In the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, the “One Way” sign—the index finger held high—became a popular icon. “One Way” bumper stickers and lapel pins were everywhere, and the “One Way” slogan pretty much became the identifying catchphrase of all evangelicalism.

Evangelicalism in those days was an extremely diverse movement—in some ways it was even more eclectic than it is today. It encompassed everything from Jesus People, who were an integral part of that era’s youth culture, to straight-line fundamentalists, who scorned everything contemporary. But all of them had at least one important thing in common: They knew that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. “One Way” seemed an unshakable belief that all evangelicals shared.

Recovering the One Way

The early church exemplified this same dogged insistence on the exclusivity of Christ. Jesus Himself stated definitively, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). He is saying with crystal clarity, “I am the only way to God.”

He made this same point early in John 10:7–9, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”

Jesus is the only door—the only pathway—to God. By the time the events of the book of Acts were unfolding, Christianity actually became known as “the Way” (Acts 9:2; 22:4; 24:14, 22). This is because the message preached was an exclusive message. F. F. Bruce explains,

He [Jesus] is, in fact, the only way by which men and women may come to the Father; there is no other way. If this seems offensively exclusive, let it be borne in mind that the one who makes this claim is the incarnate Word, the revealer of the Father. If God has no avenue of communication with mankind apart from his Word . . . mankind has no avenue of approach to God apart from that same Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us in order to supply such an avenue of approach.^[1]The Gospel of John [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983], 298.

Paul followed this example by preaching the exclusive message of Christ crucified, knowing that the message was a stumbling block to the religious Jews and foolishness to the philosophical Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:23). Peter likewise proclaimed, “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). No Christ, no gospel; no gospel, no salvation.

We need to recover that apostolic boldness. We need to remember that sinners are not won by clever public relations or the powers of earthly persuasion. The gospel—an inherently exclusive message—is the power of God unto salvation.

Yet, by the looks of it, evangelicalism’s biggest fear is disharmony with the world. I believe this is because church leaders, in their desperate quest to be relevant and fashionable, have actually failed to see where the contemporary world is going and why.

It is ironic that so many who are downplaying the exclusivity of Christ are doing it because they believe it is a barrier to “relevance.” Actually, Christianity is not relevant at all if it is merely one of many possible paths to God. The relevance of the gospel has always been its absolute exclusivity: Christ alone has atoned for sin, and therefore Christ alone can reconcile sinners—who believe in Him alone—to God.

This blog series, The Exclusivity of Christ, is meant to be a reminder of the gospel’s distinctiveness. That very narrowness sets Christianity apart from every other worldview. After all, the whole point of Jesus’ best-known sermon was to declare that the way to destruction is broad and well traveled, while the way of life is so narrow that few find it (Matthew 7:13–14). Our task as ambassadors of God is to point to that very narrow way. Christ Himself is the one way to God, and to obscure that fact is, in effect, to deny Christ and to disavow the gospel itself.

We must resist the tendency to be absorbed into the fads and fashions of worldly thought. We need to emphasize, not downplay, what makes Christianity unique. And in order to do that effectively, we need to have a better grasp of how worldly thought is threatening sound doctrine in the church. We must be able to point out just where the narrow way diverges from the broad way.

Now is not the time to make friends with the world. It is certainly no time to capitulate to worldly cries for pluralism and inclusivism. Unless we recover our conviction that Christ is the only way to heaven, the evangelical movement will only grow increasingly weak and irrelevant.

(Adapted from Why One Way? and MNTC: John 1–11)