Dr. Sproul starts discussing this section by reviewing Peter's great confession in Matthew 16:13-17 to remind us that Christ built a confessing church and explains a time in school when he had to confess his faith in Jesus. Dr. Sproul then discusses Jesus' claim to be the way, the truth, and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. After that statement, Jesus has to go over it again due to Philip's statement and leaves them with a challenge.

Last week, we looked at the beginning of the fourteenth chapter of the gospel according to Saint John, reading through the sixth verse. I did not address the highly controversial verse 6. So this morning, as we return our attention to the gospel of John, we are going to read John 14:6–11. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the gospel:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”

Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.”

He who has ears to hear, let him hear the Word of God. You may be seated. Let us pray.

Once again, our God, as we examine one of the “I Am” statements of Jesus that are found in this text, we pray for the assistance of the Holy Spirit in our understanding. We look to Him to illumine the text for our edification, and we ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Confession of Christ

Last evening, Vesta and I arrived back in Orlando after being in Philadelphia for the past few days. The occasion was the thirtieth anniversary of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. The theme this year was the nature and function of the church. I gave the address Friday night to open the conference, based on the Caesarea Philippi confession of Simon when Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” (Matt. 16:13).

After they gave a report of the rumors among the people, Jesus turned to His disciples and asked, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). It was on that occasion that Simon gave what has been called in church history the great confession, the Caesarea Philippi confession. In response to the inquiry of our Lord, he said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). When Simon made that confession, Jesus said to him: “Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17).

This morning, I am not going to give the same message that I gave in Philadelphia on Friday night. The point that I want to link with the text we read this morning is that the church Christ built and is building must always be a confessing church. When we speak of the church as a confessing church, we are not simply speaking of the confession of sin that we utter before God, but rather of the confessing of our faith. Christ promises redemption to those who not only believe Him in their hearts but also confess Him with their mouths.

We think that the confession of faith upon which the church was established was focused on the person and work of Christ Himself. “Thou art the Christ,” Simon said, “the Son of the living God.” The Apostles’ Creed echoes that confession, and we say, “We believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord.”

From the very beginning of the Christian faith, the exclusive character of Christ, the uniqueness of Christ, has been at the heart of our confession. I stress that because in this day, in this culture, and even in the modern church, there is nothing more politically incorrect or repugnant to the relativists of this age than any claim of exclusivity given to Jesus.

Jesus the Only Way

When we looked at this issue years ago when we were meeting in the Page School, those of you who were there may remember an anecdote that I related. I was a student in an English class taught by a woman who had been a war correspondent during World War II. She was openly hostile to Christianity. She never missed an opportunity to attack Christianity in her classroom, and I tried to melt into the woodwork to escape the arrows of her wrath.

One day, I was not able to do that. This teacher called on me in front of the whole class. She said, “Mr. Sproul, do you believe that Jesus is the only way to God?” I thought, “What a question for this woman to have thrown at me in front of the whole class,” because I knew how she felt about any exclusive claims of Jesus. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, if I said what I believed, I knew I would experience an avalanche of wrath from her. I also knew that if I did not say what I believed, I would be guilty of treason, and nothing less than that, to the King of kings.

So, I mumbled my answer. I said, “Yeah.” She said, “What was that?” I answered: “Yes, ma’am. I do believe that Jesus is the only way to God.” She went postal. There was a paroxysm of rage that she spilled out at me in front of the class. She said, “That is the most narrow-minded, arrogant, bigoted thing I’ve ever heard a student say.” The rest of the class glared at me, and I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

After class, I think she felt sorry for the way I had been humiliated in that experience, so as I was walking out the door, she stopped me and said: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so hard on you.” Then it came again: “But I just can’t understand how anyone could be as narrow-minded as you are.”

I asked her, “Do you think it’s possible that Jesus could possibly be one way to God?” She answered, “Yes, I believe that He could be one way to God.” I asked, “Can you believe that a person could be foolish enough to be genuinely convinced that Jesus is at least one way to God?” “Oh yes,” she said, “I know there are intelligent people who are Christians and who embrace Jesus as the way to God. It’s this narrow view, this bigoted view that says that He’s the only way to God that I can’t endure.”

