Is Jesus the Only Way? An Honest Look at the Hardest Claim

A woman in our church stayed behind after Bible study a few years ago. She waited until everyone else had gone. Then she asked the question she had been carrying for months. “Pastor, my best friend is Hindu. She is kinder than most Christians I know. Are you telling me Jesus is the only way?”

She was not being defiant. She was being honest. She loved her friend.

If you have ever asked that question, you are not a bad Christian. You are a person who loves people. The question hurts precisely because love is involved.

So let’s not dodge it. Let’s look at the hardest claim Christianity makes, and let’s be honest about what it costs and what it offers.

What Jesus Said

The claim does not come from a committee or a church council. It comes from Jesus Himself: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Notice where He said it. Not at a debate. In an upper room, on the night before His death, to friends whose hearts were troubled. It was spoken as comfort, not as a weapon. He was telling frightened men that the way to the Father was not a map they had to figure out. It was a Person standing right in front of them, and He would do the finding.

On Tuesday I wrote about who Jesus claimed to be. This claim only makes sense coming from that Jesus. From God in the flesh. A merely human teacher who says “no one comes to the Father except through me” is arrogant beyond words. God in the flesh, saying it on His way to a cross, is something else entirely.

Why This Question Feels Different Now

Our grandparents rarely met anyone of another faith. We work beside them, celebrate with them, love them. Pluralism is not a theory anymore; it has a face and a name. That is why the question lands harder for us than it did a generation ago.

But here is something worth noticing. The gospel was born in a world just as crowded with religions as ours. Rome had a god for everything. The earliest Christians did not preach one way because they had never met anyone different. They preached it in a marketplace of a thousand altars, and they were mocked for it then too.

The claim has always been narrow. And, strangely, it has always been the most welcoming message in the room. Narrow about the door. Wide open about who may enter. If it still feels heavy, you are in good company. C.S. Lewis resisted it for years before calling himself the most reluctant convert in all England.

The Good News Under the Hard Claim

Think of a rescue raft after a shipwreck. It is exclusive in one sense: it is the only thing floating. But nobody treading water complains that the raft is too narrow-minded. The only question that matters is whether there is room aboard.

There is. “Whosoever will may come” (Revelation 22:17). The exclusivity of Jesus is not the exclusivity of a country club, designed to keep the wrong people out. It is the exclusivity of a rescue, offered to everyone, paid for at unthinkable cost. I wrote about that cost in Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

John Newton understood this from both sides. He was a slave trader, about as far from the door as a man can wander, and grace found even him in a storm on the Atlantic. His story is here. A raft with room for John Newton has room for your friend. And for you.

For Today

Here is one practical step. Do not argue with anyone this week. Instead, pray for one person you love who does not yet know Jesus. By name. Every morning.

The woman who asked me about her Hindu friend started doing exactly that. She stopped treating the question like a debate to win and started treating it like a burden to carry to God. That is what this claim asks of us first. Not that we win arguments, but that we love people toward the door that stands open to them.

Narrow door. Room for everyone. Including her friend. Including you.

Keep looking up!
Pastor Rodney

Related Devotionals

• Who Is Jesus, Really? Beyond the Sunday-School Picture
• What Is Costly Discipleship? Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship in Plain English
• Why Did Jesus Have to Die?
• What Does It Mean to Be Born Again?

Or take five minutes with the Lift Up Your Day podcast, every weekday morning.

If This Kind of Writing Helps You, My Books Go Deeper

Who Is Jesus, Really? takes the question behind this whole series through John chapter 8, one explosive claim at a time.

Make It Rain is about building the kind of faith God blesses, one obedient step at a time.

A Certain Kind of Heart explores the kind of heart God is searching for across the earth.

You can find them all on my books page.