How to Get to Heaven
Introduction
A few months after I became a Christian, my dad and I had lunch together. We were talking and eating, and then my dad asked me if I remembered the TV series the “Lone Ranger.” I said “Yeah, I do.” And he said: “I remember one episode where Tonto turned to the Lone Ranger and said, `There are many ways to God, Kemosabe.’
Well, after my dad and I laughed about how absurd it was to quote Tonto, our discussion got very serious. My dad had made his point: Christianity isn’t any different than other religions and there are many ways to God.
That’s a pretty common view in our society today.
I was eating lunch in the cafeteria at work one day and overhead a conversation at the next table. A man was talking about how his folks had taught him and his brothers and sisters about a wide variety of religions, and that when each of them were old enough, they could decide which religion they wanted to believe in.
The man went on to say that it was important for everyone to find the religion that they’re most comfortable with, the one that best fits their personality. As long as they were sincere, it didn’t matter what religion they believed in.
After hearing that, I looked in the Yellow Pages and counted 111 headings of different kinds of churches in St. Louis alone! 111! Now many of those were different denominations of essentially the same religion, but still, 111! And who knows how many individual churches there are—I didn’t count those, it would have taken too long.
Are all religions the same?
Is it OK to choose the one that appeals to you the most?
Does it matter what you believe in as long as you sincerely believe it?
Are there many ways to God or is Christianity the only way? And if we say Christianity is the only way, are we bigots and intolerant of other views?
I hope nobody is offended by this, but quite frankly, it doesn’t make any difference what I think, or what you think, or what anybody else thinks. The only thing that matters is what God thinks.
And since the Bible is the Word of God, let’s see what it has to say. This morning we’re going to look at a well known passage in John 14 that should clear up any misconceptions about how to be at peace with God and have the promise of eternal life.
Let’s start by putting the verse in John 14 in context. This familiar passage takes place at the Last Supper. Jesus and the 12 disciples are in the upper room and Jesus has really blown them away. First He washes their feet, then He predicts one of them would betray Him, then He predicts His death, and then Peter is told that He will deny knowing Jesus.
So by the time we get to John 14:6, the disciples are pretty shook up. Jesus knows this and comforts them in the first four verses by telling them about where He was going: heaven. In verse four Jesus says “You know the way to the place where I am going.”
But in verse five, Thomas says, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
That brings us to our verse.
John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
This is a verse that’s frustrated non-Christians for two thousand years. It’s only 21 words long, but how you interpret it determines your eternal destiny. Let’s take a look at the first half of the verse.
Jesus Is “The Way”
He starts out by saying He’s “the way.” In other words, Jesus is telling Thomas that He Himself is the way to wherever He’s going. Think about that! Jesus is saying, “Thomas, the way to where I’m going is me—I’m the way!”
As amazing as that answer is, Thomas shouldn’t be surprised at Jesus’ response. In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus says:
Matt. 7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
Matt. 7:14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
In John 10:9, Jesus says:
John 10:9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.
Thus, Jesus has already told Thomas and the other disciples that he was “the way.” We know from Acts 9, 19 and 24 that the early church was even known as “the way” and that Christians were called “followers of the way.”
Notice that Jesus says THE way, not ONE of the ways.
Proverbs 16:25 says:
Prov. 16:25 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
Humans have devised all kinds of ways to get to God.
Some people think they can get to heaven by doing good deeds, like helping flood victims, sponsoring underprivileged children in a third world country or giving money to charities.
Other people think that obeying the ten commandments and following the Golden Rule gets you there, and as long as you do more good things than bad things you’ll get to heaven.
But listen to what the Bible says about works: Ephesians 2:8-10:
Eph. 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith -and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God -
Eph. 2:9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Eph. 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
My wife and I went to a parent-teacher meeting at my daughter’s school several years ago. And my daughter showed us something in the hallway that she had made. It was a series of statements that each of the kids in her class had to write about. One of the statements was “My family loves me because…” And my daughter’s answer was “because I do my chores.” My wife and I looked at each other and I immediately picked my girl up and said “honey, we love you because of who you are, not because of what you do.”
