The Exclusivity of Christ

What about people in the world, billions of people in the world, who don’t believe this is true, who believe other things. Are they really wrong? Followers of other religion, followers of no religion, with all their sincerity, are they really separated from God and not able to come to God unless they believe in Jesus?

Why Would God Make Only One Way To Himself?

When we hear Jesus say, “No one comes to the Father, except through me,” we immediately wonder, why would God only make one way to himself? Certainly God is more creative than that. More importantly, certainly God is more loving than that, we think. Which is a great question. Why would God make only one way to himself? And when we ask that question, it causes us to step back in history.

So, have you ever been in a conversation with someone about some intense subject, maybe an hour or two, just diving into the subject or maybe a week or two. And after you’ve been talking about this person, about the subject for a while with that person, all of a sudden somebody else comes in and just kind of jumps into the conversation and starts bringing up things that you brought up an hour or two ago, or a week or two ago, and you want to say, “Who invited you into this conversation?” They don’t understand where the conversation is. They haven’t been there.

Well, this is where I think we need to step back. When Jesus says these words in John 14, we’re coming in on a story in the Bible that happens here, a claim that happens here, but there’s a lot that’s happened before then.

So, let me give you a little context, maybe. Step back, broaden the picture all the way back to the beginning. So, imagine God. And I’ll use the word imagine there because I like I’ve mentioned numerous times, I mean, I realize there are people here who may not believe there is a God, believe there’s no God. Well, just imagine, it’s possible that God exists. I think we’d all have to at least be willing to admit it’s possible that God exists. If I were to say that something is not in this room, then that means I have to have searched this whole room. And then I could say, “Okay, it’s not in this room.

So, if I’m going to say God’s not there, that means I would have to have searched all knowledge to see if God is there. And if I’ve searched all knowledge, then that means I have all knowledge and by definition, that would make me God and I’d deny my own divinity with my own statement that there is no God. So, it’s at least possible that somewhere in knowledge that there’s a God who exists. So, just imagine. So just start there. Just imagine there is a God who exists. And this God is perfectly good and perfectly holy, perfectly loving. All that is love is summed up in God. And imagine God created the world. He created a world in which he put mountains and seas and all the beauty we see in nature around us.

God Wants Our Worship

But then after creating all of that, he created man and woman as his prize creation, as a reflection of himself for relationship with him. Imagine created man and woman with a capacity to know him, to walk with him, to enjoy him. And he said to man and woman, “I want you to enjoy me and all my creation, forever.”

And then imagine, God, the creator, were to say to his creation, “But if you disobey me, you turn away from me, you will die. But I don’t want you to die. I want you to live with me forever.” And imagine the creation say, “Yes.” But then one day, for no just reason, the man and the woman decide, our creator doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t know what is best for us. And so for no just reason, they disobey their creator. And the creator comes to them and said, “I told you that if you did this, you would die.”

But imagine the creator having in motion, even there, a plan to make it possible for his creation to live with him forever, still. Imagine that plan involves calling a people to himself. For among creation, they’re called the people of Israel in the Old Testament. And he says to them, “I want to show my love to you, as a people. Almost enter into, it’s called a covenant in the Old Testament, but like a marriage relationship, a special relationship with you in a way that you’ll then show my love to all the other peoples of the earth.” And imagine this. People say, “Yes,” and they enter into that marriage relationship, that covenant, to enjoy God’s love and to make God’s love known to everyone else on the earth.

But imagine, just days after initiating or entering into that covenant, imagine just days later them saying, “Our creator is not worthy of worship. Let’s take gold and silver and put it together in the form of a cow and we’ll worship that instead.” And imagine them continuing to do that, in all sorts of other ways, all sorts of other idolatry and immorality. And imagine the creator, in his love, sending messengers to that people. Messengers that bring good news of the creator’s love for them, that if they’ll turn back from their sin, turn back to their creator’s, ways that he’ll forgive them, restore relationship with him.

God Gave Us The Cross

But imagine the creation, taking those messengers sent from the creator, and stoning them, sawing them in half, imprisoning them, persecuting them, killing those messengers. In light of after centuries of messengers coming with news of the creator’s love, imagine the creator, committing the ultimate act of condescension and coming to creation himself. Taking on a robe of human flesh and living among his creation, loving them, serving them, healing them of diseases and bringing good news of the creator’s love.

And imagine the creation, taking the creator himself, in the flesh, and mocking him and beating him, scourging him, spitting in his face and then nailing him to a cross, in the most cruel form of murder imaginable.

The Exclusivity of Christ Is Gracious

And imagine in light of that whole story, the creator saying, not just to his creation, who did that, but to all people in all history. “If you will only believe in my love for you, expressed on that cross, then I will forgive you of all your sins against me and you can live with me forever.”

Now, if that’s the whole story, in light of the whole story, it doesn’t make a lot of sense now, to look to this creator and say, “Only one way? I thought you were more creative than that. How are you loving?”

Once we realize the whole story, we realize the question is not why is there only one way? The question is now, why is there any way at all? And the good news we celebrate on this day is that God has made a way. God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him, will not perish but have everlasting life.