only be done in and through Christ for he alone is and was perfectly focused, lived perfectly - walked (and completed) the perfect path to God and fully partook of God.
".. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son ²except the Father, and no one knows the Father ²except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him..." - Mat 11:27
And out of love for us, He offers to assign and credit to ³us His perfect life (the only life perfectly lived, approved, and accepted by the Father), so we might enter into the divine dance of love and life that is God as if we lived that perfect life ourselves.
All this can only be done in and through Christ for he alone is and was perfectly focused, lived perfectly - walked (and completed) the perfect path to God and fully partook of God.
".. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son ²except the Father, and no one knows the Father ²except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him..." - Mat 11:27
And out of love for us, He offers to assign and credit to ³us His perfect life (the only life perfectly lived, approved, and accepted by the Father), so we might enter into the divine dance of love and life that is God as if we lived that perfect life ourselves.
This is the only way we can experience what all religions seek (including and maybe ⁴especially adulterated performance-based "Christianity") but can never obtain or give us since they are based on our efforts, not on God's in and through Christ.
Christ wasn't arrogantly boasting about Himself when he said He is the way, he was simply pointing out the reality of who and what truth life is and how it is found.
And this is true only of Christ and no one else. He alone perfectly loved the Father with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength and others as himself, even to the point of dying i.e. giving up His life for the Father's honor but also for ours. We haven't, and never will, nor has any religious leader loved in this way. This is why he alone is the way to the Father, the truth about the Father and life himself from the Father and was sent to us by the Father, who offered himself in sacrifice so we too could be fully reconciled to and united with the Father.
For a further discussion and what it means to be righteous click here
¹Why a gift. Because we can not do or be enough on our own to enter this Union of bliss. What is needed to enter must be obtained for us and offered to us as a gift. It is now up to us to receive this gift.
²This is not saying we know nothing about the Father and Son but that we do not know them fully as they truly are or in the same way they know each other.
The good news is we don't have to in order to be united with God and fully accepted and embraced by him because Christ already did and does this and extends to us the benefits of this as a gift.
³because we cannot and never will live it. And this is our dilemma. We refuse to believe we are too broken to live it. We think we can somehow save ourselves - obtain salvation on our own, given enough time and effort, even if it takes us several attempts (e. g. reincarnation). If we are to ever obtain what other religions promise but cannot deliver, we must receive Christ and abandon our notion of self-deliverance. We must trust Him, not ourselves, and recognize we never can perfectly align ourselves with our Creator by our efforts. That he alone did for us what we can't and now offers perfection and wholeness to us as a gift - if we will receive it.
⁴I say it this way because of all the proposed alternate paths to God, adulterated versions of Christianity are the most destructive because they most appear to be what Jesus taught in how we are to unite and be aligned with God when in fact they are the exact opposite and only another religion that is a performance-based (vs Spirit, grace, love based) approach to God.
"And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed...
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world." John 17:5, 24
https://bible.com/bible/59/jhn.17.5-24.ESV
For a further discussion and what it means to be righteous click here
For a further discussion on why Christ is our only way to be in right standing with God click here
For a further discussion on our alienation from God and the solution, click here.
For a further discussion on the difference between religion and Christ, click here.
For a discussion on the meaning of the "broad and narrow way" click here.
______________________________
¹Why a gift. Because we can not do or be enough on our own to enter this Union of bliss. What is needed to enter must be obtained for us and offered to us as a gift. It is now up to us to receive this gift.
²This is not saying we know nothing about the Father and Son but that we do not know them fully as they truly are or in the same way they know each other.
The good news is we don't have to in order to be united with God and fully accepted and embraced by him because Christ already did and does this and extends to us the benefits of this as a gift.
³because we cannot and never will live it. And this is our dilemma. We refuse to believe we are too broken to live it. We think we can somehow save ourselves - obtain salvation on our own, given enough time and effort, even if it takes us several attempts (e. g. reincarnation). If we are to ever obtain what other religions promise but cannot deliver, we must receive Christ and abandon our notion of self-deliverance. We must trust Him, not ourselves, and recognize we never can perfectly align ourselves with our Creator by our efforts. That he alone did for us what we can't and now offers perfection and wholeness to us as a gift - if we will receive it.
⁴I say it this way because of all the proposed alternate paths to God, adulterated versions of Christianity are the most destructive because they most appear to be what Jesus taught in how we are to unite and be aligned with God when in fact they are the exact opposite and only another religion that is a performance-based (vs Spirit, grace, love based) approach to God.
"And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed...
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world." John 17:5, 24
https://bible.com/bible/59/jhn.17.5-24.ESV
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Grace to you
Jim Deal