In the same way, we can’t and don’t earn God’s love or approval by the things we do. God gives his love freely to those of us who accept his son Jesus Christ and become children of God.
In Matthew 19, Jesus’ disciples asked Him how someone could be saved. In verse 26, Jesus says:
“…with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
In other words, there’s nothing that a human being can do to get into heaven. Jesus didn’t say it was hard—he said it was IMPOSSIBLE.
Imagine that all of us are on one side of the Mississippi River and heaven is on the other side of the river, and we’re trying to jump across. There’s no way we can jump to the other side on our own—we need help. Jesus is our “way,” our bridge to the other side.
The “way” to heaven isn’t through good works and human efforts.
We won’t go to heaven because we go to church.
We won’t go to heaven because we help the poor.
We won’t go to heaven because our parents are Christians.
We won’t go to heaven if our spouse is a Christian.
We won’t go to heaven if we follow the Ten Commandments.
We won’t go to heaven if we do more good things than bad things.
The “way” to heaven is faith in Jesus. But good works are important to God. Listen to 1 Timothy 6:18, where Paul instructs Timothy, leader of the church of Ephesus, on what to say to his congregation:
“Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”
While good works won’t save us, they’re a natural bi-product of being right with God.
As Christians, we were also created to do good works. Ephesians 2:10 says:
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
And, while as humans we can’t see into each others’ hearts, good works are the best way to tell if someone is really a Christian. Listen to James 2:18:
“But someone will say, `You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me YOUR faith without deeds, and I will show you MY faith by what I do.”
Another way humans try and get to God is by making up their own gods. We’ll talk more about that in just a few minutes.
So, while there appear to be many ways to God, Jesus says HE’S the way. He doesn’t just show us the way, he IS the way. Salvation is through the person of Jesus Christ. Acts 4:12 is pretty clear on that:
Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
First Timothy 2:5 echoes this truth:
1Tim. 2:5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
Jesus Is “The Truth”
In the next two words of verse six—”the truth”—Jesus backs up his claim as “the way.”
Not only is Jesus the truth, He’s also the true God. Listen to 1 John 5:20:
1John 5:20 We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true -even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
And listen to what Jesus said in John 8:32:
John 8:32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Jesus didn’t just teach the truth, he IS truth.
Humans are proud, however, and we don’t like to be told what to do and how to do it. We like to create our own reality and our own gods, gods that don’t harp on sin and our inadequacies. Romans 1:21-23 says:
Rom. 1:21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Rom. 1:22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
Rom. 1:23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
1 Corinthians 8:4 is an even more definitive passage on false gods:
1Cor. 8:4 So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one.
There’s only one God, the God of the Christian Bible. And there’s only one way to God and that’s through Jesus.
I’ll never forget the time my family and I were driving on the highway and saw a truck with this written on the back of it: “Attend the church of your choice on Sunday and start the week off right.”
My wife and I smiled at that and thought boy, that’s great, but as we started to pass the truck it occurred to me, hey, wait a minute: Jim Jones had a church. David Koresh had a church. And Uganda had a church.
Our world is full of false gods and false religions, which are very different than Christianity. Generally speaking, there are only two kinds of religions: the religions of human achievement—in other words, religions where people earn their way into heaven—and the other kind, the religion of divine achievement. That’s Christianity.
In Buddhism, for instance, the ultimate goal is nirvana, which can only be achieved by following what they call the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, one can achieve nirvana. That’s obviously a religion of human achievement.
The ultimate goal for the Hindu is also Nirvana, and it’s reached leading a good moral life. You keep getting reincarnated until you clean up your life. Like Buddhism, Hinduism is obsessed with what we can do to get to God.
