Jesus Is The Way…

Jesus Is The 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 NIV 

This is quite possibly the most unpopular statement made by Jesus as recorded in the Bible.

Moreover, holding this belief today might be one of the most egregious cultural sins a person can still commit: combining a dogmatic rigidness with a seemingly unapologetic intolerance and wrapping it in an apparently exclusive religio-centrism.

But let’s look at this from another angle:

A. If you were standing on the top floor ledge of a twenty-story burning building—would you argue over the brand of netting that you’ll jump into? Moreover, would you really wait for a second fire truck to arrive?

B. If you were lost in the middle of the Sahara Desert, were dying of thirst, and found a case of ice-cold Aquafina water, would you really stop and say, ‘Geez, so Aquafina thinks it’s the only kind of water, huh? Well, I like Evian, and I won’t drink anything else!’

Perhaps we might further consider the following scenario from author Lee Strobel:

C. “Finally, please imagine that two parents find out that their child has jaundice. The doctor calmly tells them that the disease is treatable by placing the new baby under a special light that stimulates the child’s liver to counteract the jaundice. But what if the parents were to say, ‘That’s your truth, doctor—we think our baby is just fine’? Or, ‘We want to treat the baby by scrubbing its skin and dipping it into bleach—we’ll work out the problem ourselves’?

The doctor might say, ‘Wait, you don’t understand—scrubbing the baby’s skin won’t help—that only cleans the surface—it doesn’t fix the root problem. And ignoring it won’t change what is true—it will lead to worse problems. And look at my medical degree—I am uniquely qualified to diagnose and treat this disease!’

Would anyone accuse the doctor of narrow-mindedness, intolerance, or snobbery in this scenario?

Similarly, Jesus is uniquely qualified as the Son of God, through the miracles He performed, through His sinless life, through the fact that He fulfilled hundreds of predictions made hundreds of years before He was born, and by His sacrificial death and return to life, to diagnose our disease (sin) and cure us of it forever (if we will put our faith in Him). Ignoring the diagnosis doesn’t make it go away, and we can’t scrub ourselves clean through good works.

Religion = DO; Jesus = DONE.

Which—WHO!—will you choose?”

QUOTE

“Buddha never claimed to be God.
Moses never claimed to be Jehovah.
Mohammed never claimed to be Allah.

Yet Jesus Christ claimed to be the true and living God.

Buddha simply said, ‘I am a teacher in search of the truth.’
Jesus said, ‘I am the Truth.’

Confucius said, ‘I never claimed to be holy.’
Jesus said, ‘Who convicts me of sin?’

Mohammed said, ‘Unless God throws his cloak of mercy over me, I have no hope.’
Jesus said, ‘Unless you believe in me, you will die in your sins.’”

Unknown

For Further Study:

1. Numbers 21:4-9 (Bronze Snake)
2. Daniel 7:13-14 (Son of Man)
3. John 20:26-31 (Proof)
4. Acts 4:10-12 (Jesus Alone Saves)