Archive: Is Jesus the Only Way?

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

by Ralph Martin
Originally published in New Covenant, P.O. Box 8617, Ann Arbor, MI 48107
Reprinted with permission.

One of the central claims of Christianity is that Jesus is the only way by which men and women can find salvation and be reconciled with God. “This Jesus is ‘the stone rejected by you the builders which has become the cornerstone.’ There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name in the whole world given to men by which we are to be saved” (Acts 4:11-12, NAB).

Yet today this claim is questioned, directly and indirectly, by many even in the Christian churches. The result of this questioning is that many Christians are confused about the whole missionary dimension of the Christian church and the grounds on which missionary work is based. Many have begun to think it unreasonable, even unfair, to believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Some have begun to think that missionary work should now be focused on helping people live better human lives, rather than on helping them come to repentance, faith in Christ, and baptism.

In a recently published survey of attitudes among Catholic missionaries, one priest in Latin America said that his goal in working with prostitutes and their children was simply human betterment, not conversion. A nun working in Asia said her goal was to awaken people to the benefits of education and to stop the bickering that has prevented them from improving their lives.

Others believe that missionary work should simply help people to live more fully their present beliefs and religion without imposing the Christian view of the world. In Africa last year I met a nun who told me that her goal in working with Muslim people was no longer to invite them to become Christian, but to help them be better Muslims “since there are many ways to God.”

The claim that Jesus is the only way to salvation remains, at least officially in the churches, a central Christian claim. Is this an unreasonable claim to make?

In order to understand whether Jesus is “the answer,” we must first understand the “question.” Precisely what is the need that the human race has for salvation?

One of the primary facts Scripture tells us is that God’s ways are quite different from man’s ways, and that God’s view of man’s situation is quite different from man’s view of his situation. Furthermore, it tells us that God’s ways are the right ways and His views are the accurate ones. So the appropriate attitude for us to take before God is one of silence, of listening, so that we might hear His word and be informed about the truth of our situation and His provisions for it.

As we are quiet before Him and hear His word, we hear Him speak to us about the nature of our situation, our need for salvation, and the way we receive that salvation.

God’s Word tells us that the entire human race is in a state of fundamental rebellion against Him and His ways, a state called sin. This rebellion, this sin, has evil consequences of vast scope. Through this sin and rebellion the human race is now living a cursed existence, subject to disease and, ultimately, death. Through this sin and rebellion, we continue to commit abominations against God Himself and against our fellow humans. Through this sin and rebellion, a host of evil powers, led by a supremely evil genius, Satan, has gained access to the human race and a hold over it. The situation is no longer one of simply human evil, but a much more complex and potent mixture.

Human history is, typically, the history of our greed and fear, anger and hostility: the story of murder on a mass scale, of unfaithfulness, theft, treachery, fornication, homosexuality, adultery, oppression, war, brutality, and all manners of evil. From under the veneer of civilization and of human solutions to problems, the horror of our fallen existence leaps out and makes us ask fundamental questions: What would it take to overcome the evil that allowed civilized Germany to send six million Jews to their deaths? What kind of new humanity has modern, progressive Russia created through the starvation and execution of 60 million of her citizens? What could be offered to the creator as reparation, as recompense, for the hundreds of millions of infants murdered in the womb or strangled on the birth bed through the history of the human race?

How can that race continue to be proud of its progress in the power and subtlety of its abominations throughout the centuries? Even if some men and women, at some times and places, have led somewhat moral lives, what of the rest of us? What of the worship due to God, which many moral men and women withhold? What of the disease that strikes even moral men and women, and the death that takes us all?

It is clear through God’s Word, as we reflect on the situation of our race, that the salvation we are in need of has a number of precise elements.

1. The salvation that the human race requires must include pardon for the enormity of its sin, for its fundamental and continued rebellion. This can come only from the One primarily offended, God Himself.
2. Repentance, with subsequent forgiveness, must always be accompanied by restitution. The wrong that is done must be made up for, be recompensed for. The human race must somehow make atonement for the weight of its sin.
3. The power of Satan and his infernal legions over the human race must be broken.
4. Justice must be established; justice that is somehow able to reach backwards in time, beyond death, to right the balance of millennia of oppression and injustice.
5. Death and disease must be conquered.
6. Men and women must undergo a fundamental change in their natures so that they can live in a way pleasing to God.

