No One Comes to the Father Except Through Me

      There is no salvation outside of Jesus Christ. This is one of the most basic, foundational understandings of the Christian faith. Jesus Himself said in John 14 that “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except through Me.” We all have a pretty good idea of what traditional Christianity means when it proclaims this. That is, no one goes to heaven unless they, at the very least, profess belief in Jesus Christ.

     But is this what He meant?

     Really, the concept of salvation meaning going to heaven as we now think of it wasn’t within the worldview of the ancient world. The word which we translate as “heaven” actually just means “sky” in nearly every case, and the “sky” is where the divine dwelt in virtually every ancient pantheon (the Greek gods dwelt on Mt. Olympus, but that was still basically in the sky as far as they were concerned). It was where the divine dwelt, but no mortal living or deceased ever set foot there. Mortal souls descended into the underworld to be judged and sent to either paradise, torment, or someplace in between depending on the cultural worldview. The idea that a mortal soul would dwell with the divine after death was foreign to everyone in the first century, either Jew or pagan.

     The concept of a mortal soul going to the realm of the divine after death stems from what Paul says, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” That is, for those who are joined to Christ as part of His body, where He is, they are, and where they are, He is. And so, of course when one of these endures physical death he or she is automatically with Jesus Christ, because they are joined as one thing, one body. It is not a prize to be won, per se, but a fact of their union with Jesus Christ. But the hope of the follower of the Way of Jesus Christ was not even this, but the resurrection and transformation of the physical body as immortal like His body after the resurrection.

     But was this actually the salvation Jesus spoke of? It was certainly the end result, but the salvation He spoke of throughout His life was the rescue from our common malfunction which in Greek is called “hamartia.” Not the consequences of that malfunction, but the malfunction itself. The Way He taught and modeled to His disciples was about letting go of your own will, attachments, and desires, and surrendering all of it to the Father so that He did not say or do anything which the Father did not say or do through Him. It was a voluntary cooperation between Himself and the Father, not forced. And on the night before He was crucified, He explained it in really no uncertain terms that just as He surrendered Himself and remained in the Father, so His disciples were to surrender themselves and remain in Him, so that it would be the Father acting and speaking through the Son, and the Son acting and speaking through the disciple what the Father acted and spoke through Him.

     Paul also elaborates on this heavily in his letters, detailing the internal workings of this salvation from our own malfunction, explaining that the malfuncton itself is both hereditary and biological in nature. And only those who submit themselves, or enslave themselves, to the Spirit of Christ with whom they have been joined will be able to function, to speak or act, apart from that malfunction because it will in fact be the Spirit of Christ, which is without the malfunction, speaking and acting through them.

     So, the salvation which was first proclaimed had very little to do with the afterlife and everything to do with what we do and how we function in this life, in these mortal and physical bodies. It was meant as a final solution to the problem of the human malfunction which, as it was voluntary, would not violate our free will. As long as we voluntarily cooperated with the Spirit of Christ within us, our malfunction would be rendered inert and unmanifested. Once we chose to not cooperate, it would manifest itself again.

     And it is this salvation, this voluntary possession and control by the Spirit of Christ which bypasses our own malfunctioning biology, which is impossible without Jesus Christ. There are things like meditation and philosophy which can mitigate our malfunctioning behavior, rules and laws which can restrain harmful behavior, but it is only this cooperation with the Spirit of Christ which can bypass the malfunctioning source of behavior altogether. It is this salvation which He and His Apostles taught first and foremost, and everything else which happens including the union with Jesus Christ as a part of His body, including being present with Him wherever He is whether in the body or outside of it, and including the final transformative resurrection to be like Him in every way is a byproduct, a consequence of this submission and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ within us.

     And it is this salvation, this rescue from our own malfunctioning selves, which is the most important to understand, to preach, and to practice. If we understanding nothing else about salvation, if we understand nothing else about theology, if we are going to call ourselves true disciples of Jesus Christ then we must, absolutely must, understand this.