I said: “Do you understand my problem? I have been persuaded that Christ is the Son of God. I am a Christian. There is nothing more foundational to Christianity than that confession that He is the Son of God. If I believed that Jesus was the only way to God because He happened to be my way, and if the premise of my logic was that anything R.C. Sproul believes must, by logical necessity, be the only true way to think, then I would agree with your assessment that I would be unspeakably arrogant, bigoted, and narrow-minded. But I want you to understand why I believe Jesus is the only way. It is because Jesus said that He was the only way. If I deny that, I deny Him.”

Let me just say parenthetically that if you deny that, you deny Him. There is probably no greater point of pressure in your society than at that very point. Your friends, your community, and even many churches are telling you to deny the uniqueness of Christ, which is to say you must deny the church’s confession of faith that makes Christianity what it is. That is why I want to spend some time on this text.

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

In John 14:6, we find Jesus giving another of those sayings that we have looked at in the gospel of John called the “I Am” sayings. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament Scriptures, the sacred name for God—the name Yahweh, which we translate “I Am who I Am”—is rendered by the Greek combination of two words: egō eimi, which literally could be translated “I I am” or “I am the one who is the I am.”

When Jesus uses this language, this unusual construction of words, He is making a radical claim about His connection with God. These are the words used here in John 14:6, where Jesus says: “Egō eimi hē hodos,” which could be translated “I am the road” or “I am the way.” He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Why is that?

First, when you look at the structure of this verse, where Jesus says He is the way, the truth, and the life, it is not like we have a string of descriptive terms that reflect on the character of Christ where He says, “(a) I am the way; (b) I am the truth; (c) I am the life.”

Rather, the structure indicates that what is tacitly assumed in the elliptical form of this statement is this: “I am the way because I am the truth and because I am the life. I am the way to the Father because I am the true manifestation or revelation of the Father. I am the way to the Father because I alone have zōē. I alone have the power of eternal life that I’ve been talking about all through John’s gospel.”

Jesus had earlier said that He was the door through which men must enter (John 10:9). Elsewhere in the Scriptures, we are told there is no other name under heaven through which men must be saved (Acts 4:12). The Apostle tells us there is but one Mediator between God and man, even the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:5). In the very first chapter of John’s gospel we read that the logos, who is incarnate in Jesus, is the monogenēs, the only begotten of the Father (John 1:14).

This is not an exceptional passage from the lips of Jesus. It is consistent with a theme that runs through the entire New Testament: God has provided a road, or a path, or a way of redemption, which was His plan from all eternity. The divine logos, the second person of the Trinity, took upon Himself human nature to make that way possible for people.

It Matters What You Worship

I explained this to my English professor. She said: “But how could God be so narrow-minded? I thought God was a God of love.” She believed the maxim in our culture that it really does not matter what you believe as long as you are sincere—if you are sincere in your devotion to Zoroastrianism, if the Ephesians were sincere in their devotion to the goddess Diana, the followers of Baal in their worship of Baal, the Philistines in their worship of Dagon, the Buddhists in their worship of Buddha, and the Muslims in their worship of Allah, then that is all that matters. God does not care whether you worship idols or not, just as long as you worship them sincerely.

This was the temptation brought to our Lord in the wilderness when Satan himself appeared and says: “Just bow down to me for a moment. One little genuflection, and I’ll give you the kingdoms of this world.” Jesus answered, “I can’t do that.” Satan responded, in essence: “Don’t be so narrow-minded, Jesus. There’s room in the mercy of God for a little Satanism. It doesn’t matter what you believe. It doesn’t matter what you worship, just as long as you worship.”

I cannot think of anything more antithetical to biblical Christianity than that concept. But we have had that inculcated in us from the time we were in kindergarten. Because all religions are equally tolerated under the law in the United States, we make that gratuitous leap from equality under the law to equal validity before God.

It is a perilous place to stand because the Scriptures say there is a difference between truth and falsehood. There is a difference between the true Messiah and false messiahs. There is a difference between Christ and antichrist.