The claim of Christianity is that in Jesus Christ all that is required is provided. All the needs are met. God’s Word tells us that through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus sin is forgiven, atonement made, the power of Satan overcome, justice reestablished, death and disease conquered, and men and women born again by the Spirit of God.

Between His first coming and His second coming some of these results of the redemption are experienced only in an initial way. With His second coming all will be fully realized. Already His resurrection and our experience of Pentecost validate His claims as the One sent by God and confirm the truth of His message and mission.

Because Jesus is the Son of Man, fully and truly man, He is able to be our representative and to live, die, and rise on our behalf. Because Jesus is the Son of God, fully and truly God, His life, death, and resurrection have overwhelming value, value to atone for the Auschwitzes and abortion clinics of all the ages, value and power to accomplish all that is required and more.

When we are asked then if there is another way to salvation or reconciliation with God besides Jesus, we ought to ask some questions in return. Does this “other way” truly attempt to deal with the actual requirements of our fallen situation? Does this “other way” effectively deal with the requirements of the situation? Does it make atonement for sin, win pardon, overcome death and Satan, establish justice, recreate the human race? Most importantly, we need to ask on whose authority this “other way” has been established, and who has sent its messengers.

If Jesus is God’s appointed Messiah, then should we not justly call all others who claim this role false messiahs? If Jesus is truly the Prophet sent from God, should we not justly call others who make that claim false prophets? The story of the good shepherd gives us Jesus’ approach to the problem. “Truly I assure you: Whoever does not enter the sheepfold through the gate but climbs in some other way is a thief and a marauder. … I am the gate” (John 10: 1,9).

Jesus is the light of the world. All true light and enlightenment comes from Him and reveals Him. If so-called light does not lead to the perception of Jesus as the Savior of the world, it is either trivial, irrelevant, or not light at all. Jesus thought that light which did not lead people to see Him was better described as darkness. …

The New Testament is clear that all nations and cultures, all human beings, indeed, all of creation, is to submit to Christ, to come under His rule, become part of His body, and be presented by Him to the Father (I Corinthians 15:24-28; Ephesians 1:9-10; Colossians 1:15-20). Scripture is equally clear that in Jesus one finds the full, definitive, and final revelation of God. Jesus, in other words, is presented as the last chance for the human race, as God’s final offer. …

Of course, legitimate questions can be raised about certain situations and cases. For example, how are those saved who lived before Christ? How are those saved who have never heard the gospel? (There is not space to comment on them in this brief article.) But the faith is shipwrecked when people surrender to theological speculation about such questions—which do not need to be answered in order for us to get on with our work—rather than heeding the direct and clear commands of Christ and the unbroken tradition of the church. A mentality which views Christian missionary work as primarily helping people improve their lot as human beings or helping them become better Muslims or whatever, and which does not aim at conversion, is a travesty of the Gospel message. This mentality betrays an incredible blindness to the core of the message of salvation.

Rather than being unreasonable or unfair, the claim that Jesus is the only way to salvation is the merciful truth which, if properly understood, will be greeted with joy, or rejected with murderous, damning hostility. It is the overwhelming mercy of God that provides in Jesus a Savior able to fulfill all that is required for the salvation of the human race.

To complain that God did not provide us with another savior or with a dozen saviors or with a choice of ways of salvation is to miss the point of our actual situation. To rebel at the claim that Jesus is the sole means by which the human race can be saved is simply to stand in jeopardy of rejecting the last chance of a new beginning, just as the first chance of a blessed existence was rejected in the garden. The same attitudes are apparent in both. That we place our sense of what is fitting and fair against God’s sense of what is fitting and fair is a sign of rebellion that needs to be repented of, of the sickness that needs to be healed. It is precisely for this that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and offered His life as an atonement of our sins.

And because the gift of God in Christ Jesus is so great, and the redemption offered so exquisitely and powerfully appropriate, the consequences of accepting or rejecting it are also great. “Then he told them: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to all creation. The man who believes in it and accepts baptism will be saved; the man who refuses to believe in it will be condemned’ ” (Mark 16:15-16).

We don’t know all we might like to know about how God will deal with situations not clearly addressed in Scripture or in the tradition of the church; those are His affair. We do know that it is completely true that Jesus is the only way of being reconciled with God, and that our responsibility is to proclaim this clearly and confidently.