We’ve already seen where a life based on good works leads, haven’t we? Nowhere.
In Islam, heaven is achieved through denying yourself and by following the Five Pillars of Islam: repeating the creed, making a pilgrimage to Mecca, giving alms to the poor, praying five times daily, and fasting during the month of Ramadan. Once again, a religion of human achievement.
In contrast, for Christians, God has done all of the work for us on the cross. All we do is accept His free gift of salvation. That’s the religion of DIVINE achievement. There are other differences between our religions, though.
Jesus is unique in the fact that He alone claimed to be God in human flesh. Buddha didn’t claim to be God, and the prophet Mohammed didn’t say he was Allah, the Islam god.
In the major religions of the world, the teachings, not the teachers, are all-important. Confucianism is a set of teachings; Confucius isn’t important. Islam is the revelation of Allah, with Mohammed being the prophet, and Buddhism emphasizes the principles of the Buddha and not Buddha himself.
At the center of Christianity, however, is Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t just claim to be teaching mankind the truth: He claimed that he WAS the truth. He was God himself.
When I was 18 my older sister Debbie came home with some real shocking news. She said that she had joined the Krishna movement and that she was moving into their temple in the Central West End.
Nobody in the family could believe it, especially the rest of the kids, including me. After we visited the temple, saw what went on and failed to talk her out of it, we started thinking about more drastic measures, like kidnapping.
But we never took that step and our arguments never worked. She’s been in the movement for almost 30 years, now.
She’s like a lot of people who sincerely believe in the religious system that they’re involved in. Unfortunately, sincerely believing in something doesn’t make it right.
Adolf Hitler sincerely believed that race supremacy and the slaughter of six million Jews was right. Karl Marx sincerely believed that communism was the best political system. Millions of people throughout the world sincerely believe that their religious systems are ways to God.
Just wishing that something is true doesn’t make it true, though. It’s critical that what you believe in is true and valid. The Bible says that only Jesus is true and valid.
In fact, the Bible is even more bold on false religious systems. Listen to what 1 Corinthian 10:19-20 says:
1Cor. 10:19 Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything?
1Cor. 10:20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.
God doesn’t pull any punches—he says that people who worship false gods are really worshiping demons! The God of the Bible is NOT the same gods of other religions.
Ephesians 4:5-6 says there’s “one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
For Christians, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are easy to identify as other religions. Unfortunately, Satan is very clever and there are many other religions, cults and false teachers out there, groups of people—many groups of very sincere people—many of which teach about Jesus and may even use the word “christian” in their name.
Their teachings are wrong, however. In many cases dangerously wrong.
Christians disagree about a lot of things in the Bible. For instance, some Christians believe that no musical instruments should be played in the church. Frankly, disagreements like that are to be expected and are relatively common. We’re still only human and err in our interpretation, and disagreements regarding doctrine not associated with salvation is certainly not damning.
But if I said that Jesus wasn’t really God, or that He never rose from the dead, or that He sinned while He was here on earth, that’s as wrong as it can be. Believing in anything other than the perfect, sinless, God-Man of the Bible who died on the cross for our sins and who rose from the dead is a very dangerous thing to do.
We can be wrong about many things, but if we’re right about Jesus, we’re saved. Likewise, we can be right about many things, but if we’re wrong about Jesus, we jeopardize our salvation.
It’s as if God has lowered a thick, sturdy rope to earth and says “Here’s the Jesus of the Bible, come on up.” But false religions say “No thanks” and instead, they believe in a totally unbiblical Jesus and instead of a thick, sturdy rope, all they have is a worn shoelace.
To the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus is Michael the Archangel. To the Mormons, Jesus is just one of several thousand gods created by the super god, Adam, and we can become gods equal to Jesus if we work hard enough.
To the Christian Scientists, Jesus is simply an expression of the idea of the Christ, but He isn’t the Christ. To the Unitarian, Jesus is just a good moral man.
