Jesus: One Way to God or One of Many?

We’re asking the question, “Is it true that all world religions believe the same thing, and all lead to heaven?” Is it true that “it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere about it?” In the previous post, we looked at the truth of the resurrection of Jesus, a fact in history that sets Christianity apart from all religions on the planet. That’s what Jesus did, but what did Jesus teach? What did he claim for himself?

He claimed to be God.

Jesus claimed to be able to do things that only God can do, including forgiving people of their sins (Matthew 9:1-8). The ability to forgive sins is evidence of his deity. In this passage, Jesus backed up that claim by healing this man.

That passage in Matthew includes the title Jesus most used about himself – the “Son of Man,” which comes from Daniel 7:13-14. By applying the title to himself, Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah, the suffering servant who would save his people from their sins, the King and Judge who would one day rule the earth.

One day, some Jewish religious leaders claimed that Satan was causing Jesus to say the things he was saying. Jesus replied, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). The leaders thought, “If Abraham saw Jesus, then Jesus has seen Abraham. And since Abraham lived 2000 years ago, this Jesus must be a very old man.” So, they replied, “Wait a minute, you’re not even fifty years old, and you’ve seen Abraham?” To which Jesus gave one of his classic replies:

“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58)

Jesus was saying that before something in the past happened (the birth of Abraham), something in the present happened (“I am”). Jesus has no beginning. He has existed from eternity past. He is not simply eternal; he transcends time and space.

He is God.

When Jesus appeared on trial before Caiaphas, the high priest said to Jesus, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” That’s when Jesus could have easily denied being the Messiah, admitted he was just a good teacher, and quickly cleared things up, escaping the cross. Instead, Jesus said, “You have said so…But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:63-64). That was another reference to Daniel 7:13, and at that point, the high priest knew without a doubt that Jesus was claiming equality with the Father.

He was claiming to be God.

There’s another claim Jesus made – that he is the only way to eternal life.

On his last night with the disciples before his arrest, Jesus said to them, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going” (John 14:3-4). The disciples didn’t fully understand what he was saying, so Thomas spoke up and said, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (v 5). Verse 6 is one of the most important verses in the Bible:

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

He said, “I am THE way,” not one of many ways. “I am THE truth,” not one of many truths. “I AM life,” not “I give life.” And then he said, still in verse 6, “No one comes to God the Father unless they come through me.” You only get to the Father through Jesus. There is no other way. That’s what the man who was alive and who died and who lived again said. 

When Jesus said, “No one,” that’s what he meant. No matter how sincere someone may be in what they believe, they won’t see the Father except through the Son. There is no other way, there is no other truth, there is no other life.

Of course, in all of Jesus’s claims, you could say he was lying. If that’s true, he must have been committed to the lie. He was trying so hard to fool people that he was willing to suffer the agony of the cross to keep the lie going.

You could say that Jesus thought he was God, but he was mentally disturbed.

There’s a story of a mental institution with a big fence around it, and there was a small hole in the fence. One day, one of the men of the town heard the men inside the gate walking around saying, “13, 13, 13, 13.” His curiosity got the best of him, so the man found the hole and put his eye in it to look through, and he got poked in the eye with a pencil. As he jumped back, he heard the men inside the gate saying “14, 14, 14.” Well, it sounded funny before I wrote it. But you could say, based on what Jesus claimed, that he belonged in there with those men. He was insane. He was a Jim Jones, a David Koresh. Except those two people are dead. Jesus rose.

Those really are your only two options. If Jesus wasn’t God, if he isn’t the only way to heaven, then he was either a liar or he was mentally unstable. Or, of course, he really is God the Son. And God the Son really did die for your sins, he really did rise from the dead, and he really is the only way to life in heaven for eternity.

For those who claim that all religions teach basically the same thing and that all paths lead to heaven, they are choosing to ignore what Jesus claimed about himself. Many of them, though, won’t admit the only alternatives this gives them – that Jesus was either a liar, mentally unstable, or God. You’ll hear them say, “Jesus wasn’t God, but he was a good person, a good teacher, but just a man.” Remember, in the American Worldview Inventory 2025, almost one-fourth of those who claim to be Christians did not include Jesus among living, influential authorities.

To those who insist that Jesus was just a good man, C. S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, one of my favorite all-time books, wrote this:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

The truth is that Jesus is God. He lived, he died, and now he’s alive. And he is the way, the only way, to the Father.

Thank you, Jesus, for loving us so much that you gave your life for us. We stand firm on the truth that you are not a liar, you are not a lunatic, nor are you simply a good teacher.

We choose to echo to the world the words of Peter:

“Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:11-12