Show Us the Father

Jesus explains further in verse 7, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” Then Philip says to Him in verse 8, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”

I just read verse 8 in the New King James Version. Someone might ask, “What’s the difference between the New King James and the old King James?” Here is one of the differences. In the New King James, we have Philip saying, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” In the original King James, Philip says, “Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” Why the change from sufficeth to sufficient? It is certainly not linguistic or theological. I think it is homiletical. I think enough ministers protested against the word sufficeth. We used to have to practice that one in seminary, to try to say it five times in a row. It is one of the hardest words in the English language. We got rid of it. Now we have sufficient, which is so much easier on the tongue.

If ever we find Christ manifesting exasperation with His disciples, it is here. They are His disciples. He is their master; He is their rabbi, and they are always asking Him questions. Listen to what Philip says, but let me load it a little bit. Philip could have said it this way: “Jesus, we’ve seen some fantastic things. We loved the wedding feast of Cana, the feeding of the five thousand, and when You stilled the waves that night on the Sea of Galilee. Old Testament people would have given their lives to witness just one of these miracles. Angels would like to look into these things that we’ve been able to see. But give us the big one. Show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied. Just one more miracle. Peel back the veil and let us see the face of God.”

How does Jesus respond? “Philip, how long have I been with you, and you have not known Me?” It almost sounds like our violinist, Olga, giving me a violin lesson—“R.C., how many times do I have to tell you?” Jesus is obviously frustrated in this text. He says, in effect: “Philip, I’ve been with you all this time. You’ve heard everything I’ve had to say; you’ve seen everything that I’ve done, and you still don’t know Me. Don’t you understand that he who has seen Me has seen the Father, and if you know Me, you know the Father? Conversely, if you know the Father, you will recognize Me. Don’t you know that I am in the Father, the Father is in Me, and I don’t say these things on the basis of My own authority? I speak nothing on My own authority, but only on the basis of what the Father authorizes, that I say.”

Do you see what is at stake here? The biblical Christ, not the American Jesus; the biblical Christ, not the liberal Jesus; the biblical Christ claims to be the true living manifestation of God Himself. When we confuse Christ with other religious leaders, it is a travesty of the truth of God. Who else provides an atonement for your sin? Did Buddha? Did Mohammed? Buddha is dead, and when Buddha died, he stayed dead. Confucius, as admirable as he may have been in his wisdom, when he died, he stayed dead. Mohammed, when he passed away, remained in the state of death.

There is only One who provides an atonement. There is only One whom God has authenticated from heaven. There is only One whom God raised from the dead and appointed to be the One by whom He will judge the whole world.

God Has Done Enough

If you are still left with an uneasy feeling about the narrowness of God and the limits of His love, and you are thinking: “Why doesn’t God have enough love to have fifteen saviors? After all, we all come at it from different ways. Why can’t there be a god for this kind of personality and a redeemer for that kind of personality? If He really cared about the human race, wouldn’t He have twenty saviors? Anything less than that and He’s not really being gracious.”

Let me ask you to be careful about something. When you die and stand before God, please do not say, “You haven’t done enough.” It is implied in this protest that God is not gracious enough. We are told God loved the world so much that He gave the monogenēs, He gave His only begotten Son. God tells us: “If you put your trust in Him, you will not perish. I will forgive all your sins; I will give you eternal life; I will heal your ultimate problems; I will wipe away all your tears. But I hold one absolute mandate that I will not negotiate: You must worship Him and Him alone.”

If that is not enough, then take it up with your Creator, and speak to Him about His lack of mercy and grace. Can you imagine standing at the foot of the cross and saying, “That’s nice, but it doesn’t quite do it”? Christian people, think about the character of Christ. Think about the work of Christ. You will see that nothing is more consistent with who He is and what He has done than for Him to say: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me.”

Do not be like John the Baptist, who, when he was locked up in prison, sent a message to Jesus: “Are you the One who was to come? Or should we look for another?” To look for another is the supreme fool’s errand, because there is no other. Thanks be to God that there is One who has done all that is necessary for our redemption. That is why we come to Him and say with Simon, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). Let us pray.

Father, forgive us when we presume upon Your mercy. Forgive us when we presume upon Your love and discount the depths and the riches of the love that has been poured out in Your only begotten Son. Father, give to us the burning question, not why there are not more ways to You, but rather why there is even one. Help us to be amazed by that grace. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.