By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
In John 14:6, Jesus explicitly states, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That sounds so…so unjust. So unfair. So closed. So unlike what I think a Christian stands for.
But the Apostle Peter proclaims a similar thought in Acts 4:12, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Does that mean that the good Muslims will be left out? And the good Mormons? And the good people whose lives we admire but aren’t Christians? What about the Buddhists? The Hindus? The Jews? It just isn’t right!
Maybe, but let’s turn that coin over for a minute and look at the other side: Not why is there one way but why is there ANY way? It doesn’t take a Bible to know that none of us are perfect. That none of us actually are good enough to be saved?
If there is a God above, why would he want any of us to live with him? We don’t obey him, we don’t honor him. We don’t even seek him. So, why would he even make one way to him?
Easy answer: John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
How wonderful! How marvelous! That God so loves us that he sent his one and only Son to die so that we might be saved, but have you ever read one verse further?
Verse 18 reads: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
Whoever does not believe in Jesus as the one and only Son of God is already condemned…not based on what he does or doesn’t do…but on what he fails to believe. For example, the good Muslim does not believe that Jesus is the only Son of God.
Or that he is divine. The good Jew does not believe in Jesus’ divinity either. The good Hindu does not believe in Jesus as the only Son of God. The good Mormon does not believe that he is eternal. They believe he was created by God.
There is a way to eternal life, but it is narrow and exclusive. While it is open to everyone, only those who believe in Jesus as the Son of God are qualified to take it.
And of those, only those who have surrendered their lives and desires and plans to his will qualify to follow it to the end. Lest we forget, Jesus desires to be not just our Savior, but He also demands to be our Lord and Master.
Total surrender to the one who loves us so much he died for us is the only acceptable standard under which we can come to him.
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.
