It can be very frustrating to hear a Christian say that there is only one way to God. It seems cruel and unjust when you think about how many people there are in the world with such varying beliefs. How could there be only one way? How can that be good? In answering these questions, it is helpful to consider what the possible ways are to get to heaven. One that immediately comes to mind is that, if Jesus is not the only way, then perhaps you can follow other prophets, great teachers, or philosophers to get to God instead? With this approach, Jesus is viewed as one of many prophets, teachers, or philosophers that point the way to God.
The problem with this is that there’s no other major prophet, teacher, or philosopher, who made the sort of claims that Jesus made! Others may claim to have a revelation from God that they’re sharing with humanity or a new text they bring to light, but believing in them doesn’t fix your relationship with God or get you to heaven. Their teachings intend to point people in the direction of God—that if you do what they say, you will experience enlightenment or discover the true God. The reality is that only Jesus claimed to be God. Only Jesus offers a relationship with God by believing in him. Only Jesus claims to be the way, the truth, and the life.
A second alternative to get to heaven is simply that we can be good enough to earn our way to heaven. This is the prevailing view in many major religions—that you need to do a series of good things, or more good deeds than bad deeds, to get to God. With that in mind, I have some questions: “What is the number of good things that you need to do to get to God? Have you been keeping track? If not, how will you know when you hit it?” Imagine having to think back to all the good things you did at five years old or fifteen years old?! That would be exhausting! Plus, there’s no way you could ever be certain. You may have thought you did a good deed when you were ten only to find out years later that it technically wasn’t good. What happens to your count then?
Let us suppose that we did have a clear number of good deeds that we need to do to get to God. For the sake of illustration, let’s say the number is 20,000. What would we then say about the person who does not live long enough to get to the 20,000-mark? Or what if the person does 20,000 good things, but 19,999 bad deeds? Will they still be qualified for heaven? Or what about the person who dies just before the 20,000 goal and ends up one deed short! Is it fair that God would send them to hell for missing by one? And if we say that God would not send them to hell since they were so close, then what about the person who did 19,998 good deeds? They only missed it by two! Should we let them squeak in as well? At what point do we finally accept a cut-off?
As if that wasn’t challenging enough, the final problem I see with this perspective is motive. How could you ever know if your motive was right in doing your good deeds if you were only thinking of the potential reward? Can something be considered good, even if we had the wrong motivation? Could something bad be considered good if our heart was in the right place? This approach is riddled with logical problems and the lack of assurance that you could ever be good enough. People who are honest with themselves would live in fear of not knowing if they had ever done enough for God’s approval.
A third alternative to get to heaven could be that we all automatically just go to heaven when we die! That may seem like the best option to some, since with this view, everyone wins! But like the other perspectives we just considered, what would heaven be like if everyone were there? While the views of heaven differ amongst beliefs, the idea of heaven is that it is a “good” place where people live happily. But in the Christian view, God is also there. For some that will be a great thing! For others, that would be hell. If you lived your life as the god of your own universe, creating your own moral system, determining human value, meaning, and worth, then would you enjoy sharing heaven with another God? Which one of you would be “in charge”? I am one of those weird people who doesn’t believe that atheism truly exists. I think we all worship something. For some people that may be God or a god of some other religion. For others, it may be themselves, their intellect, the objects or people in their lives. If you don’t want to submit to the authority of God now, then would heaven really be a “good” experience for you?
In contrast, the Bible reveals Jesus in a unique way. He claims to be THE way to God, not just one alternative or path. He claims to be the Son of God—God in the flesh. He performed miracles, fulfilled prophecies, and lived a sinless life, in a way that transformed the lives of his followers to believe in him. None of the other religions of the world were founded by someone who made these unique claims coupled with miracles. Most importantly, Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection deal with the problem of sin and death in a way completely unique to all other religions and philosophies in the history of the world.
Deep down, we all know that we are deeply flawed. This leads us to an interesting question: Who wants to serve a god that only accepts them for the good deeds that they do? Imagine if your parents only loved you if you cleaned the house daily, cooked dinner, and did the laundry? Earning our way to heaven based on our good deeds would be similar. What would this pathway say about God or what he thinks of you? What would Heaven be like? Would it mean spending an eternity with a divine being who does not like you but had to let you into his house because you were nice to your neighbor? Would you even like God? After all, you did not need to like him here on earth, you just had to be good to others. Imagine what it would be like for you to spend an eternity with someone you do not particularly like?
Ultimately, it does not seem like these other ways are ideal. All these other views of God and how we get to heaven are inferior to what the Bible teaches. Christianity teaches that we cannot get to God on our own; that is why he comes down to hurting broken people needing their Healer. If Jesus is the way, it frees us from the challenges we face having to count our good works. It frees us from the stress and pressure of trying to make God like us or accept us.
When a Christian says that Jesus is the only way, what they mean is that there is nothing that he or she can do to be good enough to enter heaven.
Similarly, there is nothing YOU can do to make God love you. He already loves you with a perfect love. There is also nothing you can do to fix the broken relationship you have with a morally perfect God because of the things you have done wrong. The only way to get to God, for anyone, is to accept the free pass Jesus gives you because He paid the entrance fee on our behalf. Jesus’ death on the cross is him voluntarily stepping in and taking the penalty, the death, that we all should have to pay for our wrongs. Consequently, if we choose to follow him, we are essentially putting on Jesus’ “clothes of goodness” that in turn put us in right moral standing before God. Another way to think of it is that Jesus holds the key, the entrance, for us to get into God’s house. If we choose to follow him, our wrongs are forgiven, and we can be made good again.
Jesus lived a morally perfect life, paid for our sins by dying on the cross, and rose from the dead. By living a morally perfect life, he lived the life we needed—a life without flaws, to get to heaven. Additionally, by rising from the dead, it shows that he has power over death, and consequently, has power over what happens to you after your death. Believing in who Jesus is and what he did for us opens the way of forming a beautiful relationship with God and a pathway to heaven. If we receive him as our Lord and Savior, we become adopted into the family of God (John 1:12). Paul describes it this way: If we genuinely believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we are willing to speak with our mouths that God has raised him from the dead, then we can be confident that we have eternal life (Rom. 10:9, 10). Jesus being the only way to heaven may sound really cruel, but actually, it is a great demonstration of love. When you know that God’s love for you is not based on what you do, then it is easy to see that the way of Jesus is a better way; in fact, it is the only way that really makes sense and allows for mutual genuine love between us and God (Romans 5:8).
Alycia Wood
Alycia is a speaker for Apologetics, Inc.