We must be extremely careful not to be judgmental, but having said that, we need to be discerning and we need to be on guard against false teaching, particularly about Jesus and who he was. Satan is very clever. Listen to what 2 Corinthians 11:14-15 says:
2Cor. 11:14 And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
2Cor. 11:15 It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.
Jesus says that He’s the truth, the only truth, which means that all other religions and their gods are created by human beings and are actually Satanic in nature.
Jesus Is “The Life”
The “life” that Jesus is talking about in verse six is probably obvious by now. It’s eternal life.
In John 14, the second half of verse 19, Jesus says: “Because I live, you also will live.”
When Jesus rose from the dead he defeated Satan’s greatest weapon and what humans have dreaded since the beginning of time: death. When we accept Jesus as our savior and lord we’ll die as human beings, but we’ll be resurrected and spend eternity with God. One of the most encouraging verses on heaven and eternal life is right here in verses 1-3 of John 14:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 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.”
The last part of verse six—”No one comes to the Father except through me”—is really an amazing statement. Jesus has just said essentially that in the first part of the verse, that faith in Him is the only way to God and heaven. He’s made Christianity exclusive—all other religions are useless and satanic.
It really couldn’t be any clearer and yet He repeats what He just said, but in different way. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “Yes, that’s right, you heard what I said, NO ONE can have eternal life if he doesn’t believe in me.”
Jesus wants to make sure critics of Christianity don’t misunderstand. And He wants to make sure that we, as Christians, also don’t misunderstand.
Conclusion
So what have we found out in this article? Let’s go back to the questions we raised at the beginning of the sermon:
Are all religions the same? No. They teach different things and have different quote-unquote, gods.
Is it OK to choose the religion that appeals to you the most? No. The Bible says Christianity and faith in Jesus Christ is the only true religion.
Does it matter what you believe in as long as you sincerely believe it? Yes. Wishing and hoping that something is true and valid doesn’t make it real.
Are Christians bigots and intolerant? No. We simply believe what Jesus said, not only here in John 14, but throughout the gospels. And the rest of the New Testament affirms His claims. Jesus is the only way to God.
For those of us who are Christians, there’s one more thing that needs to be said. In fact, it’s one of the most significant points in this entire article.
When I talked about my sister joining the Krishna movement earlier I left out something very important. Weeks after she had joined and after we had tried virtually everything we could think of to get her away from the temple and back home again, I was driving around with a few of my friends. We were at a stoplight, and wouldn’t you know it, a man from the Krishna movement was handing out literature and asking for donations on the street corner.
I purposely made eye contact and waved for him to come over. He smiled and told me a little bit about Krishna and I acted like I was interested. I wanted him to hand me the book and literature that he was giving out, and sure enough, he did. But when he did, I started cursing and yelling at him, about how he had stolen my sister and how messed up his beliefs were. And when I was finished, I threw his book and literature in the street and drove off laughing.
Now I’m not proud of that. In fact, I’m ashamed of that.
But let me ask you something: Do you think that man went back to the temple, thought about what I had said, though about what he believed, and changed his mind left the temple and went back to his family?
I doubt it. If anything, I bet he was more convicted of his beliefs than ever before. After all, he didn’t want to become a jerk like me, and who could blame him?
As Christians, God doesn’t want us to look down on people in other religious systems. He doesn’t want us to mock them, he doesn’t want us to ridicule them and he doesn’t want us to taunt them with our self-righteousness.
When God provides us with opportunities to share our faith with people in other religions, he wants us to be gentle, he wants us to be kind, he wants us to be loving, and he wants us to show them respect.
Listen to what Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15:
1Tim. 1:15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners -of whom I am the worst.
That’s the attitude each of us needs to have when we proclaim the exclusiveness of Christ and when we confront those who aren’t Christians. Humble. Gentle. Loving. One writer put it this way:
“Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.”