Peter and John encountered a crippled man at the temple gate. Peter said to him, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” The man was instantly healed. When Peter was questioned about the miracle, he declared that the man was healed by faith in the name of Jesus. Then he made the statement that excluded every alternative: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Anyone who tries to find God apart from Jesus Christ only moves further away. But the one who turns to Jesus has already reached the destination, because Jesus is God. He said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” To ask whether Jesus is the only way to God is to ask whether God is the only way to God. It sounds strange because it is strange. Jesus is not one of many teachers pointing to God. He is God. He is the Word made flesh, the perfect and complete revelation of God to humanity. To look for another path is to reject God himself. To seek another way is to forfeit the way entirely.
Jesus did not merely say that he knew the truth. He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” God has made himself known definitively in Jesus Christ. Any attempt to bypass Jesus is an attempt to bypass God, which is contradictory and impossible. The claim that Jesus is the only way to God and to salvation is a statement of fact. He alone can make this claim because he alone is God incarnate.
The uniqueness of Jesus is not like the exclusivity of a prophet or a preacher. Jesus is in a unique position. To consider if Jesus is the only way to God is not like asking whether Isaiah or Jeremiah was the only true prophet. These men were inspired by the Spirit to speak for God, but they were not the message. Isaiah was a great prophet, but he was a servant who pointed away from himself to God. Jeremiah spoke the truth, yet the power of salvation was not in him, but in the God he represented.
On the other hand, Jesus is different in essence and in office. He is not merely a messenger, but he is also the message, the embodiment of the word of God. When Jesus preached for God, he also preached about himself, because he was God’s message to the world. The prophets were like signposts along the road, pointing toward the destination, but they were never the destination themselves. You could believe the prophets concerning God, but you could never believe the prophets as God. Jesus, however, is the fulfillment of everything they said. He is the destination, the culmination of God’s redemptive plan.
Jesus is not merely a reflection of God, but God himself, come to dwell among us. The incarnation is the foundation of our salvation, because only God could accomplish what was necessary to redeem humanity. The Old Testament sacrificial system pointed ahead to the need for a perfect offering. The blood of bulls and goats could never remove sin, but served only as a shadow of the reality to come. That reality is Christ. He offered himself as the sacrifice for sin. As the incarnate Word, Jesus alone was qualified to fulfill the demands of God’s justice. He lived a sinless life in perfect obedience to the Father and laid down his life as an atoning sacrifice. Only through the shedding of his blood could the penalty of sin be paid and the wrath of God satisfied.
The price had to be paid. Only Jesus could pay it, and only he did. How then can there be another way to salvation? He is the only mediator between God and man. No one else can bridge the gap that sin has created between humanity and God. Only Jesus, fully God and fully man, can stand in that place. He brings reconciliation and makes peace through the blood he shed on the cross. To deny Jesus as the only way to God is to deny the very means by which God has chosen to save us. Why would anyone want to find another way, when the only way stands before us, and it is a way of simplicity and grace?
The exclusivity of Jesus is not an arbitrary restriction, but a necessary consequence of reality itself. Saying that Jesus is the only way to God is simply to say that God is the only way to God, and that only God can meet his own demands. To seek another way is to reject salvation altogether. Any resentment at the idea that there is only one way is resentment against the fact that there is only one God or one reality. This is not a legitimate objection. It is the reaction of a reprobate.
Peter declared that salvation is found only in the name of Jesus immediately after a miracle of healing was performed by that name. The man was not healed by the gift of healing. He was not healed because Peter was an apostle. He was healed by the name of Jesus. Peter said so. He told the crowd not to look at him as if the miracle occurred because of anything in him, but to recognize that the man was healed through faith in the name of Jesus.
In the same way, we are not saved because a preacher has the gift of evangelism, or because there is anything special about the person who brought us the gospel. We are saved by the name of Jesus. There is only one Jesus, and there is only one name of Jesus. You cannot believe in a name that refers to something else and still claim to believe in the name of Jesus. The only name of Jesus is a name that heals the sick, casts out demons, and performs all kinds of signs and wonders. This name, a name that produces miracles, is the only name that leads to salvation.
Suppose a person rejects the deity of Jesus. He does not believe that Jesus is God. Then he cannot claim that he believes in the name of Jesus for salvation. The name means something different to him than what it really means. He can say the same word and make the same sound, but it is not the same name. Now if the name of Jesus saves but does not heal, how is it the same name? How is it the same Jesus? It may carry the same spelling and pronunciation, but it refers to something else.
The Bible says that some people attempted exorcism by telling the evil spirits, “I command you to come out by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.” An evil spirit answered, “Jesus I know, Paul I know, but who are you?” And the evil spirit caused a man to attack the exorcists. They tried to use the name without a personal faith and commitment to Jesus, and it backfired. Yet cessationists and other faithless people are worse. Those exorcists were not saved, but at least they referred to the same Jesus that Paul preached. On the other hand, those who call on the name of Jesus, affirming that it saves but denying that it performs miracles, are referring to a name that no one preached. Both the Christians and non-Christians in the Bible did not know such a name or such a Jesus.
You can be saved only by believing in the same name that the early disciples preached, and the only name of Jesus they knew would heal the sick, cast out demons, and produce miracles. They would have been scandalized at the idea that the name of Jesus would save but not heal the sick or perform signs and wonders. Such a name, such a God, did not exist. They prayed, “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” Here they did not even mention salvation. For them, the name of Jesus was associated with miracles at least as much as salvation.